In the world of third-party software procurement, speed is often at odds with security. Risk managers and procurement officers know the pain: a single software request can trigger weeks, sometimes months, of back-and-forth with vendors, tedious security questionnaires, and the manual wrangling of SBOMs. The result? A stalled procurement pipeline, mounting operational frustration, and exposure to unseen threats hiding in binary code.
But security doesn’t have to be a roadblock. It can and should accelerate the path to value. That’s the mission behind Spectra Assure: to transform third-party software risk management (TPRM) from a bottleneck into a streamlined, automated, and intelligence-driven process.
The Problem: Legacy TPRM Slows Everything Down
Government agencies and large enterprises alike face growing pressure to secure their software supply chains. Following mandates like Executive Order 14028, and reinforced by evolving global regulations like the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), the need for software transparency and verifiable trust has become non-negotiable. Complete SBOMs, risk scoring, malware checks, tampering analysis, and ongoing monitoring are now non-negotiable.
The Cause: Outdated Approaches
The root cause is the legacy approaches used by almost every organization.
- Manual assessments using static security questionnaires
- Vendor-provided SBOMs of questionable completeness
- Penetration testing comes too late in the lifecycle, is often expensive and hard to scale
- This legacy process can stretch across weeks to months, delaying mission-critical software deployments and increasing organizational risk.
This legacy process can stretch across weeks to months, delaying mission-critical software deployments, hindering compliance with emerging standards like CRA and DORA, and increasing organizational risk. For financial institutions and critical infrastructure operators especially, failure to modernize these processes poses both operational and regulatory exposure.
The Spectra Assure Advantage: TPRM at the Speed of Need
Spectra Assure changes the game by enabling near-instant security analysis at every stage of the third-party software lifecycle from request, to approval, to deployment, and beyond. Here’s how:
Instant Spectra Assure SAFE Report Generation
With complex binary analysis and no need for source code, Spectra Assure deconstructs even the most opaque software packages in minutes - without the need for source code. It surfaces malware, tampering, exposed secrets, and more all in a detailed SAFE (Software Assurance Foundational Evaluation) Report that’s easy to securely share across IT, security, procurement, and compliance.
Automated SBOMs and xBOMs
No more chasing vendors. Spectra Assure automatically generates the most comprehensive SBOMs, SaaSBOMs, ML-BOMs, and CBOMs, giving risk managers independent, trustworthy insight without delay.
Auto Approvals for Trusted Packages
The latest update introduces Auto Approvals, a powerful feature that lets organizations pre-define SAFE Levels. When new software meets the set criteria, it’s automatically approved for download and use, cutting out time-consuming manual reviews. This feature has been shown to shrink approval cycles from weeks to just hours.
Component Age and Operational Risk Visibility
Spectra Assure now visualizes component age across the software package, giving reviewers context into the technical debt and operational risk associated with older, potentially outdated components, something no traditional TPRM tool offers today.
Real-World Results
A large global financial institution using Spectra Assure saw a 12-week procurement cycle slashed to 1 week a 1200% increase in efficiency. Similarly, a local government reduced software approval times from eight hours to one hour for a 700% increase in efficiency, with full SAFE report visibility for employee-requested freeware.
These aren’t hypothetical benefits. They’re the result of automation, transparency, and smarter workflows all delivered in a platform built for modern software risk.
Reimagine TPRM with Confidence and Speed
As software supply chain attacks surge (up 100% YoY, per the Verizon DBIR), security teams can no longer afford slow, manual approval processes. Spectra Assure delivers speed to service, audit-ready documentation, and the depth of analysis modern organizations require without compromising security or compliance.
Ready to streamline your third-party software approvals? Request a demo today.
