CISA Guidelines for Software Supply Chains

What are CISA's software supply chain guidelines?

The CISA Guidelines for Software Supply Chains are a set of best practices, risk management principles, and policy recommendations published by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to help organizations secure their software development lifecycle (SDLC) and defend against supply chain threats.

These guidelines aim to ensure the integrity, transparency, and resilience of software components, whether developed internally or sourced from third parties.

Why listen to CISA?

The growing sophistication of supply chain attacks, such as SolarWinds and Log4Shell, has exposed vulnerabilities in the development, distribution, and consumption of software. CISA’s guidelines provide a foundation for securing the software ecosystem across public and private sectors.

Following these practices helps organizations:

Comply with Executive Order 14028
Build more secure software
Reduce exposure to third-party risks
Prepare for incident response involving compromised supply chains

How it works

The guidelines are organized into three roles:

Developers – Secure coding, build hardening, SBOM generation, artifact signing
Suppliers – Transparency, vulnerability disclosure, secure delivery
Acquirers – Risk assessment, validation of SBOMs, provenance verification

CISA also encourages alignment with:

NIST Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF)
Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) requirements
Zero Trust Architecture principles

The guidelines provide checklists, maturity models, and tooling recommendations for implementing layered security in CI/CD pipelines and procurement processes.

Benefits

Reduces Software Supply Chain Risk: Identifies and addresses weak links in development and delivery.
Enhances Regulatory Preparedness: Aligns with Executive Order 14028, FedRAMP, and upcoming procurement rules.
Boosts Market Trust: Demonstrates a proactive and transparent security posture to customers and regulators, fostering trust.
Protects Operational Continuity:Hardens build systems and vendor relationships against disruption or compromise.

CISA guidelines vs

Topic	Focus Area	Key Differences
NIST SSDF	Development practices	CISA builds on NIST and adds procurement, supplier, and acquirer roles
EO 14028	U.S. federal policy directive	CISA operationalizes EO 14028 for real-world security implementation
SLSA Framework	Build pipeline assurance	CISA includes SLSA as one element of its broader guidance

Best practices for implementing CISA guidelines

Implement layered access controls in your CI/CD toolchains
Require SBOMs and signed artifacts from all suppliers
Conduct third-party software risk reviews during procurement
Maintain tamper-evident logs of builds and deployments
Perform threat modeling and vulnerability disclosure planning

Use cases

Government Vendor Compliance: Meeting software supply chain requirements for federal contracts
Enterprise SDLC Security: Applying secure build and testing practices organization-wide
SaaS Procurement Security: Ensuring vendors follow secure development and delivery standards

Additional considerations

CISA guidance evolves regularly to reflect emerging threats — monitor updates
Implementation is tiered by maturity, enabling phased adoption
Success depends on collaboration across dev, security, procurement, and legal teams
Consider using CISA’s Secure Software Development Fact Sheet and Threat Modeling Resources for implementation