Building an application from scratch can be challenging and time-consuming. There help leverage open-source components in the development process.

This is why there has been consistent growth in the usage of open-source components within the software development industry. In fact, as per a 2022 state of open-source report, 77% of the respondents say that they have increased the use of open-source over the last 12 months, and 36.5% of them claim that they increased the use significantly. 

However, using open-source comes with its own set of perils. Failing to manage your open-source components properly can lead to several s compliance-related issues. 

In this article, we’ll talk about everything related to open-source compliance— starting with its definition.

In simple words, open-source licenses let developers share their codes, like components, libraries, etc., with other developers. Once shared, other developers believe that they can freely use these codes without any copyright issues for their projects. 

However, When someone uses open-source code, they agree to certain terms and conditions by signing a legal contract made by the original developer. This contract mentions everything the developer needs to follow while using open-source code. 

Now keeping track of all the open-source components manually isn’t the most productive way; this has led the organization to embrace the utilization of automation in this process. 

But here’s the thing— not every open-source license compliance tool can help you keep track of everything. You need a tool that can truly enable continuous compliance. So in the next section, we’ll discuss some of the essential features of open-source license compliance.

Essential Features of Open-Source License Compliance

Now we know what is open-source license compliance and how some tools can help us with it. But are there any specific features that an open-source license compliance tool should have to help your organization? 

Here are some of the essential features that open-source license compliance tools should have

Open-source license compliance will help you scan the codebase to find licenses or copyright references. This will help you dig deeper into your open-source and proprietary database for licenses or copyrights that aren’t declared by a component but still have potential compliance requirements. 

The most basic task for any license compliance tool is gaining a complete view of your open-source components. The tool should conduct a comprehensive scanning to show all the dependencies (direct and indirect) and their versions, copyright details, and other related data. Moreover, it should have an inventory of open-source licenses with direct and transitive dependencies.

An open-source software Bill of Materials (SBoM) lists all the third-party components used in an application’s codebase. The list also mentioned the licenses that govern those components, versions of the components used, and their patch status, which allows the developers to check quickly, and license-related risks available. 

Any good open-source software compliance tool provides a comprehensive list of open-source components that are used within the software along with their licenses in the form of a SBoM. 

Scanning any codebase comprehensively and accurately manually can be very tedious and time-consuming. This is where adopting automation helps-— it allows developers to scale and automate policy creation and enforcement. Here are four features that you should evaluate while choosing your compliance tool

Default-sompliance rules: Any good compliance tool offers pre-built options so that the organizations can pick from them, set up their process, and get going. 

Easy-to-customize: Developers who want to create their policies governing OSS compliance should easily do it without any unnecessary hassles. Try to find a tool that offers an intuitive user interface that would make it easier for developers to set rules per their needs. 

Automation: An OSS compliance tool should be able to automate processes wherever possible so that the developers can focus on other important tasks. 

Developer adoption is crucial for any OSS compliance tool. Long gone are the days when security simply handed over a list of vulnerabilities and open-source components to developers to manage. Now tools are used to improve the work efficiency of developers by taking charge of numerous tasks of the developers. 

While the compliance or legal teams are generally asked to manage an organization’s OSS compliance program, they can’t do it solely. DevOps and engineering teams also play an important role in the process. That’s why it imperative the chosen OSS compliance tool boosts collaboration. To put it simply, the tools should be able to integrate seamlessly with your current software development environment. For example-

It should support a vast variety of programming languages and ecosystems. 

It should get integrated directly into your CI/CD pipelines.

It should allow engineers to make fixes right through their native environments like Jira, Confluence, etc. 

License compliance is essential for any organization that leverages open-source codes. However, most organizations don’t have huge teams dedicated to managing tasks. So, a compliance tool should help the developers or security teams save time and fix vulnerabilities and compliance issues as per their severity levels. Tools that can also provide details related to the issue resolution, like the code that triggered the flag, access to dependency code, and more information related to the component, can be very beneficial for the remediation process. 

So these were the essential features that an open-source compliance tool should have. In the next section, we’ll discuss the risks re-associated with non-compliance with an open-source license.

Risks of Non-Compliance with Open-Source License

Several developers believe that OSS components is freely available and has no restrictions. This is wrong. Each OSS components’ license comes with its own set of terms and conditions. And failing to comply with those conditions can result in serious consequences. Here are some of the risks associated with non-compliance with open-source licenses

As aforementioned, all the open-source components have some terms and conditions that anyone who uses those components needs to follow. Any violation attached to the licenses may result in a lawsuit against the organization or whoever uses those components. 

