Key Takeaways:
Open source software (OSS) is the backbone of modern software development, powering innovation across finance, healthcare, government, and technology. to innovate faster and reduce costs. Its widespread adoption accelerates delivery and reduces costs, but it also introduces a growing and increasingly complex risk landscape.
With open source components making up 90% of the average application, vulnerabilities are a constant threat. The attack surface of modern applications is expanding, not just from known vulnerabilities, but also from the complexity of software supply chains, regulatory shifts, and the speed of development.
Developers download an estimated 1.2 billion vulnerable dependencies every month, giving bad actors ample opportunities to infiltrate critical systems. Many of these vulnerabilities live in transitive dependencies, making them difficult to detect and even harder to prioritize without the right tools.
Software composition analysis (SCA) has emerged as a critical component of the future of software supply chain security to help organizations gain visibility into their dependencies, evaluate associated risks, and ensure license compliance.
To address the evolving risk landscape, Sonatype outlined software supply chain best practices with actionable insights that leading organizations are using to stay ahead of emerging threats.
Organizations need more than just vulnerability scanning to protect their software supply chain. Effective risk management requires a holistic approach that integrates security across people, processes, and tools. SCA plays a key role in this strategy by enabling visibility, control, and governance over open source components. Consider the following software supply chain best practices as top priorities.
Security programs are only as effective as their ability to measure progress. Clear, quantifiable objectives help teams monitor progress and demonstrate the effectiveness of security efforts.
Metrics to consider:
Modern SCA platforms provide real-time dashboards and automated reporting that align with audit, compliance, and governance requirements, helping organizations move from reactive security to continuous improvement.
Manual processes cannot keep up with the speed and scale of modern development. Automation is no longer optional. It is the cornerstone of software supply chain security best practices. Automating SCA across the SDLC ensures consistent enforcement while minimizing the burden on developers.
Benefits of SCA automation include:
By embedding automated SCA controls directly into CI/CD pipelines and development environments, organizations can scale security alongside development velocity. This approach reduces manual effort, improves consistency, and enables teams to deliver software faster.
Integrating security early, and often, in the development pipeline helps teams catch and resolve issues before they hit production. Rather than treating security as a final gate, high-performing organizations build continuous feedback loops into development workflows.
Effective shift-left practices include:
Not all vulnerabilities pose the same level of risk. Many reside in unused parts of libraries, posing no actual threat. Treating every vulnerability as equally urgent overwhelms teams, creates alert fatigue, and diverts attention away from issues that actually threaten production systems.
Reachability analysis helps organizations move beyond severity scores alone by determining whether a vulnerability is truly exploitable based on how the application uses the affected code. By analyzing call paths and runtime usage, reachability analysis identifies which vulnerable functions can actually be invoked, allowing teams to focus remediation efforts where they will have the greatest impact.
This risk-based approach enables security and development teams to prioritize with confidence and clarity, resulting in:
Reachability analysis provides actionable context that transforms vulnerability management from a volume-driven exercise into a precision-driven strategy. This smarter prioritization is essential for scaling software supply chain security best practices without overwhelming teams.
Technology alone cannot secure the software supply chain. The most effective software supply chain security strategies are rooted in cross-functional alignment and shared accountability. A security-first culture treats secure development not as a separate function or final checkpoint, but as a core part of how software is designed, built, and delivered.
To ensure your organization is prepared for the future of supply chain security, you must break down silos between development, security, and operations teams and create an environment where security is viewed as an enabler — not an obstacle. When teams share goals, metrics, and visibility, security becomes a natural part of everyday decision-making rather than an afterthought.
Key elements of a security-first culture include:
SCA tools can play a unifying role by offering shared dashboards, policy-as-code support, and audit trails that give stakeholders visibility and accountability. This shared visibility fosters trust, supports informed decision-making, and helps embed software supply chain security best practices into the fabric of the organization.
Effectively managing open source risks is not a one-time initiative. It requires continuous focus, ongoing adaptation, and the right foundation of tools and processes. As open source usage accelerates and attack techniques evolve, organizations that rely on reactive or manual approaches will struggle to keep pace.
By implementing SCA, organizations can significantly enhance security and resilience. When SCA is embedded throughout the SDLC, it becomes a powerful enabler of both security and development velocity.
The most secure organizations continuously adapt by combining:
Together, these practices reduce exposure, shorten remediation timelines, and prevent critical risks from reaching production. Just as importantly, they empower developers to innovate with confidence knowing that security guardrails are built into their workflows rather than imposed at the end. By embedding security into every stage of the SDLC and anchoring that effort with robust SCA, organizations can protect their applications, customers, and reputations in 2025 and beyond, while preparing for the future of software supply chain security.
Want deeper insights into how leading organizations are applying these strategies today? Watch Sonatype’s webinar, Future-Proof Your Software Supply Chain: 2025 SCA Best Practices, for expert perspectives on what’s next and how to stay ahead of emerging threats.