Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is an essential tool in your cybersecurity arsenal if you use open source libraries, components, and dependencies, which 97% of commercial codebases do.
The widespread use of open source has fueled innovation and accelerated development cycles. It has also introduced risks and challenges for security teams and developers:
- Vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed and therefore easy to exploit
- Hackers can use one vulnerability to exploit a number of companies, as many as are using that particular library or component
- Vulnerable open source components can be used to execute software supply chain attacks
Keep reading to find out how SCA can help and how to choose the right tool for your enterprise.
Key highlights:
- Software composition analysis (SCA) is the process of identifying, reviewing, and securing open-source and third-party components in a codebase.
- By detecting vulnerabilities and license compliance issues early, SCA strengthens security and reduces costly remediation later in the SDLC.
- Effective SCA tools provide automated monitoring, prioritized remediation guidance, and seamless integration with developer workflows.
- Cycode delivers an enterprise-grade SCA solution as part of its unified ASPM platform, combining visibility, prioritization, and code-to-cloud security.
What Is Enterprise Software Composition Analysis?
Software Composition Analysis is the automated, continuous identification and review of open source and third-party libraries in a codebase. SCA scans and analyzes open source components for known vulnerabilities and license compliance issues to ensure the integrity and security of code and to protect the software supply chain.
In the simplest terms, SCA scans your codebase to automatically identify the following:
- Open source inventory: What open source dependencies, including direct and indirect, are in your application?
- Licensing compliance: Do you have any restrictive open source licenses that prevent derivative proprietary works?
- Security vulnerabilities: Are there any known weaknesses in these components that could be exploited?
By understanding these aspects of code, developers can build more secure and reliable software.
Until the early 2000s, teams relied on manual processes for managing open source components. This was time-consuming and error-prone, especially for complex projects with many dependencies.
The introduction of SCA tools has helped developers and security teams identify and address vulnerabilities earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC), which reduces the cost and effort required for remediation downstream.
How Do SCA Tools Work?
Understanding how Software Composition Analysis (SCA) operates is essential for leveraging it effectively. These automated security solutions execute a rigorous, multi-step workflow designed to eliminate open-source risk from your codebase. The process moves quickly, ranging from initial component discovery to intelligent prioritization and automated remediation, ensuring security is baked into your development lifecycle.
1. Component Identification
SCA tools start by scanning the software project’s dependencies to create an inventory of all components used. This includes libraries, frameworks, modules, and other third-party code integrated into the project.
There are two primary methods used (and many tools take a hybrid approach):
- Manifest Scanning: SCA tools can parse your project’s manifest files, like package.json or pom.xml, which typically list the dependencies explicitly declared during development. This provides a clear picture of the intended components.
- Binary Scanning: For compiled applications or container images, manifest files might not be readily available. Here, SCA tools leverage a technique called binary fingerprinting. Essentially, they create a unique signature based on the code’s characteristics, which can then be compared against databases of known open source components.
Modern SCA tools integrate with continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, enabling automated scanning (and remediation) as part of the DevSecOps workflow.
2. License Compliance
Once third-party components have been identified, SCA tools assess their open source licenses to ensure they are compliant. Metadata is analyzed to ensure that the project adheres to relevant open source licenses and meets legal obligations. This helps organizations avoid licensing conflicts, infringement issues, and legal liabilities associated with non-compliance.
3. Vulnerability Detection
SCA tools are most known for their ability to identify known open source vulnerabilities. They do this by cross-referencing identified components against vulnerability databases like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) or the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. Once vulnerable components are identified, SCA delivers insights into the severity of each vulnerability through tools like CVSS score or risk scoring.
4. Prioritization and Remediation
Finally, SCA tools analyze any identified vulnerabilities to prioritize findings and make recommendations for remediation. This includes both reachability analysis and exploitability. Reachability analysis determines whether an application’s execution path reaches the vulnerability in a way that could be exploited at run time. Exploitability identifies the likelihood or ease with which an attacker could exploit a vulnerability.
