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SBOM Best Practices: What Global Leaders Are Asking and Doing

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SBOM Best Practices: Tips from Global Technology Leaders
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The software bill of materials (SBOM) drives the shift from compliance checkbox to cornerstone of modern software security, equipping organizations to navigate supply chain threats, evolving regulations, and the complexity of AI-generated code.

The most forward-looking organizations go beyond SBOM generation and ask questions like:

Let's tackle five of the most critical questions global technology leaders have about SBOMs, and see clear answers alongside best practices. Learn how to effectively manage SBOMs and bring software transparency to life within real-world DevSecOps environments.

Burning Question #1: Are We Doing This for Compliance or Security?

Short answer: Both.

Compliance may have forced SBOMs into the spotlight, but real security comes from how you use them. Global mandates like Executive Order 14028, the European Union's Cyber Resilience Act and NIS2, and Japan's AI transparency guidelines have made SBOMs a requirement. But just producing an SBOM is not enough.

There's a big difference between producing an SBOM and producing a high-quality one — and knowing that difference means truly understanding your software and everything inside it.

Pairing SBOMs with SCA creates a living policy engine, one that can identify risk, enforce governance, and power remediation at scale.

SBOM Best Practice

Use high-quality SBOMs as the foundation for policy-based remediation and compliance workflows. Incorporate enrichment, validation, and regular updates as part of a scalable SBOM management strategy, not a one-time exercise. This increases visibility and improves your security posture across the SDLC.

Burning Question #2: What Does "Good" SBOM Practice Look Like at Scale?

It's about automation, interoperability, and integration.

Creating one SBOM is easy. But managing hundreds of thousands across thousands of applications? That takes a serious strategy.

Sonatype's Ultimate SBOM Guide lays out clear specifications:

  • CI/CD integration: Embed SBOM generation into your pipelines.

  • Format standardization: Use CycloneDX or SPDX to enable tool compatibility, leverage APIs, and reduce chaos.

  • VEX enrichment: Add vulnerability exploitability context to prioritize what matters.

  • Governance alignment: Connect SBOM insights with GRC frameworks for global compliance readiness.

SBOM Best Practice

Adopt standardized specifications like CycloneDX or SPDX to simplify generation, minimize translation errors, and support global regulatory needs. These formats are essential to scaling SBOMs effectively across DevSecOps pipelines. With Sonatype SBOM Manager, organizations can automatically ingest, validate, and enrich these standardized SBOMs with live vulnerability context, enabling faster incident response, fewer false positives, and easier audits.

Burning Question #3: What If We Already Have Security Tools?

Then you probably have tool sprawl.

Many enterprises today suffer from security fatigue: too many scanners, too many alerts, not enough clarity. Without alignment through a unified SBOM, these tools often just produce noise.

SBOMs provide the signal. They help:

  • Map vulnerabilities to specific components.

  • Track ownership across teams.

  • Detect "unknown unknowns" like orphaned libraries or ghost dependencies.

SBOM Best Practice

Establish centralized SBOM management that connects directly to your vulnerability database and legal review workflows. Automate ingestion and policy enforcement to reduce alert fatigue and eliminate unactionable findings. With Sonatype's approach, pairing intelligent SCA with SBOM management delivers precision. Your SBOM becomes a dynamic source of truth that filters noise, prioritizes true risk, and clarifies ownership across development teams.

Burning Question #4: How Do We Handle AI-Generated Code and Unknown Components?

AI is creating faster code — and fuzzier provenance.

Developers are increasingly using AI to generate code, but that code may include third-party snippets, hallucinated libraries, or unknown packages.

This raises big questions:

  • Where did this component come from?

  • Is it safe to use?

  • Does it introduce license risk?

SBOMs play a critical role in demystifying AI-generated software. They:

  • Provide transparency into embedded models and libraries.

  • Flag unknown or non-canonical packages.

  • Detect re-packaged components using dependency hash comparisons.

Treat AI-generated code like any other software dependency, and include it in your SBOM. That's your first step toward visibility and governance.

SBOM Best Practice

Always cross-reference AI-generated components with known vulnerability and licensing databases. Maintain rigorous self-assessment processes to ensure that every component — even those from AI — is traceable through the build system. Centralized SBOM management can help track and verify these components consistently across releases and teams.

Burning Question #5: How Do I Convince Leadership?

Frame SBOMs as business protection — not just a compliance cost.

Executives want ROI. So make the case that SBOMs:

  • Reduce incident response time by enabling faster root cause analysis.

  • Speed up customer assurance by providing transparency in sales and vendor reviews.

  • Prevent blocked deals, especially where regulations like the FDA, CRA, or EO 14028 require SBOMs to close contracts.

SBOM Best Practice

Treat SBOMs as revenue protection assets. Build leadership buy-in by showing how centralized SBOMs reduce incident costs, speed up sales processes, and future-proof the company against regulatory upheaval. With Sonatype SBOM Manager, organizations can demonstrate compliance maturity and streamline customer-facing security documentation and attestations.

Smarter SBOMs Start with Smarter Questions

The future of software supply chain security will not be shaped by teams that simply tick the "SBOM generated" box.

It will be defined by those who dare to ask:

  • How do we integrate SBOMs into our workflows?

  • How do we enrich them with actionable intelligence?

  • How do we operationalize them to drive real security outcomes?

SBOMs are not static documents. They're dynamic assets — and those who treat them that way are building the most defensible, resilient, and compliant software on the planet.

Join our SBOM experts for live, informal consultations. Bring your architecture, your regulatory pain points, or your AI security worries — and leave with clarity.

Book your SBOM Consultation Hour.
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Written by Aaron Linskens

Aaron is a technical writer on Sonatype's Marketing team. He works at a crossroads of technical writing, developer advocacy, software development, and open source. He aims to get developers and non-technical collaborators to work well together via experimentation, feedback, and iteration so they ...

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