The Buyer’s Guide to Software Supply Chain Security
Why legacy AST tools don’t provide adequate coverage for today’s threats.
ReversingLabs reports a 1300% increase in software supply chain threats over the last three years. And the analyst firm Gartner reported recently that software supply chain attacks have seen triple-digit increases.1
Despite risks from software mounting, organizations are mistakenly relying on software composition analysis (SCA) and other legacy application security testing tools (AST), which offer limited visibility and scalability. Two key failures of legacy SCA & AST tools:
- They overlook threats and risks in commercial and proprietary software
- SBOMs (list of software ingredients) are delivered without comprehensive threat analysis
The Buyer’s Guide to Software Supply Chain Security examines key features and capabilities software producers and buyers need to modernize their application security (AppSec) tooling for the new era of software supply chain security (SSCS).
In this buyer’s guide, you’ll learn:
- How legacy AST tools miss key attack vectors in the modern software development lifecycle (SDLC): malware, tampering, and secrets.
- How SCA’s purpose-built nature — to identify vulnerabilities embedded in open-source software — means it misses many modern supply chain threats.
- Why managing third-party or commercial software risk requires automated testing that identifies all components and their security, threat, and compliance status.
- About the increasingly complex nature of today's software development processes, driving the increase of malware paths into software packages.
1. Gartner, “Mitigate Enterprise Software Supply Chain Security Risks”
Dale Gardner, 31 October 2023
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