Most SCA tools provide remediation advice that identifies the fix for a vulnerability. They also integrate with issue tracking systems and version control platforms to streamline remediation workflows. Through advanced prioritization and remediation, cybersecurity teams can be sure that they are addressing the riskiest vulnerabilities first, while safely deprioritizing unreachable vulnerabilities.
SCA and Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs)
A software bill of materials is a formal record containing the details and supply chain relationships of the various components used in building a software application, including all open source and third-party dependencies. Think of it as a list of ingredients in your software.
This “list” offers much-needed transparency and helps organizations properly assess and identify supply chain risk, which is precisely why it’s become industry standard for software suppliers to produce and share with the companies they’re selling to.
SCA plays a crucial role in creating SBOMs by providing the necessary data and insights required to accurately document the software components used within an application. SBOMs, in turn, help companies improve software security and compliance, just two of the benefits of SCA.
Learn more about the minimum requirements for SBOMs.
Why Is Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Important?
SCA helps organizations identify publicly disclosed vulnerabilities before they become critical breaches and improves developer experience. This translates to better products, a more secure supply chain, and happier customers. Let’s explore these benefits in more detail.
Enhanced Security Posture
SCA empowers organizations to systematically identify and address vulnerabilities in their software supply chains. By proactively managing third-party and open source dependencies, organizations can prevent costly security breaches and safeguard sensitive data.
Regulatory Compliance
SCA plays a pivotal role in ensuring compliance regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS by enabling organizations to track and manage the use of third-party components, verify licensing obligations, and demonstrate due diligence in safeguarding data.
SBOMs are crucial here. They enable organizations to accurately track and trace the origins of the software components they use in different products and applications, and facilitate transparency and accountability throughout the software supply chain.
Assured Quality and Reliability
Customers entrust organizations with their sensitive data and rely on software products to deliver seamless experiences. SCA plays a pivotal role in upholding this trust by ensuring the quality and reliability of software applications.
Streamlined Development Processes
Developers are constantly trying to balance speed, innovation, and security. By automating the identification and management of third-party dependencies, and integrating with their workflows, SCA helps free up developer time, increase developer productivity, and accelerate time-to-market.
Empowerment Through Insights
SCA provides security and business leaders with the insights they need to make informed decisions about dependency selection, version management, and vulnerability remediation. By leveraging these insights, developers can take ownership of software security, mitigate technical debt, and foster a culture of continuous improvement.
Why Is Software Composition Analysis Important?
SCA helps organizations identify publicly disclosed vulnerabilities before they become critical breaches and improves developer experience. This translates to better products, a more secure supply chain, and happier customers. Let’s explore these benefits in more detail.
Enhanced Security Posture
SCA empowers organizations to systematically identify and address vulnerabilities in their software supply chains. By proactively managing third-party and open source dependencies, organizations can prevent costly security breaches and safeguard sensitive data.
Regulatory Compliance
SCA plays a pivotal role in ensuring compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS by enabling organizations to track and manage the use of third-party components, verify licensing obligations, and demonstrate due diligence in safeguarding data.
SBOMs are crucial here. They enable organizations to accurately track and trace the origins of the software components they use in different products and applications, and facilitate transparency and accountability throughout the software supply chain.
Assured Quality and Reliability
Customers entrust organizations with their sensitive data and rely on software products to deliver seamless experiences. SCA plays a pivotal role in upholding this trust by ensuring the quality and reliability of software applications.
Streamlined Development Processes
Developers are constantly trying to balance speed, innovation, and security. By automating the identification and management of third-party dependencies and integrating with their workflows, SCA helps free up developer time, increase developer productivity, and accelerate time-to-market.
Empowerment Through Insights
SCA provides security and business leaders with the insights they need to make informed decisions about dependency selection, version management, and vulnerability remediation. By leveraging these insights, developers can take ownership of software security, mitigate technical debt, and foster a culture of continuous improvement.