This is why it is compulsory to check all the terms and conditions before using the components and ensure that you comply with them when you use them in your application.



If an organization fails to comply with licenses, it can be exposed to business disruption. This is because some licenses may automatically terminate because of the organization’s non-compliance status. Now the status may hamper the product's distribution until the source code is released. The later a dependency is identified, the more costly it could be to resolve. 

Competitors are always looking for loopholes to help them get an edge. And if there’s any issue related to non-compliance with open-source licenses, they might identify it and use it against your organization. This, in turn, can result in severe reputation damage. 

There are chances that you use the outdated version of an open-source component, and this could lead to serious security issues. The best idea here is to add a verification step into your compliance process to ensure that you’re using the exact code version corresponding to the distributed binary versions.

Lack of audit and plan to manage the open-source licenses can affect an IPO and slow down the process. Further, it can also reduce the IPO valve significantly. This, in turn, heavily damages the organization's overall bottom line.

Non-compliance can lead to negative press coverage and build a wrong image in front of the audience.

It can affect the users' trust and make them switch the organization.

It can damage credibility in front of the open-source community.

It can lead to losing money on restarting everything again and getting into the good lists of the target audience. 

Dimensions of Open-Source License Compliance

No matter how intimidating or dull OSS license compliance sounds, it is important for your application. As a part of an organization, here are three dimensions to consider while doing open-source license compliance

Open-source components are essential for today’s applications. Here’s the complete guide on managing them using an open-source compliance tool.

All you need to know about Open-Source Compliance - Scantist

Open-source License Compliance Tool: The Complete Guide

The term SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) has been all the rage lately, but what exactly is an SBOM? In a nutshell, SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) is a list of all the open-source and third-party components within a codebase. And to understand it fully, it's crucial first to comprehend its basics.

So, let’s dive deep into the concept of SBOM, and how it can help you to improve the security posture for your organization. This guide is designed specifically for those wanting to understand all the pieces behind SBOM.

What Is An SBOM (Software Bill Of Materials)?

Simply put, an SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) lists all open-source and third-party components used in an application. This list includes both direct (i.e. components directly called by your application’s code) and indirect dependencies (i.e. components called by the direct components).

The simplest analogy for an SBOM is that it is like a nutritional label on food — it provides information about what exactly goes into a piece of software and how these components interact. This way, developers can identify potential vulnerable components in their code before deploying it.

The Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) concept began in the manufacturing industry, where complex supply chains are involved and manufacturers need to track where all their components come from in case any of them is found to be defective. It has recently been adapted to software development as well. An SBOM is similarly an inventory of all the open-source and third-party components used in a codebase or application with the idea of making it easy to detect which of them are ‘defective’ i.e. vulnerable or risky in other ways. 

SBOMs helps increase visibility into all components that make up a specific piece of software, and when combined with other security features like system hardening and least-privilege access regulations can offer an extra layer of protection against cyber attacks.

Benefits Of Using Software Bill Of Materials

There are several benefits to using an SBOM for your software development efforts, some of which include the following:

An inventory of all the components that make up your codebase offers improved visibility, allowing you to identify potential risk areas quickly. This, in turn, can help you to improve your overall security posture.

An SBOM provides the necessary information to quickly and accurately assess any changes needed before deploying software. This makes it much easier to deploy applications faster while maintaining a high-quality control level.

With SBOM security, you’ll have all the details on every component used in your codebase. This makes it much easier to keep everything up-to-date with the latest patches and updates and maintain overall functionality.

What’s In A Software Bill Of Materials?

A Software Bill of Materials, known as an SBOM, provides a comprehensive view of the components used to create a piece of software.

This structured listing is organized by versions and dependencies, with information regarding the products’ origin, source code integrity, and other parameters relevant for review.

A software bill of materials helps software professionals on various levels – from developers writing code to executives creating policy – understand the exact items that make up each component and how they interact.

Moreover, sharing code across organizations aids in streamlining compliance processes and can minimize the financial risk associated with deploying software applications.

