Software Composition Analysis

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is a security testing methodology that identifies and analyzes open source components, third-party libraries, and dependencies in your applications. SCA tools automatically scan your codebase to create a complete inventory of all external components, detect known vulnerabilities (CVEs), check license compliance risks, and provide remediation guidance. By continuously monitoring your software supply chain, SCA helps development and security teams understand exactly what's in their applications and proactively address risks before they reach production.

Dependency scanning works by analyzing your application's build files, package manifests, and container images to identify all direct and transitive dependencies. The SCA tool reads configuration files like package.json, requirements.txt, pom.xml, or go.mod to catalog every library and framework your code relies on—including dependencies of dependencies.

Once the inventory is complete, the scanner cross-references each component against vulnerability databases (NVD, GitHub Advisory Database, OSV) to identify known security issues. The tool then reports findings with severity scores (CVSS), exploit likelihood (EPSS), and actionable fix recommendations, enabling your team to prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities efficiently.

SCA tools detect a wide range of security vulnerabilities in open source components and third-party dependencies, including:

Known CVEs: Published vulnerabilities with assigned CVE identifiers, severity scores, and available patches

Outdated packages: Components running versions that are end-of-life or no longer maintained by their maintainers

Malicious packages: Intentionally harmful code including typosquatting attacks, dependency confusion, and supply chain poisoning

License compliance risks: Incompatible or restrictive licenses (GPL, AGPL) that conflict with your usage policies

Unpatched critical vulnerabilities: High-severity issues like Log4Shell, Heartbleed, or similar widespread threats

Transitive dependency risks: Vulnerabilities hidden deep in your dependency tree that aren't directly imported

By detecting these issues early in the development lifecycle, SCA enables teams to secure their software supply chain before vulnerabilities reach production environments.
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SCA (Software Composition Analysis) and SAST (Static Application Security Testing) are complementary security testing methodologies that examine different aspects of your code:

SCA focuses on open source and third-party code:

• Scans open source libraries, dependencies, and packages you didn't write
• Detects known vulnerabilities with published CVEs
• Checks license compliance and component versioning
• Monitors your software supply chain for risks

SAST focuses on first-party code:

• Analyzes source code you or your team wrote
• Identifies coding errors, logic flaws, and security weaknesses
• 4Detects issues like SQL injection, XSS, and buffer overflows in custom code
• Reviews code structure and implementation patterns

Most organizations need both: SAST secures the code you write, while SCA secures the 70-90% of modern applications composed of open source and third-party components. Together, they provide comprehensive application security coverage across your entire codebase.

SCA tools automatically detect and track every open source license across your dependencies, helping you avoid legal and compliance risks. The scanner identifies licenses like MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL, AGPL, and BSD, then flags potential conflicts based on your usage policies. For example, if you're building proprietary commercial software, SCA will alert you when GPL-licensed components could trigger copyleft obligations requiring you to open-source your code.

Beyond detection, SCA provides:

• Policy enforcement: Automatically block builds containing prohibited licenses
• License inventory reports: Complete SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) for audits
  
• Risk scoring: Identify high-risk licenses that require legal review

This automation saves legal review time, prevents accidental license violations, and ensures your software distribution remains compliant with open source licensing terms and your corporate policies.

Yes, modern SCA solutions scan container images to detect vulnerabilities in every layer of your containers. The tool unpacks each layer—base OS, system libraries, language runtimes, and application dependencies—to create a complete inventory of components.

It then identifies vulnerabilities in:

• Base images: Outdated or vulnerable OS packages (Ubuntu, Alpine, Debian distributions)
• System libraries: OpenSSL, glibc, curl, and other foundational components
• Language-specific dependencies: npm packages, Python wheels, Java JARs, Go modules embedded in the image
• Application binaries: Compiled code and executables copied into containers

Container scanning integrates into your CI/CD pipeline to block vulnerable images before deployment. This ensures your containerized applications stay secure across development, staging, and production environments without manual inspection of every image layer.

SCA integrates seamlessly into modern DevOps workflows to provide automated security scanning without slowing down development velocity.