What Are the Strengths and Weaknesses of Popular Open-Source SCA Tools?
While foundational open-source SCA tools offer a free starting point, their effectiveness and scalability are inherently limited by their siloed nature, dependence on public databases, and lack of prioritization context. For true enterprise-grade security, they are often insufficient on their own, requiring significant internal maintenance and integration efforts.
The real competitive landscape is defined by commercial solutions, which have evolved SCA into highly intelligent platforms. Below is a comparison of leading providers, highlighting the trade-offs between point tools and the unified approach of the Cycode AI-Native Application Security Platform.
Who are the leading commercial SCA solution providers in the market, and what are their areas of specialization? Let’s take a closer look.
| Leading Open-Source SCA Tools | Key Focus |
| Cycode | AI-Native Application Security Platform: Code-to-Cloud Context and Prioritization |
| Xygeni-SCA | Supply Chain Security: Dependency Malware Detection and Policy |
| Snyk | Developer Security Platform: In-Workflow Scanning |
| Veracode SCA | Application Security Platform: Compliance and Policy-Driven SAST |
| Checkmarx SCA | Application Security Platform: Broad Language Coverage |
| Jit | Security Orchestration: Minimal Viable Security and Workflow Automation |
| Wiz | Cloud Security Platform: Cloud Posture (CSPM |
| Black Duck by Synopsys | Mature SCA Platform: License Compliance and Open Source Governance |
| Sonatype Lifecycle | Dependency Management: Component Curation |
- Cycode
Cycode is the AI-Native Application Security Platform that sets the standard for enterprise SCA. We are not a point solution; our enterprise-grade SCA is seamlessly incorporated alongside proprietary AST and ASPM. This unification is Cycode’s decisive advantage: we apply the power of the Risk Intelligence Graph (RIG) to every SCA finding, eliminating alert noise by confirming a vulnerability’s reachability and exploitability across your entire SDLC. Cycode is purpose-built to reduce developer toil, offering automated remediation and making it the superior choice for organizations seeking measurable security outcomes at DevOps speed.
Cycode is the leader in the market, featured in both Gartner AST MQ 2025 and a leader in the 2025 IDC Marketscape because it solves the core problems of noise and context that plague every other SCA tool on the market. Our platform unifies siloed tools into a single, intelligent engine.
- Code-to-Cloud Traceability: Cycode’s Risk Intelligence Graph (RIG) maps vulnerabilities from the code repository through the pipeline to the deployed cloud asset, uniquely confirming exploitability to filter out up to 92% of non-critical alerts.
- AI-Native Automation: We leverage specialized AI to automatically prioritize risk and generate precise, one-click remediation suggestions, reducing Mean Time to Remediation (MTTR) by eliminating manual toil for developers.
- Unified AppSec Platform: Cycode provides native, enterprise-grade SCA, SAST, IaC, and Software Supply Chain Security (SSCS) in a single platform, eliminating vendor sprawl and consolidating all risk visibility and policy enforcement.
- Snyk
Snyk is marketed as a Developer Security Platform, specializing in providing fast, real-time security feedback directly within the developer’s workflow, such as in the IDE and Pull Request (PR). It excels at open source and container scanning.
Strength: Excellent developer experience with fast scans and good in-workflow fix suggestions.
Weakness: It lacks the deep governance, holistic posture management (ASPM), and full Code-to-Cloud context required by large, regulated enterprises.
- Veracode SCA
Veracode offers SCA as part of a veteran, cloud-based AppSec testing suite, recognized for policy enforcement and compliance reporting across its SAST/SCA offerings.
Strength: Provides strong compliance and executive reporting trusted by auditors, especially for binary analysis and policy enforcement.
Weakness: Its scanning methodology is often slower and less flexible for rapid DevOps workflows, creating bottlenecks and lacking the SCM-native agility of modern platforms.
- Checkmarx SCA
Checkmarx provides its SCA within a broad platform focused on comprehensive, in-depth security testing across numerous languages.