Utilizing Software Bill of Material tracking is increasingly becoming essential to any organization’s IT department’s operations. Some of the aspects that make SBOM wholesome are:

A software bill of materials (SBOM) is a comprehensive listing of all the components that make up a given software program or application. This includes both proprietary and open source elements.

Open source components refer to parts of a software solution created under an open source license; this means developers are allowed - and often encouraged - to use, study, modify and redistribute the code for their projects.

While this flexibility has great advantages, it can also be difficult to track which specific open source projects have impacted the finished product.

That's where a software BOM really shines; it provides an automated way to discover, document, and report on all these components allowing developers to evaluate their impact on the finished piece of software thoroughly.

The software bill of materials (or BoM) includes all software components used in a product's building and running. In this list, open source licenses identify which components are using a certain license. This is especially crucial to know as it affects further compliance requirements, such as external audits, as different licenses have different requirements and obligations.

Understanding the open source compliance on software is vital in keeping up with technological transformations and associated best practices to remain competitive.

Understanding what’s in a software bill of materials can be integral to ensuring software development success. A software bill of materials (SBOM) is a list of elements utilizing open source versions that are included within a particular commercial product or application.

These elements typically comprise programming code libraries, frameworks, and integrated software components that help create the intended functionality or behavior for the product.

An SBOM can provide transparency into the makeup of a product and profile key elements used in its construction to make developers more aware of potential vulnerabilities from using open source versions.

Additionally, it helps with license compliance because each element listed in the SBOM must adhere to specific licensing guidelines for public use. Bringing together all this information about open source versions into one place helps organizations ensure that products meet security and compliance requirements before final delivery.

Regarding open source vulnerabilities, having a Bill of Materials can help you accurately detect threats from outside sources, such as outdated libraries or fewer-known packages running in your systems.

In addition, by using a BOM to analyze open source components, you can easily track correspondences between upstream sources, mitigate risks associated with supply chain attacks, and prioritize actions related to fixing security issues.

A good Bill of Materials entails adopting modern cloud technologies and automation that keeps track of all these elements and informs when something needs urgent attention or remediation must happen without delay.

Why Do Organizations Need A Software Bill Of Materials?

As seen and observed in the year 2021, which was particularly rampant with serious security breaches for Codecov, Kaseya. And when Apache Log4j became the victim of a supply chain attack, it prompted President Biden to take assertive action to protect federal software applications from future attacks.

In reference to this, an executive order outlining guidelines for how these organizations must secure their software - including SBOMs as an integral part of ensuring safety and integrity - was issued.

These preventive measures will soon become industry standards, setting the bar higher on protection across all software construction, testing, and security management operations.

In light of today's ever-evolving and increasingly complex software environment, it is becoming increasingly important for organizations to focus on secure and responsible software development.

A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) helps facilitate this by providing invaluable insights into the components that make up a particular piece of software.

It also helps organizations develop better security and risk management strategies since they have an easily accessible record of all the components that make up a project and their associated vendors.

SBOMs allow organizations to quickly identify any potential security vulnerabilities affecting their operations and act swiftly to address them.

SBOMs help organizations strengthen their risk management capabilities while ensuring their deployments are secure and compliant with industry standards and company policies.

Creating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) can help ensure that software is secure, quickly identifiable, and up to date. For starters, it allows organizations to understand better their software's composition and its open source dependencies, as well as what third parties contributed to its development.

Knowing these details can give you the knowledge to determine which versions are trustworthy and provide a roadmap for ensuring they remain safe. So, let's explore more below.

1. Choose An Open-Source SBOM Generation Platform Like Scantist

Generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is critical for ensuring software security, but it can be challenging. You can simplify the process with an open-source SBOM generation platform like Scantist.

Scantist leverages AI and automated deep-packet inspection technology to gather data on components and licenses associated with each component in your software system, creating an accurate and comprehensive SBOM in minutes. Scantist's intuitive user interface also makes it simple to generate SBOMs in custom report formats tailored to the requirements and regulations of various industries, offering complete peace of mind.

In this detailed step-by-step guide, learn how SBOM (software bill of materials) can help you safe-keep your business from external threats.

