In our recent webinar, Mastering SBOMs: Best Practices, speakers, including Ilkka Turunen, Field CTO, Sonatype, Roger Smith, Global Testing and Digital Assurance Lead, DXC Technology, and Marc Luescher, Solution Architect, AWS, shed light on the importance of software bills of materials (SBOMs) in software development.
What impact does the federal government have on SBOM management?
Roger Smith underscored that SBOMs are not just critical but foundational elements in software development, serving as table stakes for securing applications and software supply chains.
Smith advocated for regular adoption of SBOM practices to:
- enhance situational awareness;
- eliminate security by obscurity; and
- comply with the stringent requirements.
These practices are especially important in highly regulated industries such as finance, banking, government, and defense.
The webinar covered real-world examples of security incidents stemming from poor supply chain management, which underlines the need for a robust SBOM strategy. The evolving regulatory landscape adds pressure on organizations to comply with SBOM guidelines and possible requirements.
SBOMs have become invaluable tools in identifying security vulnerabilities and ensuring compliance with licensing requirements. By offering visibility into third-party, especially open source, components in the software supply chain, SBOMs act as a safeguard against potential security breaches.
What is the recommended approach to SBOM management?
While what constitutes best practices depends upon your organization's requirements and operations, our speakers in this webinar put forth ideas such as:
- Update your SBOMs regularly;
- Integrate SBOM generation into your software development life cycle (SDLC) or continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines;
- Automate SBOM generation and updates;
- Prioritize vulnerability tracking and management;
- Strive for completeness and accuracy at every level with your SBOMs;
- Treat SBOMs as sensitive information; and
- Regularly review SBOMs for licensing and compliance issues.
SBOMs are critical in enhancing software supply chain security. Access the webinar recording to watch the top 7 best practices for SBOM management.
We encourage organizations, especially in regulated industries, to catch part 2 of this series, SBOMs in Action: Demonstrations to adopt SBOMs as a standard practice to fortify their software infrastructure.