Integration options include:

• Version control systems: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket—scanning pull requests before merge
• CI/CD platforms: Harness
• Container registries: Docker Hub, Amazon ECR, Azure Container Registry—image scanning before deployment
• IDE plugins: Real-time vulnerability detection as developers write code in VS Code, IntelliJ, or other editors
• Package managers: npm, pip, Maven, NuGet—scanning during dependency installation

The SCA tool runs automatically at multiple checkpoints in your pipeline, providing immediate feedback through inline PR comments, build status checks, and dashboard alerts. You can configure quality gates to fail builds when critical vulnerabilities are detected, or set policies to block deployments of non-compliant components. This "shift-left" approach catches security issues early when they're fastest and cheapest to fix, without requiring security experts to manually review every change.

Effective vulnerability prioritization combines multiple risk factors rather than relying solely on severity scores. Here's a practical framework:

Use CVSS scores (0-10) to understand severity:

• Critical/High (7.0-10.0): Serious vulnerabilities with significant potential impact
• Medium (4.0-6.9): Moderate risks requiring attention
• Low (0.1-3.9): Minor issues to address during normal maintenance

Add EPSS scores (0-100%) to assess exploit likelihood:

• High EPSS (>50%): Actively targeted by attackers, prioritize immediately
• Medium EPSS (10-50%): Elevated risk, schedule remediation soon
• Low EPSS (<10%): Lower probability, can be addressed in regular patching cycles

Add reachability analysis to assess whether code is executed

• Reachable: vulnerability is in an OSS function/method called by your code, lower risk
• Not reachable: vulnerability is not in an OSS function/method called by your code, lower risk

Prioritization matrix:

• Critical + High EPSS + reachable: Fix immediately—these are actively exploited high-severity vulnerabilities
• High + Medium EPSS + reachable: Address within days—serious risks with moderate exploit likelihood
• Medium + High EPSS + reachable : Faster than severity alone suggests—attackers are targeting these
• Low CVSS or EPSS: Schedule for routine maintenance
• Not reachable: Schedule for routine maintenance

SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) generation creates a comprehensive, machine-readable inventory of all components in your software—similar to an ingredients list on food packaging. An SBOM documents every open source library, dependency version, license, and supplier for your application. SCA tools automatically generate SBOMs in standard formats like SPDX, CycloneDX, or SWID tags.

Why SBOMs matter:

• Regulatory compliance: Required by executive orders (EO 14028) and regulations for government software suppliers
• Incident response: When new vulnerabilities like Log4Shell emerge, quickly identify which applications are affected
• Supply chain transparency: Understand your software supply chain dependencies and third-party risks
• Vendor risk management: Share SBOMs with customers who need to assess your software's security posture
• Audit readiness: Provide complete documentation for SOC 2, ISO 27001, or customer security questionnaires

Modern SCA solutions generate and continuously update SBOMs automatically, ensuring you always have current documentation of your software composition without manual maintenance. This transparency is increasingly essential for software procurement, security assessments, and meeting emerging compliance requirements.

Comprehensive SCA solutions support multiple programming languages and their associated package managers to cover polyglot development environments.

Common support includes:

• JavaScript/TypeScript: npm, Yarn, pnpm—scanning package.json and lock files
• Python: pip, Poetry, Pipenv—analyzing requirements.txt, Pipfile, and pyproject.toml
• Java/Kotlin: Maven, Gradle—scanning pom.xml, build.gradle, and JAR files
• Ruby: Bundler, RubyGems—analyzing Gemfile and Gemfile.lock
• Go: Go modules—scanning go.mod and go.sum
• PHP: Composer—analyzing composer.json and lock files
• .NET/C#: NuGet—scanning packages.config, .csproj files
• Swift: CocoaPods, Swift Package Manager
• C/C++: Conan, vcpkg

Beyond language support, effective SCA tools also scan container images (Docker), infrastructure as code (Terraform), and cloud-native platforms (Kubernetes manifests). This broad coverage ensures security across your entire technology stack without requiring multiple specialized tools. When evaluating SCA solutions, verify support for your specific languages, frameworks, and build systems to ensure comprehensive vulnerability detection across all your applications.