In our recent webinar, The State of Global Software Regulation, Sonatype Field CTO Ilkka Turunen joined OSPO Technical Program Manager Eddie Knight to discuss the increasingly vital role regulation plays in modern software delivery. We've all watched as software has transitioned from a tool for innovation to the backbone of modern society. Just as we regulate water, electricity, and roads, governments are now treating software as critical infrastructure.
With the release of the 2026 State of the Software Supply Chain Report, we see a shift from an era of guidance to one of enforcement. With 2026 marking a major turning point for global compliance, engineering leaders must understand not just what is changing but how to adapt their development pipelines to survive it.
Open source software has become the central focus of regulatory scrutiny. This isn't arbitrary; it is a reflection of modern development reality. Open source components now make up 80–90% of modern applications. It is the foundation of AI models, cloud platforms, and global financial systems.
Regulators have recognized that securing critical infrastructure is impossible without securing the open source supply chain that powers it, and this heightened scrutiny is driven by three converging pressures identified in the report: a malware explosion, with more than 1.2 million malicious packages blocked, demonstrating how bad actors are actively weaponizing the supply chain; significant vulnerability blind spots, as 65% of new vulnerabilities lack severity scores, leaving security tools unable to properly assess risk; and growing AI instability, where the rapid acceleration of AI-driven development has led to roughly 27% of dependency suggestions being invalid or risky hallucinations.
The regulatory net is tightening across every major market. Organizations can no longer view compliance as a regional issue; if you sell software globally, you are subject to global standards.
Europe is leading the charge with the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). This regulation requires products with digital elements to be developed using secure-by-design practices and to actively manage and remediate exploitable vulnerabilities. It introduces mandatory transparency documentation, with Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) widely expected to be the primary mechanism. It mandates software transparency documentation, with software bills of materials (SBOMs) widely expected to serve as the primary compliance artifact. It also enforces strict reporting timelines, including 24-hour incident notification under NIS2 and early vulnerability disclosure requirements under the CRA, with penalties of up to 2% of global revenue. Software will also effectively require a CE mark, signaling it meets safety standards before it can enter the market.
While the US has relied heavily on executive orders, the shift toward enforcement is clear in federal procurement. Agencies now require attestation that software adheres to the NIST Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF) and CISA guidelines. The message is simple: if you want to sell to the government, you must prove your software is secure.
The UK is consulting on its own Cyber Resilience Bill, Australia is updating national standards, and India’s regulators (SEBI and CERT-In) are enforcing strict incident disclosure and SBOM requirements for financial services.
The common thread across all these regulations is transparency. You are now responsible for the upstream risk of your software, even if you didn't write the code yourself.
The old method of "fix it later" is no longer viable. To meet requirements like "secure-by-design," compliance must move into the SDLC. This concept, known as Governance as Code, replaces manual audits and spreadsheets with automated gates in the CI/CD pipeline.
The SBOM is the core artifact of this new era. However, generating an SBOM is only the first step. To achieve true compliance, organizations must be able to consume, analyze, and audit them. "Good" compliance looks like high-quality generation, clear ownership, and integration with vulnerability systems.
Adapting to this landscape doesn't happen overnight. The report suggests a practical timeline for maturity:
In the Next 3 Months: Clarify ownership. Who is responsible for software supply chain security? Define internal policies that align with new regulations.
In the Next 6 Months: Integrate automated checks into your Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline. Focus on improving the quality and coverage of your SBOMs.
In the Next 12 Months: Aim to produce audit-ready, machine-optimized evidence. You should be able to provide repeatable attestations to regulators without disrupting development velocity.
It is easy to view regulation as a burden, but opacity is the real enemy. Regulators are responding to genuine societal risks. The organizations that treat transparency as a competitive advantage will win. By investing in automation and secure-by-design principles now, you create faster audits, more secure releases, and greater trust.
To learn more, watch our webinar on global software compliance.