An overview of Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) | Scantist

A Detailed Guide to Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)

In today's software development industry, where developers focus on developing applications as early as possible, the use of open-source components has become inevitable. Using open-source components accelerates the speed without compromising the quality of the application. However, each of the components needs to be tracked in order to avoid license compliance issues and security risks. Also, the entire process of tracking and fixing issues shouldn't slow down the process. This is where Software Composition Analysis comes in the scenario.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is an application security testing methodology for managing open-source components in software. It automatically identifies open-source components in a codebase and evaluates them for security, license compliance, and code quality. The scanning process generates a bill of materials (BoM) and provides a complete inventory of a project's software assets.

Why is Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Important?

Modern applications use several open-source components, but these components come with their own set of vulnerabilities. An SCA tool allows for risk management of open-source use throughout the software development lifecycle. Features of SCA include

Create a Bill of Materials (BOM) for all your applications: A bill of materials describes everything about the open-source components used in an application. With a detailed BOM, cybersecurity professionals can get a better understanding of all such components and check if there are any potential vulnerabilities and licensing issues. An SCA tool generates a bill of materials for all resources used that can be shared with internal as well as external stakeholders.


Spot and track all the open-source components: An SCA tool allows organizations to discover all the open-source used in the source code, binaries, direct and indirect dependencies, subcomponents, and OS components.


Automatic and regular monitoring: In order to improve productivity and focus on important tasks, developers need to automate repetitive tasks. Scanning open-source for detecting potential vulnerabilities is one such task. An SCA tool regularly monitors the code, allowing developers to focus on more important tasks.


Setting policies: OSS license compliance is vital for any organization and at all levels from developers to upper management. An SCA tool highlights the importance of having policies, responding to license compliance and security events, and then providing adequate open-source training across the organization. Several SCA solutions automate the approval process and set guidelines for open-source usage and remediation.


Easily integrate open-source code monitoring into the development environment: Integrate OS security and license management in the DevOps environment to regularly scan the codebase to identify dependencies.


How Does Software Composition Analysis Work?

An SCA tool starts with running scans on the code base to check for potential vulnerabilities. The analysis results in a software bill of materials that includes all the open-source components used and their respective licenses. Moreover, it detects all the vulnerable third-party libraries and offers in-depth details on open-source dependencies. At last, it provides remediation suggestions to the developers to fix potential threats.

Here's what a typical SCA process looks like

Step 1: An SCA solution scans the codebase and builds a software bill of materials (SBoM) of all the open-source components used in the application, including dependencies that get resolved during the build process.

Step 2: The tool provides specific details about the open-source components. The details include licensing information, components version, and location of the detection. Here the accuracy of the information is completely dependent on the open-source database the tool is using to extract the data from.

Step 3: Now, the main job of the SCA tool starts to detect all the vulnerabilities associated with the open-source components.

Step 4: Once all the vulnerabilities are detected, the tool alerts the administrators and the other stakeholders involved in the process.

Step 5: The best software composition analysis tools compare each detected component against the pre-set policies and automatically stop the promotion of the application to the next stage of the development process until proper remediation steps are taken.

Step 6: Provides remediation suggestions to fix the vulnerabilities.

Step 7: The vulnerabilities are fixed, and the application moves forward in the development process. The SCA tool continues to monitor the application on a regular basis until it finds another vulnerability and pauses the process.

Scantist SCA utilizes its own proprietary vulnerability analysis engine to identify open-source components and the vulnerabilities associated with them. It is the only tool available in the market that allows for both source code and binary scanning integrated into a single dashboard.

Now that we know what SCA is and how it works, it's also important to know the challenges that could come while using an SCA tool. Here are some of the most common challenges

The way open-source codes are embedded into an application's code base can lead to visibility issues. There are chances that a developer might unknowingly add several open-source components in the codebase that rely on additional open-source packages. These indirect or transitive dependencies can be so deep in the codebase that it could be very challenging to gain end-to-end visibility into what open-source is actually being used by an application.

The number of vulnerabilities is increasing rapidly. There are thousands of open-source-related vulnerabilities that can affect an application's security. Now analyzing all these vulnerabilities and then prioritizing them according to the risk they come with has become very difficult, especially if you don't have enough tools and resources. So an SCA tool should be able to dig up the vulnerabilities and prioritize the ones that come with heavy threats to the application and recommend possible fixes.

To precisely determine the dependencies an application is leveraging along with the vulnerabilities they come along with, an in-depth analysis of how each ecosystem handles is necessary. Package resolution during the time of installation, lock files, and development dependencies are some examples of factors that influence the identification of vulnerabilities in open-source components as well as the determination of remediation processes. It'sIt's crucial for any SCA tool to understand all these nuances to avoid creating too many false positives.

