In a world where DevOps and CI/CD have become the norm, most software development teams face pressure to release application features and updates quickly and regularly.
At the same time, however, developers are expected to embrace DevSecOps by integrating security into the software development process. The goal of this practice is to identify and remediate not just security vulnerabilities that originate from an organization’s own source code, but also risks in third-party software that arise from within the software supply chain, which Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools help to uncover.
These two priorities – development velocity and software security – can easily conflict. If teams lack an efficient means of detecting and remediating security flaws within their code and software supply chains using SCA, they are at risk of slowing down development operations.
The good news is that it’s possible to create software development pipelines that are both fast and secure. The key to doing so is integrating Software Composition Analysis seamlessly into the broader software development process.
SCA in DevSecOps: An overview
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is a type of security testing that assesses the third-party software an organization uses – such as open source libraries and packages. The purpose of SCA is to identify third-party software resources that may present a security threat to the organization.
Because SCA is the primary means of discovering risks in third-party code, it plays a central role in DevSecOps, which means the integration of security into the software development process. When organizations practice DevSecOps, they make security tests – such as SCA scans, Static Application Security Testing (SAST), and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) – an integral and automatic part of the pipeline they use to develop and deploy software.
Running a thorough set of SCA scans is critical for identifying all of the potential risks lurking within an application’s supply chain. If developers and security teams don’t catch these risks prior to application deployment, threat actors may exploit them once the app is running in production.
How SCA integration can slow down DevSecOps
A key challenge, however, is that when teams don’t integrate SCA efficiently, they are at risk of slowing down the overall development process and undercutting the goals of DevSecOps. This can happen under conditions like the following:
- Siloed SCA tests: When SCA scans are performed in isolation from other security tests, analyzing and reacting to scan results becomes a separate step in the DevSecOps process, which can reduce the pace of development operations.
- Inaccurate scans: Scans that report false positives (meaning alerts about vulnerabilities that don’t actually exist) distract developers, who end up wasting time assessing issues that don’t require a fix. The result is less time spent developing application features and a slower software delivery pipeline.
- Lack of risk prioritization: SCA scans often detect a large number of potential risks, some of which are more serious than others. If teams struggle to prioritize vulnerabilities based on the risk they pose, they may waste time fixing low-value issues, another cause of slower development operations.
- Lack of remediation guidance: SCA tools that merely identify risks without offering guidance on how to fix them can also slow down development because they require developers to research and implement remediations entirely on their own.
None of these challenges are a reason to skip SCA. On the contrary, failure to comprehensively scan the supply chain for vulnerabilities and other risks would be a huge mistake because it would expose the organization to supply chain attacks, which have surged in frequency by triple-digit rates in recent years.
But they do mean that organizations must approach SCA strategically, ensuring they integrate SCA into DevSecOps in a way that provides accurate and reliable protection against supply chain risks while simultaneously enabling software development velocity.
Having it all: SCA, DevSecOps, and development speed
To ensure that speed and security go hand-in-hand for teams that deploy SCA tests and adopt DevSecOps, consider the following best practices:
Manage supply chain risks proactively
The fewer risky third-party libraries you introduce into your applications in the first place, the fewer SCA scan results you’ll need to manage. To that end, establish clear policies surrounding how developers can incorporate third-party code into applications.
For example, you might designate in advance which open source libraries they may utilize, perhaps based on author reputation and repository health metrics.
Systematically integrate and perform Software Composition Analysis
Software Composition Analysis scans shouldn’t occur on a periodic or one-off basis. Instead, to ensure that scans take place reliably without slowing down development, they should become an integral part of the broader development process.
The exact timing may vary from one pipeline to the next. But in general, it’s most effective to perform SCA scanning at least daily, ensuring that the team vets any new third-party code that developers have added to an application’s codebase in the past twenty-four hours. The earlier you catch issues, the less time and effort it typically takes to fix them.
Prioritize SCA risks
Not all third-party code dangers necessarily require immediate remediation. While some, such as libraries identified to contain malicious code, should be remediated with high priority, others may be minor issues that will not lead to a compromise (for example, if reachability analysis determines that vulnerable code is never actually called by the current version of the application).
For that reason, it’s a best practice to prioritize risks within SCA scan reports and focus on remediating those that are most serious. Don’t waste developers’ time chasing issues that pose no clear and present danger.
Ensure effective communication and collaboration
The more effectively developers and security analysts can work together, the faster they can typically fix third-party vulnerabilities that impact their code. To this end, the risks that security analysts discover using SCA scans should be communicated clearly and systematically to developers. In turn, developers should keep the security team in the loop about the status of remediations to these risks.
When all stakeholders collaborate efficiently, the software development pipeline flows more readily.
Making the most of DevSecOps with Checkmarx
As an integral capability of Checkmarx One, Software Composition Analysis helps teams not just discover third-party risks that impact their software supply chains, but also to assess and remediate them quickly. High-accuracy scans, full vulnerability visibility, risk prioritization and management, and built-in remediation guidance empower development and security teams to focus quickly on key risks, and then fix them efficiently, without slowing down the development process. Learn more by requesting a demo.