Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools identify open-source components within software applications. Open-source components can make up a significant portion of an application’s codebase, and relying on these components may introduce security vulnerabilities, licensing issues, and maintenance challenges. Its therefore important that developers can track the usage of open source code within their applications, assess any security and compliance risks, and remediate them effectively.
SCA tools work by integrating with the DevOps pipeline by scanning the application code and dependencies during development, testing, and deployment phases. They inspect source code and package managers, comparing code against knowledge bases which contain known and common vulnerabilities. This then flags any vulnerabilities, errors, or issues with the overall code quality.
This process helps in reducing the risks associated with open-source usage while adhering to compliance regulations and industry standards. SCA tools further provide automation capabilities, vulnerability remediation guidance, and continuous monitoring to ensure that organizations take a proactive approach to secure their software supply chain.
As developers look to “shift left” and introduce code security analysis earlier into the SDLC, the use case for Composition Analysis tools is rapidly growing. In this guide we will explore the top 10 Software Composition Analysis tools, including their key features, to help organizations make an informed decision.
CAST Highlight is an automated portfolio governance solution designed to provide comprehensive insights across a wide range of applications. The platform provides a centralized control tower for custom application portfolios, enabling rapid portfolio analysis, cloud migration optimization, open-source risk control, and green software development.
CAST Highlight offers developers a single, integrated view of their portfolio, assisting them in lowering maintenance costs, optimizing resource allocation, reducing technical debt, rationalizing redundancies, and avoiding production outages. Additionally, the platform helps cloud leaders to segment and prioritize applications for migration (5Rs) based on technical characteristics and business impact. This allows for a faster and more efficient migration and ongoing cloud optimization.
The platform also strengthens controls over open-source legal and security risks by providing automatic recommendations on priority actions to address critical security vulnerabilities and IP licensing exposures. Furthermore, CAST Highlight supports the emerging green software development trend by identifying green deficiencies in code and suggesting ways to reduce CO2 emissions while improving costs, performance, and resiliency. CAST Highlight supports over 50 technologies and offers customizable dashboards, instant drilldowns, REST APIs, and CI/CD plug-ins.
Checkmarx is a software security company that offers Software Composition Analysis (SCA) to scan applications for open source risks, recommend updates, and ensure license compliance. The SCA solution identifies vulnerable open source packages in code, provides remediation guidance, and helps developers scale their production efforts without compromising security. The software tracks open source components within applications and provides accurate results to prioritize remediation efforts.
The Checkmarx SCA solution is designed for secure DevOps, delivering security risk information directly to stakeholders, without impeding their ability to ship code on tight schedules. It is delivered through a scalable, enterprise-class cloud, with integrations, REST APIs, and secure data communications for both cloud-based and on-premises SDLC and CI/CD pipelines. The system automatically alerts users to new threats impacting previously analyzed projects even after they have gone into production.
Checkmarx’s dedicated open source security research team provides detailed descriptions and remediation guidance for known CVEs and exclusive vulnerabilities not available through public resources like the NVD. As part of the Checkmarx application security testing (AST) portfolio, the SCA solution simplifies user administration and access control configuration, allowing users to focus on managing software security. Checkmarx is trusted by over 1,400 organizations around the globe, including more than 40 percent of the Fortune 100 and large government agencies.
Fossa is a leading open source management platform that offers advanced risk detection capabilities, without hindering development cycles. It uses sophisticated algorithms to accurately identify and map direct and indirect dependencies across various programming languages, providing comprehensive open source risk detection. Fossa also contains a curated knowledge base of open source components and vulnerabilities for precise license and security issue detection.
The platform’s robust policy engine allows teams to create policies for license compliance and vulnerability detection. This allows you to enforce policies at scale and automate risk management processes. This includes customizable rules, vulnerability filtering, and role-based access control.
Fossa delivers timely and actionable intelligence to help developers quickly address and resolve issues, offering out-of-the-box integrations with CI/CD pipelines and collaboration tools like email, Jira, and Slack. Fossa is trusted by over 7,000 open source projects and companies such as Uber, Ford, Zendesk, and Motorola.
GitLab is a software development platform that helps companies to manage the complexity of developing, securing, and deploying software by reducing toolchain sprawl, resulting in faster cycles, increased developer productivity, and reduced expenses. GitLab provides a comprehensive security framework that protects multiple attack surfaces, such as code, build environments, dependencies, and release artifacts.
One of GitLab’s primary features is its ability to secure source code by establishing version control, code history, and access control, along with enforcing review and approval rules. Automated code quality tests and security scans ensure the detection of vulnerabilities, and that sensitive information is not included in the source code. GitLab also allows users to prevent developer impersonation through signatures.