The speed of development to production for any application is increasing, thanks to the evolution of technologies. However, this has led to a new challenge for security teams. They now need to cope with the development process speed and make sure that they fix almost all the security issues before the application goes to the production stage. If they don't, it could delay the development process.

There are chances that an application is developed using multiple programming languages, and if an SCA tool is being used to scan the code, it's imperative that it supports all the languages used. If the SCA tool fails to determine or scan the language used in developing the application, there's no point in using it.

The primary use of SCA tools is to scan the codebase to identify open-source components. Now in order to leverage this information, it's imperative that the developers have a detailed report of everything related to the open-source components. SCA tools should be able to offer a variety of report features, integration options, and extensive APIs that can be used by all the stakeholders involved in the development process.

How Software Composition Analysis Reduces OSS Risk

Open-source components have become almost ubiquitous in the software development industry. It allows the developers to quickly and easily scale their software development cycle. However, open-source software (OSS) components can also come with vulnerabilities, licensing problems, and security threats because of poorly written codes. That's where SCA tools help.

Typically SCA tools use a framework to reduce the OSS risks. The framework comprises three simple steps Inventory, Analyze, and Control.

Inventory: The first step is to understand all the dependencies that the application is using. After all, if we don't know what are the open-source components we're using, how can we address the vulnerabilities and license-related issues? So, SCA tools start with building an inventory of all the components used in the application.

Analyze: Once all the components are detected, the SCA tools start analyzing them and check for all the crucial contextual information. This includes vulnerability details, source library, common vulnerability score, and its asperity, and more. The license part reflects compliance issues and other license-related terms.

Control: In the last step, the SCA tools start to control the open-source risks. They come up with remediation suggestions. Applying the suggestion will remove the vulnerability.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Best Practices

SCA tools are essential when it comes to spotting vulnerabilities and fixing them. But in order to do it, you need to find the right tool. Here are some best practices that can help you while choosing the tool

Developers are busy writing codes, and if you give them an unfriendly SCA tool to use, it might hamper the entire development process. So when you choose an SCA tool, you need to ensure that it is developer-friendly and can integrate easily with the existing workflows.

Once you choose a tool, educate your developers about it so that they can get an understanding of its perks and usage. Developers may think that security doesn't come under their responsibilities, but it's essential to keep security in mind throughout the development process so that it doesn't become an issue after production.

Your SCA tool needs to be able to integrate into your CI/CD pipeline. This will allow determining and fixing vulnerabilities become a functional part of your entire software development and production process.

There are two kinds of dependencies: direct and indirect. Direct dependencies are the components that you use in your project. Indirect dependencies are the ones that are used by one of your direct dependencies. According to studies, most of an open-source project's vulnerabilities come from indirect dependencies.

A good SCA tool needs to inspect all kinds of dependencies that are available in the entire project so that you can fix all the vulnerabilities coming from all the dependencies and build a secure application.

A developer might not have time to manually scan the code at every stage of the development process. However, scanning is imperative and needs to be done multiple times throughout the process. This is where a good SCA tool comes in handy. It automatically scans the code, flags potential vulnerabilities, and tells how to fix them.

Software Composition Analysis tools identify open-source components & evaluate them for security, license compliance, & quality. Know more about them here.

What is Software Composition Analysis (SCA)? - Scantist

Software Composition Analysis: The Complete Guide

Web applications are everywhere. From ordering food online to buying new clothes, we’re dependent on these applications to a great extent. However, this has also become a concern for us. Hackers and cybercriminals are always looking for security loopholes to exploit for their benefit. And if they find any loophole, it can lead to severe consequences for your organization and its users. 

This is where Application Security Testing (AST) helps. 

In this article, we’ll talk about what AST is, what are the best tools for AST and the best practices you should follow.

Application Security Testing uses multiple tools and practices to test an application, identify all vulnerabilities, and help you fix them. With the help of application security testing, you can explore

All the risks associated with the application

In addition, application security assessment can also prevent malicious cyber-attacks and security breaches coming from cyber criminals. The main aim behind performing application security testing is to find all the possible ways intruders can get in and harm the organization. 

Today’s applications are complex, so developers need multiple vulnerability detection tools that rely on multiple testing methods to help them secure these applications. 

But is application security testing necessary? Let’s find out!