Strength: Offers broad language coverage and powerful, high-fidelity scanning engines for technical risk identification.
Weakness: The volume of high-fidelity findings results in significant alert fatigue due to insufficient context for true prioritization, making large backlogs unmanageable.
- Wiz
Wiz is primarily a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) leader that has extended its cloud visibility to code-level artifacts, approaching application security from a Shift-Right infrastructure perspective.
Strength: Excellent cloud-native visibility, correlating code artifacts with deployed cloud workloads and runtime context.
Weakness: Lacks native Shift-Left tools like high-speed SAST and its code-level analysis often forces developers out of their workflow for remediation, hindering adoption.
- Black Duck by Synopsys
Black Duck is a veteran SCA solution, revered for its deep specialization in open source governance and licensing compliance for enterprises.
Strength: Unmatched expertise and trusted database for IP risk and legal compliance.
Weakness: Its deep governance focus results in slow, build-time scanning that introduces significant friction into high-velocity CI/CD pipelines and lacks automated, exploitability-based prioritization.
- Sonatype Lifecycle
Sonatype is focused on dependency management, deeply integrating with software repositories to enforce policies and curate high-quality components.
Strength: Strongest in dependency management and component curation, effectively blocking poor-quality or risky dependencies from entering repositories early.
Weakness: Functions primarily as a governance point tool; it requires integration with other platforms for full AppSec posture management and Code-to-Cloud traceability, increasing complexity and TCO.
Open-Source SCA Tools (e.g., OWASP Dependency-Check, Trivy, Grype)
Open-source tools offer basic dependency scanning that relies on public databases, providing a bare-minimum starting point for vulnerability discovery.
Strength: Zero licensing cost, strong community support, and fast CLI operation for single-artifact scanning. Weakness: Creates massive alert noise due to zero context, requires high internal maintenance overhead, and offers zero Code-to-Cloud visibility, making it insufficient for enterprise-scale risk management.
How to Choose a Software Composition Analysis Tool
Choosing the right SCA tool is a critical decision for any organization aiming to secure its software supply chain and maintain compliance. We recommend evaluating potential vendors using a structured, step-by-step approach. For example:
Define Your Requirements
Start by mapping out your specific needs, including the types of open-source components you use, the size of your codebase, and your regulatory compliance obligations. This will help narrow down your options to vendors that cater to your specific industry and project scale.
Research and Shortlist Vendors
Once your requirements are clear, research vendors who offer SCA tools that align with your needs. Look for those who have a strong reputation in the industry, as evidenced by independent reviews, customer testimonials, and third-party evaluations from analysts like Gartner.
Evaluate Feature Sets
For each vendor on your shortlist, evaluate their feature offerings against your requirements. Focus on key capabilities such as comprehensive open-source identification, vulnerability management, license compliance, and integration with existing tools.
You should also consider whether you want a tool that utilizes proprietary scanners or open-source scanners.
Request Demos and Trials
Reach out to vendors to request demos or trial versions of their tools. This hands-on experience will allow you to see how the tool works within your environment and assess its usability, performance, and integration capabilities.
Here’s a shortlist of potential questions to ask:
- How does your tool integrate with our existing CI/CD pipeline and IDEs?
- What types of vulnerabilities can your tool detect, and how does it prioritize them?
- Can your tool handle binary files and provide a complete Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)?
- What are the options for customizing policies and alerts in the tool?
- How do you ensure the tool stays updated with the latest vulnerabilities and license terms?
Curious how Cycode stacks up? Learn more about how our software composition analysis tools help security and development teams scan, prioritize, and remediate application code for vulnerable open source dependencies.
What Kinds of Vulnerabilities Can Be Found With Software Composition Analysis?
As we’ve said, SCA focuses on vulnerabilities within open-source and third-party components, targeting security issues that can arise from unmaintained, misconfigured, or outdated dependencies.
