Mitigating SCA Vulnerabilities: Strengthening Your Software Supply Chain for Maximum Security

Open source has become indispensable to modern software development, but it’s also become one of the biggest attack surfaces.

By compromising a single OSS component, attackers can exploit every application or system that includes it. And because these vulnerabilities often hide deep in your dependency tree, they’re easy to miss and hard to fix.

That’s where Software Composition Analysis (SCA) comes in.

This article explores the risks of SCA vulnerabilities, how to identify and mitigate them, and what to look for in a modern Software Composition Analysis.

How Do SCA Vulnerabilities Impact Your Software Supply Chain?

Consider the following: 

• Attacks targeting software supply chains increased by 742% between 2019 and 2022. 
• From 2020-2023, compromised open-source package repositories became 1300% more prevalent.
• In 2024, 75% of software supply chains experienced one or more cyberattacks. 

Adversaries are exploiting SCA vulnerabilities with increasing frequency, and with good reason. Without specialized software, these security risks can be nearly impossible to identify, allowing them to proliferate across your SDLC. 

Each new dependency introduced into your pipeline is another component you don’t directly control, and another potential weak link in your software supply chain. The problem is especially pronounced with open source software (OSS). 

Because development is community-driven, anyone can feasibly contribute to the codebase, including bad actors. They can also simply upload a poisoned version of a component masquerading as legitimate. This tactic, known as repo confusion, has become incredibly widespread — last year, for example, we detected over 100,000 infected repos on GitHub. 

And since no single entity is accountable for addressing OSS vulnerabilities, they may go overlooked for months or even years, as happened with Log4J.  

There’s also the matter of compliance. Juggling the complex license requirements of multiple components can be extremely challenging. An organization that fails to effectively manage its licenses may find itself facing legal issues or regulatory penalties. 

Lastly, keeping third-party tools and libraries up to date is both time-consuming and burdensome. It introduces more unnecessary work to a security team that may already be running on fumes, increasing the chance of mistakes and oversights. 

Key Benefits of SCA for Security

Implementing SCA for both open source and proprietary components positions an organization to adopt a proactive approach to securing its SDLC and supply chain.

Through automatic scanning and analysis, security teams can adopt a shift left strategy, identifying and remediating vulnerabilities well before they reach production. 

With a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), the organization gains a complete overview of every component, dependency, license and vulnerability in its supply chain.  

Finally, automated tracking, assessment, and analysis reduces the burden on developers and security engineers, allowing them to focus on addressing issues instead of painstakingly investigating them. 

How Can Organizations Identify and Track SCA Vulnerabilities?

Effective SCA security begins with finding the right technology. This means deploying a solution that can: 

• Accurately detect and categorize OSS components
• Provide insight into both vulnerabilities and licenses
• Deliver actionable remediation guidance
• Support automated policy enforcement
• Integrate with both the CI/CD pipeline and other security tools

Combine the technology above with the following best practices: 

Embrace a Shift Left Mindset

Make a point to address security issues as early as possible in your SDLC. This applies to SCA vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, exposed secrets, and access controls. Integration can greatly helps with this, allowing you to embrace a more proactive approach to protecting your supply chain. 

Don’t Sacrifice Usability

Security policies and workflows should enable your development team rather than blocking them. This requires an SCA solution that connects seamlessly with existing tools and processes and focuses on providing clear, practical guidance and feedback. 

Employ Automated Real-Time Monitoring

Perform an automatic SCA scan with each new commit or pull request. Each time a risk is identified, correlate threat intelligence from established databases with the business impact it may have on your ecosystem. 

Instead of relying on scheduled scans or audits, continuously monitor your environment so you can detect and block SCA vulnerabilities before they enter your pipeline. 

Maintain an Accurate SBOM

Your SBOM serves as a roadmap of your third-party dependencies and vulnerabilities. It can also assist in remediation and prioritization by providing additional context. To ensure it remains as accurate as possible, update it in real-time.

Streamline Remediation

Detecting and identifying vulnerabilities is relatively straightforward. Remediating them is another matter altogether. The process is often time-consuming and disruptive, plagued by communication breakdowns, tool sprawl, and software complexity. 

Addressing these challenges requires several steps. First, integrate vulnerability management and remediation with existing workflows. In addition to detection and prioritization, automate tracking, assignment, and verification. 