Importance of Application Security Testing

When an organization develops an application, it ensures its users' private data security. If any data breach occurs, it can result in a loss of trust and tarnished reputation. 

Here are some reasons why application security testing is important -

Sometimes, some threats are underlooked but have the potential to become severe threats. Application security testing can help your organization spot such vulnerabilities and provide you with possible solutions. Moreover, as today’s applications have several open-source components, it has become more crucial to do security testing. 

Once any breach happens, an organization must invest a lot to fix it and then do damage control. However, if an organization invests in application security testing during the software development lifecycle, there won’t be any severe vulnerabilities till the production phase. This, in turn, won’t lead to unnecessary investments in damage control. 

Downtime isn’t good for any application. You can eliminate all the bugs and reduce downtime with application security testing. 

When an application uses open-source components, there are certain regulatory standards that it needs to follow. Failure to comply with these standards can lead to legal issues. Application security testing helps organizations adhere to regulatory compliance and laws around security. 

By safeguarding your application against online threats, you give a reason for your customers to trust you with their crucial data. And if there’s trust, your customers will stick to your organization in the long run. 

Now that you know the importance of application security testing, here are the types of application security testing.

When it comes to testing an application for vulnerabilities, testing with just one tool won’t help. You need to test it with multiple tools to determine various vulnerabilities. Here are the types of testing that will help you secure your application as much as possible

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST)

Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST)

Application Security Testing as a Service (ASTaaS)

Application Security Testing Orchestration (ASTO)

Static Application Security Testing, also known as static analysis, scans the source code to spot security vulnerabilities that could make the application susceptible to attacks. 

The best part of SAST is that it takes place during the early stages of the SDLC, doesn’t require a working application, and can also be used without the code being executed. 

Application development relies massively on open-source frameworks and components. Although using open source does help to speed up the development process, it also leads to security issues if the developers don’t check all the codes and libraries outside of the codebase. 

There helps SCA. It is an automated process that tracks and audits all the open-source components in an application’s codebase. This, in turn, allows the developers to evaluate the security, license compliance, and quality of the open-source codes. 

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) analyzes any web application through the front end to find vulnerabilities through simulated attacks. 

It is an approach that evaluates the web application from the outside by attacking it as a malicious user would. Once a DAST scanner attacks the application, it looks for unexpected outcomes and identifies the vulnerabilities. 

DAST is important for application testing because developers don’t solely need to depend on their own knowledge while building an application. With DAST, they test their application in a real environment and then check what needs to be improved to protect the application. 

The rising number of databases has made database security a major part of the security process of any organization. While databases are not considered a prominent part of an application, applications developed rely heavily on databases. Database security tools look for updates, weak passwords, configuration issues, and more. Moreover, some tools can also spot irregular patterns or actions, such as excessive administrative actions. 

Mobile application security testing, similar to application security, aims to spot vulnerabilities in the application to mitigate the risks of attacks. MAST tools are a combination of static, dynamic, and forensic analysis. Although they perform some functions similar to static and dynamic analyzers, they also enable mobile code to run through other analyzers as well. 

IAST tools help developers to spot and manage security risks related to vulnerabilities discovered in running applications with the help of dynamic, also known as runtime testing methodologies. 

It is generally used during the test/QA phase of the SDLC, and so it catches the issues earlier in the SDLC, reducing expenses and delays. 

In simple words, with ASTaaS, you pay a vendor to perform security testing on your application. The vendor will perform a series of different tests like penetration testing, static analysis, and more. It is important because there can be some flaws that would be hard to detect by yourself. Getting a check from a third-party vendor will help you identify all the uncovered issues. This, in turn, will make your application secure and ready to launch in the real world. 

Here’s everything you need to know about Application Security Testing along with the list of tools you should try.

The Complete Guide to Application Security Testing | Scantist

Application Security Testing: The Ultimate Guide

According to a recent report, it is expected that by 2025 cybercrime will cost the world $10.5 Trillion annually. Cybercrime has become an issue for all kinds of businesses in today’s world. Millions of dollars are spent annually to ensure that companies are safe from cybercriminals' attacks. And yet, the rate of cybercrime is continuously increasing.

While earlier, the responsibility of detecting and fixing vulnerabilities came under the security teams, with the coming of the DevSecOps approach, it has now become a shared responsibility. 