Here are some specific vulnerabilities that SCA detects and why they’re important:
- Outdated Libraries: Unpatched libraries can harbor well-known vulnerabilities, exposing systems to security risks. SCA detects outdated versions by comparing them against databases like the NVD to ensure dependencies are secure.
- License Compliance Issues: SCA identifies components with restrictive licenses, preventing legal risks associated with improper use of open-source software. Detecting license issues ensures compliance and avoids potential legal challenges.
- Dependency Confusion: Some components may pull from external repositories that could be tampered with. SCA tools detect such dependencies to prevent malicious packages from infiltrating the software.
- Vulnerable Transitive Dependencies: Often, vulnerabilities lie in indirect dependencies. SCA tools analyze entire dependency trees to find transitive vulnerabilities that could compromise application security.
- Hardcoded Secrets: While not always a direct dependency issue, some open-source libraries may contain hardcoded credentials or tokens. SCA scans for such sensitive information within dependencies to reduce data leakage risks.
- Configuration Weaknesses: Insecure defaults in third-party components can expose an application to attacks if not properly configured. SCA tools identify these configuration issues, providing guidelines for securing them.
Challenges with Software Composition Analysis
Now that we’ve covered some of the challenges security and development professionals face when detecting SCA vulnerabilities, let’s discuss some best practice tips that’ll help ensure your software remains secure and compliant.
Shift Security Left in the SDLC
Integrating your SCA tool early in the SDLC is critical. By doing so, you can identify and address vulnerabilities and license compliance issues as code is being written, rather than after it’s already in production. This approach not only reduces the cost of remediation but also helps maintain development speed by catching issues before they become embedded in the codebase.
Automate Policy Enforcement
To ensure consistency and reduce human error, automate the enforcement of security and compliance policies. Use your SCA tool to set up automated checks within your CI/CD pipeline, where builds can be halted if critical vulnerabilities or license violations are detected. This automation ensures that security is maintained without slowing down the development process.
Regularly Monitor and Update Components
Open-source components often become outdated or unsupported, posing security risks. Regularly monitor your components for new vulnerabilities, and promptly update them to the latest secure versions. Implement a process for continuous monitoring so that your development and security teams can stay ahead of potential risks.
Foster Cross-functional Collaboration
Remember: Security is a team sport!
Ensure that software composition analysis is integrated into security and development teams’ workflows, and that security is considered at every stage of the development process. Establish clear communication channels and shared goals to align teams on the importance of SCA and its role in maintaining software security and compliance.
How to Use Software Composition Analysis in Development Processes
SCA is a critical part of modern application security. But developers are often hesitant to adopt security tools due to concerns that they may slow down productivity or disrupt workflows. For SCA to be effective, it’s crucial to select tools that integrate seamlessly into existing development processes, allowing teams to address vulnerabilities without sacrificing efficiency.
Here are some tips to effectively integrate SCA into developer workflows:
Integrate SCA in CI/CD Pipelines
Automate SCA scans in CI/CD to detect vulnerabilities before they reach production. This setup provides immediate feedback to developers on component security.
Conduct Regular Dependency Reviews
Schedule regular scans of your software’s dependencies. Regular monitoring keeps you informed about new vulnerabilities in open-source components that may arise post-release.
Prioritize Remediation Efforts
Use SCA reachability analysis to focus on vulnerabilities that pose actual risks, allowing developers to prioritize fixes efficiently.
Establish Security Gates
Set policies that prevent merging code with high-severity vulnerabilities into main branches. This ensures that only secure components enter your codebase.
Educate Developers
Provide training on SCA tools and best practices for managing open-source dependencies. Awareness empowers developers to select secure components and reduce the introduction of vulnerable dependencies.
The good news is that Cycode was designed by developers for developers and integrates seamlessly into development workflows with real-time feedback through pull request scans, CLI, and IDE integration.
How Can Cycode Help?