GitLab assists in verifying open-source dependencies used in projects to ensure they are free from vulnerabilities and originate from trusted sources. It generates software bills of materials, enables automated software composition analysis, and performs license compliance scans. With GitLab, users can better protect their build environments and release artifacts while maintaining a secure connection with the cluster to deliver release artifacts.
GitLab offers platform-wide governance that enables security at scale and automation, allowing developers to focus on value-generating work and ensuring adherence to best practices throughout the organization. A multi-cloud DevSecOps platform, GitLab helps businesses to avoid vendor lock-in and to efficiently manage their software supply chains.
JFrog X-Ray is a software composition analysis (SCA) solution that scans and detects open-source software (OSS) packages for known vulnerabilities, helping users to efficiently resolve security risks. It offers comprehensive analysis for source code and binary files, as well as identifying license compliance issues with enhanced CVE detection.
JFrog X-Ray’s operational risk policies help to block undesirable packages by automating risk management and implementing customizable blocking policies based on soft attributes like the number of maintainers and release age. It also screens for malicious packages through JFrog’s database, which contains thousands of undesirable packages and is continuously updated with information from global sources.
The solution emphasizes shifting security assessment as far left as possible, beginning with scanning packages early in the development process for vulnerabilities and license violations. JFrog X-Ray provides developer-friendly tools for scanning source code and binary files, as well as seamless integration into users’ IDEs and automated pipelines using a CLI tool.
JFrog’s dedicated security team continually advances software security by discovering and analyzing new vulnerabilities and attack methods. Their research enhances the CVE data used in JFrog X-Ray, providing valuable context and step-by-step remediation guidance for developers. With over 720 findings published and 500+ zero-day vulnerabilities disclosed, JFrog X-Ray helps to create trusted, secure releases throughout the software development process.
Mend SCA is an open source security platform that enables organizations to identify and resolve vulnerable open source dependencies, ensure compliance with license policies, and prevent malicious open source software from being integrated into their code base. Mend SCA offers comprehensive visibility and control over open source usage, simplifying the process for developers to resolve open source risk from their existing tools.
Mend SCA operates unobtrusively in the background, continuously detecting open source components, including direct and transitive dependencies, whenever developers commit code or build applications. If vulnerabilities, malicious packages, or license policy violations are identified, Mend SCA sends real-time alerts and offers automated remediation capabilities. In some cases, it can even block malicious packages and license violations before they become part of the code base.
The platform integrates with IDEs, repositories, registries, and CI/CD pipelines to provide automated risk remediation and policy enforcement throughout the software development life cycle. Mend SCA supports over 200 programming languages, making it an ideal solution for addressing open-source security and license compliance issues across a wide range of applications.
Snyk Open Source is a developer-focused software composition analysis (SCA) solution that helps find, prioritize, and fix security vulnerabilities and license issues in open source dependencies. It allows developers to identify vulnerable dependencies while coding in their IDE or CLI, scan pull requests before merging, and add automated Snyk tests to CI/CD pipelines. Additionally, it can test production environments for existing vulnerabilities and monitor for newly disclosed issues.
The platform’s features enable users to prioritize top open source risks, automate vulnerability fixes through one-click pull requests, and continuously monitor projects and deployed code for vulnerabilities. Snyk Open Source also provides real-time and historical reporting for compliance evaluation with regulatory and internal security policies.
Developers can integrate Snyk Open Source into their workflow tools across the software development lifecycle. The platform offers automated and actionable fixes and is powered by a robust database of open source vulnerability intelligence. With its focus on security at every step, Snyk Open Source provides comprehensive protection across coding, code management, CI/CD, containers, deployment, and reporting tools.
Sonatype Lifecycle is a platform designed to manage open source risk across the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It enables businesses to automatically find and fix open source vulnerabilities throughout the development process. This platform provides monitoring, remediation, policy enforcement, and developer empowerment features, making it suitable for both developers and security teams.
As the platform offers integrated support for IDEs and source control, developers can deliver quality code quickly, without switching tools. It also allows developers to prevent unplanned work and maintainability issues with early detection and remediation of vulnerabilities. Moreover, they can locate and fix threats easily with precise component and dependency intelligence.
For security teams, Sonatype Lifecycle offers monitoring for open source risks, customizable policy enforcement, and automated Software Bill of Materials generation. This provides full visibility into applications, allowing swift vulnerability remediation based on detailed intelligence. The platform is available with flexible deployment options, including cloud (hosted on AWS), self-hosted, and air-gapped solutions—catering to various organizational requirements without additional operational complexities.
Sonatype Lifecycle is compatible with various tools, offering seamless integration and access to step-by-step remediation guidance, ultimately covering all vulnerability concerns throughout the development process.