Lastly, provide developers with actionable remediation guidance to walk them through complex fixes. 

Reduce Noise

Traditional SCA tools generate an overwhelming volume of non-actionable alerts. This noise makes it incredibly difficult for security engineers to identify and prioritize vulnerabilities. By automatically and intelligently analyzing, prioritizing, and contextualizing vulnerabilities, you’ll ensure your team can focus exclusively on the security findings that matter. 

Related Content: 3 dimensions of application risk you need to prioritize and reduce your alert backlog

Define Your Policies

Establish clear policies that include:

• An acceptable remediation timeline for critical vulnerabilities
• What constitutes an acceptable (and unacceptable) open source license
• Minimum security standards
• Regular audits and code reviews
• Incident response and disaster recovery
• Roles, responsibilities, and ownership for SCA-related tasks
• Criteria for prioritizing risk
• Approval for new dependencies

Automate monitoring and enforcement of these policies through your SCA tools, which can also manage inventory, dependency tracking, and automated scanning. 

Keep Your Supply Chain Under Control with Apiiro

Third-party components accelerate development, but they also expand your attack surface. Traditional SCA tools focus on known vulnerabilities in OSS, often lacking the context needed to prioritize or prevent real risk.

Apiiro is the only ASPM platform that automatically discovers your entire software architecture, including code, dependencies, pipelines, and runtime context, and continuously detects material changes that introduce risk.

With Apiiro, you can:

• Generate a dynamic SBOM that updates automatically with every code change.
• Uncover vulnerabilities, secrets, and misconfigurations using Deep Code Analysis (DCA), enabled through simple SCM integration—no CI/CD hooks required.
• Correlate risk across code, infra, and runtime with Apiiro’s Risk Graph to prioritize what truly matters.
• Enforce guardrails and policies directly in pull requests and builds to block critical issues early.
• Trigger automated remediation workflows and surface actionable guidance for developers.

Apiiro transforms SCA from a reactive scan into a proactive, contextual security strategy. You’ll spend less time chasing false positives and more time eliminating real risk.

Schedule a demo to see how Apiiro helps you take control of your software supply chain.

FAQS

What industries are most at risk from SCA vulnerabilities?

Manufacturing, healthcare, technology, and the public sector represent some of the most common targets for software supply chain attacks. In addition to managing highly sensitive or proprietary data, they frequently maintain complex supply chains. They may also lack effective supply chain security, making them incredibly compelling targets for malicious actors. 

What are some of the most common SCA vulnerabilities? 

Malicious libraries represent one of the most significant and widespread SCA vulnerabilities. Attackers may distribute these poisoned components in a number of different ways, including dependency and repo confusion attacks.

Transitive dependencies may also put your supply chain at risk, particularly given that they’re frequently overlooked. 

Other SCA security issues include weak configuration, restrictive or incompatible licenses, and compromised vendor environments. 

How does SCA fit into regulatory compliance requirements?

SCA testing and scanning help organizations fulfill multiple industry, regional, and national regulations through a combination of automated visibility, documentation, remediation, and compliance checks. Data protection laws such as the GDPR require that organizations actively manage vulnerabilities. In contrast, some regulations, such as the US Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, directly identify SCA as a requirement for critical software. 

Can relying solely on SCA tools create security blind spots?

Yes. Software security is multifaceted, and the supply chain is only one component of your ecosystem. SCA scanning doesn’t typically detect issues in proprietary code, and many SCA tools aren’t designed to work in runtime environments.

Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) represents a far more effective approach, as it consolidates all aspects of software security into a single holistic platform. 

What should businesses look for when selecting an SCA solution? 

The right SCA software is context-aware, deeply integrated, and designed to enable both security engineers and developers. More importantly, it supports a holistic approach to software security, protecting the software supply chain along with your broader ecosystem. Other key criteria include:

• Intelligent, risk-based prioritization
• Contextual vulnerability analysis
• Coverage of all languages, frameworks, and components in your environment
• Native integration with developer tools, CI/CD pipeline, and security software
• High signal-to-noise ratio
• A flexible, automated policy engine
• Detailed insights into vulnerabilities and licenses
• Automatic, real-time SBOM generation
• Continuous monitoring