A software bill of materials (SBOM) is a list of all the software components found in a given codebase or used in a given software build. Great. So, now what? Why do we even care about SBOMs?

Those are great questions—because in and of itself, the SBOM doesn’t really do anything; it is simply a means to an end. That end being greater software security and a more secure software supply chain.

Let’s take one step back to understand why there is such a sudden and urgent demand for SBOMs. The most recent ‘big bang’ attack on the software supply chain was the Apache Log4j flaw, discovered in December 2021. That vulnerability opened the doors to countless breaches and caused billions of dollars in damage. Before that, the high-profile hacking of SolarWinds caused similar damage.

Now, will the SBOM prevent that from happening (again)? No. However, what an SBOM can do is tell you exactly where these kinds of vulnerabilities exist in software and enable you to quickly patch your systems or block exploits. Having a software bill of materials enables you to quickly assess the risks in your codebase and mitigate them as needed.

It’s strongly recommended that you use dynamic SBOMs (versus static) that are automatically updated to the latest SBOM information and provide extensive search capabilities as part of an SBOM database. That allows for immediate identification of a specific dependency version, like the Log4j case. Some solutions also update the SBOM information based on the runtime (like Docker or Kubernetes). That way, you know not only if some component is used, but also where.

SBOMs are an invaluable tool as they allow an audit of licenses, libraries, modules, applied patches and other components to look for weaknesses. However, for such an audit to reliably trace the components used to build the software, the SBOM must have certain attributes.

• Unique identities for each software component
• Separate identities (independent of those used internally in the organization) to identify each machine and user involved in the development process
• Timestamps to facilitate traceability of each change or component incorporation

Additionally, from a security point of view, a key element necessary for the reliability of the SBOM is to prevent unauthorized changes to it. And the most effective way to do this is by using an immutable ledger that records a history of when each change was made.

Once the reliability of an SBOM is assured, DevSecOps teams can use it as part of their threat scanning toolbox and, therefore, improve software security.

There is no doubt that SBOMs should be requested from your software vendors and that you should consider creating SBOMs along with your own developed software. It’s all about the proper storage of the SBOMs so you can be sure they’re recent, searchable and trustworthy and tamper-proof.

The benefits and use cases for SBOMs are numerous; they vary across stakeholders who produce, choose and operate software and are amplified when combined. Use cases for SBOMs include better software development, supply chain management, vulnerability management, asset management and high assurance processes. The benefits include reducing cost, mitigating security risk, license risk and compliance risk.

But the key is making the SBOM actionable.

No developer, no software maintainer or DevOps engineer wants to manually collect the dependencies and produce SBOM documents. It needs to be fully automated within the software build and deployment pipeline and there needs to be a proactive check of where it’s currently running.

The most efficient approach to work with a pervasive SBOM policy is to have them generated as a byproduct of a modern development CI/CD process.

In today’s complex development environments, it is imperative that SBOMs can be shared frictionlessly between teams and organizations as a fundamental part of software management transparency. This transparency model is supported by the ISO association through its OpenChain Specification, and it is part of an effort to improve security in the digital industry.

There are two SBOM specifications: The Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) backed by the Linux Foundation and the CycloneDX specification managed by the CycloneDX Core working group. For more details, have a look here.

Make sure to choose the SBOM standard that makes the most sense for you and stick to that for all of the software developed or used in your infrastructure. The test of whether your SBOM is actionable will come when the next Log4j moment arrives. You should be able to pinpoint the existence and the location of the component in question to mitigate risk effectively.

To hear more about cloud-native topics, join the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and the cloud-native community at KubeCon+CloudNativeCon North America 2022 – October 24-28, 2022