Synopsys Black Duck Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is designed to manage security, quality, and license compliance risks associated with using open source and third-party code in applications and containers. By utilizing multifactor, open source detection and a KnowledgeBase of over 6.3 million components, Black Duck provides comprehensive visibility into the composition of any application or container.
Black Duck conducts dependency analysis for languages like Java and C#. For applications built using languages like C and C++, it utilizes codeprint analysis to identify open source and third-party components. It also performs binary analysis which identifies open source content within compiled application libraries and executables, while snippet analysis discovers copied open source code within proprietary code.
Black Duck’s discovery technology compiles a complete software Bill of Materials (SBOM) for the open source, third-party, and proprietary software components in applications and containers. This enables tracking of security, license, and operational risks through NTIA-compliant formats such as SPDX and CycloneDX. The solution also automates open source governance and policy enforcement across the software development life cycle (SDLC), integrating with tools used by developers, development teams, and security and operations teams.
Veracode Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is a tool designed to secure software supply chains by reducing open-source and license risk. Veracode enables businesses to automate the discovery and remediation of vulnerabilities within their software’s open-source libraries. As a result, it helps organizations ensure their code is compliant with regulations and mitigates the risk of costly fines or penalties.
In addition to detecting vulnerabilities from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), Veracode SCA’s premium database identifies potentially harmful code that may not have been reported or registered. With its easy-to-use interface, developers can immediately test code in their development environment, reducing fix time and facilitating faster and more accurate results.
Veracode SCA offers features such as Fix Advisor, dependency graphs, auto-pull requests, and the generation of a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) in CycloneDX format. It also enables custom policy management and robust reporting and analytics tools. Developers can rely on Veracode’s continuous monitoring, extensive analytics, and flexible policies for effective open-source management.
Everything You Need To Know About Software Composition Analysis Tools (FAQs)
What are Software Composition Analysis Tools And How Do They Work?
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools are software development tools that enable organizations to identify and manage open source code used in their software applications. These tools are essential for developers to remediate against security vulnerabilities, ensure licensing compliance and improve the overall quality of code, earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
SCA tools work by examining the dependencies and components used in a software project, such as source code, container images, and package managers. The tools create a comprehensive inventory of these components. This can then be scanned and compared against a database of known security vulnerabilities, highlighting any errors or potential risks. SCA tools also check the licenses of open source code to identify any conflicts or restrictions which may affect the project.
SCA solutions will provide comprehensive reports detailing the results of the security analysis. If vulnerabilities are detected, SCA solutions can provide alerts and notifications which are then prioritized so that development teams can quickly remediate issues. This may also include guidance on how to address vulnerabilities or concerns.
Why Is Software Composition Analysis Important?
Software composition analysis is important as developers continue to rely heavily on the use of open source code to improve production times. Developers need an easy way to analyze the code they are using to ensure that it is secure and compliant, without slowing down their production schedule.
SCA is a critical component of the ‘shift left’ trend, as development teams look to move continuous code security testing earlier into the SDLC. This improves both efficiency and security whilst reducing cost. This helps teams to stay ahead of production schedules, without compromising on application security.
Software Composition Analysis is essential for mitigating security risks, ensuring compliance, and maintaining the overall health and quality of software projects. It is an integral part of modern software development and helps organizations protect their assets, reputation, and the interests of their stakeholders.
What Features Should You Look For When Choosing AQ Software Composition Analysis Tool?
When evaluating the ideal SCA solution, organizations should consider factors such as ease of integration, scalability, support for various languages and frameworks, as well as robust reporting and analytics features. Key features to look for when selecting a solution for your team include:
- Dependency Analysis: Analyzing the dependencies and components used in a software project, including open-source libraries, third-party frameworks, and other code assets
- Vulnerability Scanning: Checking for known security vulnerabilities and provide information on the severity of these vulnerabilities
- License Compliance: Ensuring that the licenses of the open-source components they use are compatible with the intended use and distribution of their software
- Component Inventory: Maintaining a comprehensive inventory of all the components used in a project, making it easier to track changes and updates
- Risk Assessment: Providing risk assessments based on the vulnerabilities and licensing issues they detect, helping organizations prioritize and mitigate potential risks
- Notifications and Alerts: Offering alerts and notifications when new vulnerabilities or updates are discovered for the components in use, enabling timely action
- Reporting: Generating reports that can be used for compliance audits, project management, and communication with stakeholders
- Integration: Integrations with other development and DevOps tools, such as version control systems, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, and issue tracking systems
- Automation: Automations for scanning code repositories and building pipelines, ensuring that all code changes are checked for compliance and vulnerabilities