Cycode’s security-first, developer-friendly Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) platform provides visibility, prioritization, and remediation for security, engineering, and DevOps teams throughout the software development lifecycle. This includes our SCM-first approach to SCA in which we identify all dependencies without having to intervene in the CI/CD process. Furthermore, our SCA solution delivers code-to-cloud visibility where we trace a container image back to a specific code repository to identify how vulnerabilities move through pipelines.
Cycode offers a unified security platform that consolidates application security testing and pipeline security to deliver code-to-cloud security coverage. In addition to SCA, our application security testing includes SAST (which scans 31% faster than the competition), IaC, and container scanning. Cycode ASPM not only provides our own suite of scanning tools, but we also ingest data from third-party scanners to give you a full view of your application risk.
Book a demo now to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Continuous Monitoring in SCA?
What Is the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) in SCA?
What Is SCA Reachability Analysis?
What Is Remediation in SCA?
- Prioritization: Triage the vast list of vulnerabilities using context (reachability, exploitability) to determine which high-impact issues must be addressed first.
- Fix Identification: Determine the least disruptive and most secure path to resolution, typically identifying the specific patch or secure version update.
- Change Implementation: Developers update the dependency version in the manifest file or apply the necessary code patch to remove the vulnerable function.
- Verification: The code is immediately re-scanned (often in a Pull Request) to confirm the fix was successful and did not introduce new vulnerabilities or break the build.
- Policy Enforcement: The platform ensures the successfully remediated code passes all security and license policies before it is permitted to merge and proceed through the CI/CD pipeline.
What Kind of Remediation Guidance Does a Good SCA Tool Offer to Developers?
| Type of Guidance | Description | Cycode's Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Direct Fix Recommendation | Specifies the exact version or patch number needed to fix the vulnerability (e.g., "Upgrade library-x from 1.0.0 to 1.0.5"). | Provides precise version updates and secure package suggestions. |
| Contextual Prioritization | Uses data to confirm if the vulnerable code path is actually called or used by the application, minimizing "alert noise." | Reachability Analysis and Exploitability Intelligence prioritize only high-risk issues. |
| In-Workflow Delivery | Presents remediation steps directly in the tools developers already use (IDE, PR comment, Jira ticket). | Integrates seamlessly with IDEs and SCMs to provide real-time feedback and fix suggestions during coding. |
| Automated Fix Generation | Provides AI-driven suggestions for the code fix itself, allowing the developer to accept a patch with a single click. | AI-powered Remediation offers automated, no-code solutions for dependency updates and configuration fixes. |
| Root Cause Explanation | Explains why the component is vulnerable, how it's being used, and the path it takes through the application. | Traces the vulnerability using Code-to-Cloud traceability to give the developer full context on the risk. |
an enterprise SCA solution like Cycode's transforms a passive security warning into an active, automated task that allows developers to fix the problem efficiently without leaving their environment.
What Is Vulnerability Detection in SCA?
Are There Any SCA Solutions that Offer a Unified Platform with Other AppSec Tools?
This platform-centric model, exemplified by Cycode's approach, is critical for contextual risk prioritization. By housing all security data in a single system, the platform can correlate an SCA finding (a vulnerable library) with a SAST finding (vulnerable custom code) and pipeline misconfigurations to deliver a holistic, Code-to-Cloud security posture. This unified view, powered by a central Risk Intelligence Graph, is what enables security teams to move beyond high-volume alerts and focus developers exclusively on the few vulnerabilities that are actually reachable and exploitable in production.
What Are the Most Important Features to Look for in an Enterprise-Grade SCA Solution?
Beyond accurate risk filtering, look for features that enable developer velocity and fortify the software supply chain. This includes deep, frictionless integration into the developer's IDE and pull request workflow for fast, early feedback, as well as AI-powered remediation that suggests precise, one-click code fixes. Finally, the solution must be part of a broader SSCS platform that automates the generation of compliant Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) and enforces security and license policies directly within the CI/CD pipeline, just as Cycode does for its enterprise customers.
