Software Composition Analysis (SCA) helps identify and manage risks in open-source software (OSS) components used in application development, such as security vulnerabilities and license issues. Traditional tracking methods don’t scale, but SCA tools scan code to detect known issues and compliance risks. SCA differs from SAST, which analyzes proprietary code for unknown vulnerabilities. Azul Intelligence Cloud acts like an SCA tool for Java apps by detecting only used vulnerable code at runtime, reducing false positives and improving accuracy across all JVMs. It helps ensure secure, compliant Java applications with minimal noise and clearer remediation paths.
In today’s fast-paced world of software development, building applications often means leaning heavily on open-source software (OSS) components. This approach saves time and reduces costs, but it also introduces risks, such as security vulnerabilities and license compliance issues. That’s where Software Composition Analysis (SCA) comes in.
What Is Software Composition Analysis?
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is the practice of identifying and analyzing the OSS components within your software to uncover potential risks. It helps detect security flaws, flag licensing concerns, and ensure your applications remain secure and compliant.
By giving you visibility into your supply chain, SCA enables you to catch vulnerabilities early, stay compliant, and maintain secure, high-quality code.
Why Software Composition Analysis Exists
Using OSS for Java application development comes with great benefits, such as not having to pay for the development and licensing of the software components. You also have more flexibility when the software components are segmented into smaller pieces of code that serve modularized purposes. Also, much of the code development, maintenance and upkeep of the components is done by the OSS community.
However, using OSS does impose quite a lot of management overhead on your teams, including dependency management, Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures (CVEs) management, license management based on intellectual property (IP) legal requirements, library management to ensure OSS code meets product requirements, provides sufficient documentation and remains maintained and updated.
Although a lot of organizations have used spreadsheets and documents to track the OSS components used by their developers, this practice doesn’t scale for organizations with a larger number of developers and with development teams who use OSS components extensively. SCA tools and applications exist to help organizations manage this OSS risk.
Software Composition Analysis Tools
SCA tools mitigate OSS risk by detecting all the third-party components in use within your software applications, and identifying which ones have issues with security vulnerabilities, licensing compliance, and datedness (i.e., which components are outdated).
SCA tools typically scan your source code and files that you use to compile your application. They catalog the OSS components and code, including information about the versions being used. They store this catalog of OSS information in a database. They then will compare the catalog to databases of known CVEs for each component, such as the US National Vulnerability Database (NVD). The tools will then display the results in a report for you to evaluate the risk and any recommended actions to address the CVEs.
There are several things to watch out for with SCA tools. First, some might involve a complicated deployment cycle that takes months to configure and deploy in production. Because each tool uses its own database of OSS components and sources of information, you’ll see a wide range of programming languages, components and their vulnerabilities. Some tools may not cover the breadth of technology and the depth of information you require. For example, sometimes the most recent vulnerability information ihasn’t been reported to the NVD yet, and won’t be available until months after the CVE was originally identified.
Additionally, SCA reports may not include guidance around each OSS component or provide suggestion on how to action associated vulnerabilities. Likewise, some reports don’t include guidance on the legal requirements associated with identified OSS licenses.
SAST Versus SCA
Statistic Application Security Testing (SAST) analyzes both the open source code and the proprietary source code that you’ve created in your codebase. It identifies potential security vulnerabilities throughout the software production lifecycle. In contrast, SCA typically runs during Continuous Integration (CI) and/or deployment phases in order to assess third-party and OSS components within your source code, as well asto look for known vulnerabilities and OSS license compliance.
SAST tools will typically analyze your source code to assess any potential security-related vulnerabilities you have in your application. They also help ensure you use secure coding practices, that you comply with industry standards and requirements, and they often help you prioritize the risks that you need to address.
The weakness of SAST tools is they are often language-specific, which, depending on the number of open source languages in your tech stack can mean having to implement and
maintain multiple tools, increasing your operating costs. SAST tools are also prone to false positives, which are basically false alarms, and can lead to an overwhelming number of spurious alerts whose investigation can be a significant drag on time and resources.
The key differences between SAST and SCA are that SAST analyzes your proprietary code that’s created by your developers, while SCA analyzes OSS components or third-party libraries. SAST is run against your source code, while SCA is typically run during the CI/CD process (for software developers) or else run against the built application (for software end users). SAST tools look for unknown/undiscovered code-level vulnerabilities, while SCA tools look for known vulnerabilities in third-party libraries. When addressing vulnerabilities discovered by SAST tools, you’ll want to update your code to fix the risks. When addressing vulnerabilities discovered by SCA tools, you’ll most likely want to remediate/patch or upgrade the components your application depends on.
Azul Intelligence Cloud, like SCA can help you identify known vulnerabilities in your Java application.
Azul Cloud Intelligence and Software Composition Analysis
How does Azul Intelligence Cloud (IC) function like a SCA tool for your Java applications? IC helps identify known vulnerabilities at the class level of Java code running in production, thereby eliminating false positives. It works with all JVMs from all vendors and distributions, including Azul, Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, RedHat, and Temurin.
IC’s Vulnerability Detection helps identify and mitigate vulnerabilities found in OSS components. Vulnerability Detection detects vulnerable code that is actually used versus simply present, eliminating false positives for efficient vulnerability triage. By detecting vulnerabilities at point of use in production, it fills a critical gap at the endpoint of the software supply chain and augments legacy tools for more accurate results.