However, even after involving multiple teams and carefully developing applications, vulnerabilities can still be there. To ensure maximum security and build applications that are ready to face the dark side, we must use an open-source vulnerability scanner. 

In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to about open-source vulnerability scanners and why do you need them. 

What is Open-Source Vulnerability Scanning?

Open-source vulnerability scanning is the process of detecting open-source components used in an application and then determining vulnerabilities and helping organizations fix them. Multiple open-source vulnerability scanners available in the market can help organizations conduct automated scans in the dependency trees and highlight areas that need attention.

Importance of Open-Source Vulnerability Scanner

To build software or applications fast and of high quality, most organizations use open-source components. These components are readily available on various websites and can be reused while developing applications. 

However, while it seems easy, these componets are usually susceptible to security risks. While most of the open-source projects are backed by huge communities, there are some that are not regularly maintained. This, in turn, makes them prone to security issues. 

There helps an open-source vulnerability scanner. Here are a few reasons why organizations using open-source components need vulnerability scanning tools

No matter how hard developers and other teams try, building an application with no vulnerabilities is a myth. Especially when you’re using open-source components, vulnerabilities can come along with them. This is because open-source components have two kinds of dependencies— direct and transitive. Direct dependency can easily be tracked; however, transitive dependencies are difficult to be tracked because these are the packages used by one of your direct dependencies. 

Using a vulnerability scanner can help you check the complete dependency tree and spot all the vulnerabilities. 

Developers are busy writing codes, and other teams have their own tasks. Now, if you dedicate these teams to continuously monitoring application development for security threats, it would just waste their time. An open-source vulnerability can perform the job without involving anyone else or slowing down the development process. 

Spotting the vulnerabilities is not the end. You also need to fix those vulnerabilities before any cybercriminal spots them. Most of the tools also offer remediation options that could help developers fix those vulnerabilities. 

Not all vulnerabilities have the same level of threat for the application. Some are severely harmful, while some won’t cause much trouble. However, you need to know what is the level of risk a vulnerability is coming with and then focus on them based on their risk level. This can be a tedious thing to do if done manually. A good vulnerability scanner will highlight the level of risk and then help you remediate them.

A software license is an agreement between the real developer and the user that defines the software's usage and distribution of rights. There are several kinds of licenses that allow various rights to users. Typically, there are two types of licenses— proprietary and free. 

The role of software licenses is to protect all the parties involved and ensure that the creator and the user get the appropriate rights. However, there are over 200 license types, and keeping track of them can be very daunting. The right vulnerability scanner reveals open-source modules to ensure compliance with any open-source license requirements that could lead to legal issues. 

If you plan to detect at the end of the development phase, you might need a lot of time to detect and then remediate those issues. This can lead to delays in the production phase. However, taking care of security from the beginning won’t slow down the process. Using this approach, you’ll be able to find and fix vulnerabilities as soon as you spot them. With a vulnerability scanner, you can easily do it and make your application secure from the beginning. 

So these were the importance of using an open-source vulnerability scanner, and in the next section, we will explore how a scanner works. 

How Does an Open-Source Vulnerability Scanner Work?

To secure your application, you must understand how a vulnerability scanner works. This will help you picture the process and understand how it will help you to secure your application. While different scanning tools use different technologies, the basic steps remain the same.

Here’s a step-by-step process of how a vulnerability scanner works

Step 1: Scanning the Open-Source Components Thoroughly

The first thing any scanner would do is review all the open-source components used in the application. It would analyze the code repositories, package managers, and build tools. It creates an inventory of open-source components and dependencies and generates a software Bill of Materials (SBoM) with all the important data. 

Vulnerability scanners check all the software licenses of open-source components to ensure none of them conflict with organizational policies. For instance, some licenses could be risky for commercial projects; some would not allow modifications in the package. With a vulnerability scanner, you can check all the licenses and ensure that you remain compliant with them without any legal issues.

After scanning the code, vulnerability scanners take the results and then compare them against various databases, usually the tool’s proprietary information, containing information about vulnerabilities. Some of the tools also use their own directories. In this way, they find the vulnerabilities and then start providing suggestions related to remediation options. 

The process doesn’t end with the last step. The vulnerability scanner continuously scans the application to check if any vulnerability has occurred. 

Do you need an open-source vulnerability scanner? Here’s the answer to all your questions about vulnerability scanners.

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