Today we make RKVST available for public use with a free access tier so you can discover what a Zero Trust Fabric can do for you. From tracking software supply chain lifecycles to nuclear waste, RKVST is a powerful tool that builds trust in multi-party processes, when it’s critical to have high assurance in data for confident decisions. But before going all the way you can start simple: tracking software releases and contents with SBOMs.

More than ever, developers are building web applications on the foundations of open source software libraries. However, while those libraries make up the software bill of materials (SBOM) components inventory, not all developers and business stakeholders understand the significant impact on open source supply chain security that stems from including 3rd party libraries.

Software Bill of Materials or SBOMs are gaining momentum because they really do make a difference when it comes to enhancing the security and reliability of software. Here are three reasons why organizations need to jump on the SBOM train now.

A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is a list of ingredients that make up software components. This includes code updates, vulnerability patches, new features, and any other modifications. An SBOM is useful in tracking the history of software products and their components. But SBOMs are static, and frequently changes need to be made, which can be labor intensive and costly for organizations.

The Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) has moved from relative obscurity to mainstream seemingly overnight, although the concept has been around for a while. As organizations look to ensure that the software they are producing, buying, and using is secure and reliable, the SBOM has become a valuable tool.

A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) can be a powerful component of software security, and that’s why the rise of SBOMs should be good news for product security leaders and their teams. Because these documents are formal records that contain the details and supply chain relationships of the various components used in building software, they provide extensive histories of the software that can help organizations identify potentially risky components or sources.

Since President Biden’s Executive Order last spring, the industry has been racing to define, standardise and now produce SBOMs to describe the hundreds of thousands of software products sold to and used by federal government and beyond. So far, little thought has been given to the management of SBOMs in practice. Finding the right SBOMs for all the software an organisation relies upon can already feel like hunting for needles in haystacks.

In previous posts, we’ve discussed how the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) concept will make a difference in cybersecurity, and why context is needed to generate the most value from these formal records of the details and supply chain relationships of software components. As helpful as SBOMs are in tracking the history of software products and their components, most of these documents remain static. That’s not ideal for a scenario in which there is near constant change.

Before we jump into definitions, let’s quickly level set on how we got here. Over the last few years, the way we build software has changed drastically. With the increasing need to move faster and release more frequently, organizations are opting to get rid of monolithic architectures and adopt a microservices architecture for greater agility, resiliency, and efficiency.