Last year, we introduced Software Component Analysis (SCA) as a core capability in our Application Security platform. The goal was simple but critical: extend vulnerability detection beyond first-party code and into the vast ecosystem of third-party and open-source dependencies that modern software is built on.
In today’s cloud-native and AI-driven development environments, applications are rarely written from scratch. Developers routinely compile, import, and dynamically link hundreds, sometimes thousands of external libraries sourced from public and private package repositories. While this accelerates innovation, it also introduces hidden and transitive risk that traditional code scanning alone cannot surface.
SCA addresses this blind spot by identifying, inventorying, and continuously analyzing the software components that make up an application providing the missing context needed for meaningful vulnerability management.
Why SCA and SBOM Matter in Modern AppSec
Two of the most important concepts in this space are SCA (Software Component Analysis) and SBOM (Software Bill of Materials).
An SBOM is a structured inventory of all components, libraries, and dependencies included in a software artifact, along with metadata such as versions, licenses, and dependency relationships. SCA uses this inventory to detect known vulnerabilities, license risks, and supply-chain exposure across both direct and transitive dependencies.
This is especially important as attackers increasingly target software supply chains rather than individual applications. Vulnerabilities in widely used libraries, malicious package injections, dependency confusion attacks, and compromised build pipelines have made component visibility a first-class security requirement.
By integrating SCA directly into vulnerability analysis, we enable teams to move from reactive CVE tracking to proactive dependency risk management.
Deeper Look at SBOM Formats: SPDX and CycloneDX
While the concept of an SBOM is simple, an inventory of software components the format and structure of that inventory determines how useful it is in practice. SPDX and CycloneDX have emerged as the two most widely adopted standards, each optimized for different but complementary aspects of application security, compliance, and supply-chain risk management.
SPDX: Compliance, Provenance, and Legal Clarity at Scale
SPDX was originally created to solve a problem that many security teams still underestimate: understanding the legal and licensing implications of software composition. Over time, it has evolved into a robust standard for describing software packages, files, and their relationships with a high degree of precision.
At its core, SPDX excels at software provenance. It provides a structured way to describe where a component came from, how it was built, and what licenses apply not just at the package level, but down to individual files if needed. This granularity is especially important for organizations distributing software, embedding third-party components into products, or operating under strict regulatory or contractual requirements.
From an AppSec standpoint, SPDX supports:
- Clear attribution of components and authorship
- Accurate license identification and expression
- Traceability across complex dependency trees
- Integration with compliance, audit, and governance workflows
SPDX SBOMs are often long-lived artifacts, used not only during development but also during audits, customer disclosures, and incident response investigations. When a vulnerability or license issue emerges years after release, SPDX provides the historical record needed to assess exposure quickly and defensibly.
CycloneDX: Security-First SBOMs for Cloud-Native Applications
CycloneDX was designed with a different primary goal: making SBOMs immediately actionable for security teams. While it includes component and license information, its structure prioritizes vulnerability analysis, dependency relationships, and operational relevance.
CycloneDX places strong emphasis on how components are connected, not just which components exist. This makes it particularly well suited for modern architectures built on microservices, containers, serverless functions, and managed cloud services. For AppSec teams, understanding dependency graphs is critical for determining blast radius and exploitability.
Key strengths of CycloneDX include:
- Explicit modeling of dependency relationships
- Native support for containers, images, and cloud services
- Direct linkage between components and known vulnerabilities
- Compatibility with CI/CD pipelines and automated security tooling
- Extensibility for emerging software types and AI workloads
Because CycloneDX SBOMs are optimized for continuous use, they are often regenerated frequently on every build, deployment, or release. This makes them ideal inputs for continuous vulnerability management, runtime correlation, and automated remediation workflows.
SPDX vs. CycloneDX: Complementary, Not Competing
Although SPDX and CycloneDX are often compared, they are best understood as complementary standards rather than alternatives. Each serves a distinct role within a mature AppSec and supply-chain security program.
SPDX provides:
- Strong legal, licensing, and provenance guarantees
- Deep traceability and audit readiness
- Long-term artifact stability
CycloneDX provides:
- Security-centric modeling and dependency intelligence
- Faster vulnerability correlation and prioritization
- Tight integration with modern DevSecOps pipelines
Supporting both formats allows organizations to meet regulatory, legal, and customer expectations while also enabling real-time security operations and AI-driven risk analysis.
Conclusion
With SCA and SBOM analysis integrated into our broader vulnerability platform, teams gain a single, unified view of application risk:
- First-party code vulnerabilities
- Third-party and transitive dependency exposure
- License and compliance risks
- Supply-chain attack surface
- Runtime and deployment context
This unified approach is critical as organizations adopt AI-assisted development, increase release velocity, and operate across multiple cloud providers. Security can no longer be fragmented across tools and formats, it must be correlated, contextual, and intelligent by design.
As software supply chains grow more complex and AI accelerates development cycles, SBOMs are becoming foundational security artifacts. SPDX and CycloneDX together provide the structure needed to make software composition transparent, analyzable, and defensible.
By deeply integrating both formats into SCA workflows, organizations gain the visibility required to secure not just what they write, but everything they depend on. Look forward to more innovations from us in this space in the near future.
