Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is a formal, structured inventory of all the components, libraries, and dependencies that make up a piece of software. It provides visibility into the software supply chain by listing open-source and proprietary components, their versions, licensing information, and known vulnerabilities. SBOMs are critical for securing applications, managing risk, and complying with software supply chain regulations.
As organizations increasingly rely on third-party code and open-source software, maintaining a current and comprehensive SBOM is essential for understanding what is in your software—and how it could be exploited.
What is an SBOM?
An SBOM is a machine-readable document that outlines:
- Component names and versions
- Suppliers or origins of components
- Dependency relationships
- Licensing details
- Known vulnerabilities (e.g., CVEs)
- Component integrity (e.g., hashes)
SBOMs can be generated during the build process or retroactively from deployed applications. Common formats include SPDX, CycloneDX, and SWID, all of which aim to make SBOM data interoperable and portable.
Why SBOMs matter
SBOMs are foundational to software supply chain security because they:
- Enable vulnerability management: Identify which packages are impacted by known CVEs and whether fixes are available
- Support incident response: Quickly assess exposure during a newly disclosed vulnerability or supply chain attack
- Improve software transparency: Understand the origin and licensing of third-party components
- Enhance compliance: Meet requirements from regulatory bodies, such as the U.S. Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, PCI-DSS, and FedRAMP
- Strengthen DevSecOps: Empower teams to shift left and detect risks earlier in the development lifecycle
Without SBOMs, organizations face blind spots that attackers can exploit through outdated or malicious components.
SBOMs and software supply chain security
The rise of supply chain attacks—such as SolarWinds and Log4Shell—has underscored the importance of visibility into the components that make up modern software. SBOMs allow organizations to:
- Trace dependencies: Understand which software depends on what, including transitive (indirect) dependencies
- Audit third-party risk: Assess security and compliance risks introduced by vendors and open-source packages
- Verify component integrity: Check for tampering or substitution of critical components
- Support secure distribution: Share verifiable SBOMs with customers, partners, and regulators
SBOMs are increasingly required in both government and commercial contracts as part of secure development and procurement standards.
Challenges of SBOM implementation
Despite their value, SBOMs present several challenges:
- Tooling maturity: SBOM generation tools vary in completeness and accuracy
- Format fragmentation: Multiple competing formats make interoperability difficult
- Keeping SBOMs up to date: As software evolves, so must the SBOMs
- Vulnerability mapping: Matching SBOM entries to CVEs and determining exploitability requires context
- Storage and distribution: Managing SBOMs across environments and release cycles requires scalable infrastructure
To overcome these challenges, organizations must embed SBOM generation and validation into their CI/CD pipelines and choose tools that provide context and integration with vulnerability databases.
SBOM and DevSecOps
In DevSecOps workflows, SBOMs play a vital role in:
- Shift-left security: Detecting and addressing vulnerabilities during development
- Continuous compliance: Ensuring each build aligns with licensing and security policies
- Automated gating: Blocking deployments that contain high-risk components or known exploits
- Supply chain risk monitoring: Surfacing new risks as they emerge across dependencies
Integrating SBOMs into DevSecOps fosters transparency and accountability across development, security, and operations teams.
How Orca Security helps
The Orca Cloud Security Platform enables organizations to generate and manage SBOMs for cloud workloads, code repositories, and container images. Orca provides deep, agentless-first visibility across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Kubernetes.
With Orca, teams can:
- Automatically generate SBOMs for third-party packages across all code repositories
- Identify vulnerabilities tied to specific components, along with fix availability and exploitability context
- Track end-of-life status, install dates, and versioning details for better software lifecycle management
- Export SBOMs in standard formats to meet regulatory and customer requirements
Orca helps organizations operationalize SBOMs as part of a comprehensive application and cloud security program.
