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Insights (SCA)
Software Composition Analysis for Open-Source Code
The overwhelming majority of developers and programmers use open-source code or software for their applications. However, using open-source code can open your application up to attacks from hackers, which can compromise your user security and cost your company millions of dollars.
Fortunately, there is a tool that helps developers secure their code: software composition analysis. Discover how this tool can protect your code and potentially save your company from embarrassment, lawsuits, and other consequences.
Additional Features of Kiuwan SCA
Kiuwan Insights SCA software scans open-source code automatically to identify security weaknesses, providing a comprehensive view of the risks included with each open-source line. Some other highlights from the program’s features include:
Vulnerability tracking
When even minor or moderate vulnerabilities in open-source code can be a security risk, it’s helpful to have a program that can identify any and all possible weak points.
Easy integration
Kiuwan SCA easily works in tandem with other tools in your arsenal, including Jenkins plugins, IBM Bluemix DevOps Services, and numerous other APIs and analyzers. Its code analysis tools integrate into your current dev environment to produce secure source code within your existing workflow.
Continuous scanning
Kiuwan SCA is constantly scanning source code for vulnerabilities against NIST databases to provide constant threat protection.
Open-source library tracking
Our SCA software compares against open-source libraries to identify risks and updates to code. It also supports over 30 programming languages.
Easy security risk identification
Kiuwan SCA removes the guesswork and margin for human error from the process of identifying potential security vulnerabilities in your product’s code.
Obsolescence tracking
Tracking new patches and updates that can affect code across your applications and products can be challenging. Kiuwan SCA removes the guesswork from the process.
What Is Software Composition Analysis?
Software composition analysis (SCA) is a security methodology that application developers can use for managing and finding vulnerabilities within open-source components. With open-source software composition analysis, developers and programmers can perform a vulnerability assessment, confirm security license compliance, and ensure code quality.
By most estimates, over 90% of commercial applications alone use open-source code to a certain degree, and 9 in 10 companies use it in their infrastructure. However, this also means that without proper care, all those commercial applications can fall victim to exploitation by bad actors who know how to exploit the weaknesses in the original code.
SCA in software engineering lets developers and testers track and analyze open-source components, their supporting libraries, and dependencies related to them. Robust SCA tools can also detect software licenses, outdated dependencies, and vulnerabilities within the code to make applications more secure for all users.
Works With Your Development Environment
Kiuwan code analysis tools integrate seamlessly into your current dev environment so that you can produce secure source code easily in your existing workflow.
Compliant With Security Standards
Kiuwan meets all industry standards and scans source code for vulnerabilities against the NIST database to provide constant protection against current threats.
Why Are Software Composition Analysis Tools Essential?
In addition to the overwhelming amount of commercial applications that use open-source code in their framework, Lineaje estimates that 82% of all open-source components are inherently risky due to security issues, vulnerabilities, code equality, or maintenance concerns.
Unfortunately, the consequences of this aren’t just what-ifs. The Equifax data breach is proof of that. In May 2017, hackers exploited a basic vulnerability in Apache Struts. Because Equifax failed to resolve the vulnerable code in their system after a patch was made available, roughly 148 million American consumers’ personal information was compromised—including their names, Social Security numbers, and other data that can be used for identity theft.
This relatively simple failure ended up costing Equifax over $1 billion by some estimates, a large fraction of which was a monetary settlement for the victims whose information was exposed. Subsequently, Equifax’s handling of the situation and the public relations inferno that followed have continued to haunt the credit bureau ever since.
If data breaches like this can happen to one of the three largest credit bureaus in America, they can happen to you. Software composition analysis tools can make it easier to patch these vulnerabilities in your application before they become a liability that brings your organization to its knees.
Benefits of Using SCA Software for Security
Using open-source code for software development saves developers untold time and money that they would otherwise have to spend building the code themselves. SCA software, by extension, allows developers to identify vulnerabilities and outdated dependencies before they can become serious problems.
In turn, using SCA can save developers money and their company’s reputation. Other specific benefits include:
- Increased visibility into open-source code
- Improved developer efficiency
- Improved developer security risks
- Reduced margin of error over manual code QA testing
- Lower security risks
In a world where most software uses at least some open-source code in its framework, SCA is essential for protecting the work developers, testers, and engineers do every day.
Drawbacks of Using SCA Software
One of the key drawbacks of using SCA software is the same as any other form of SCA—using it takes longer, making your project have a slower lead time than it would if you left it out of your software testing process.
However, despite these potential disadvantages, it’s important to remember that the benefits largely outweigh the cost.
While it may take longer for your development and testing teams to take your software live, it pays off in protecting your users and your company from dangerous mistakes that could cost millions of dollars and undermine your reputation.
Did You Know?
Many developers overlook code security when building applications. For instance, 97% of all applications in the market use open-source code, and 90% of companies use it.
Choosing the Best Software Composition Analysis Tool
Kiuwan Insights empowers developers. For nearly 20 years, it has been the professional developer’s choice for identifying and resolving weak points in their products, ensuring license compliance, and automating security policies through every part of the software development process.
Kiuwan SCA Reduces Your Cyber Risks
Kiuwan Insights SCA is the tool your team needs to automate the software composition analysis process, including alerting on security compliance issues and even blocking them from the code automatically. This allows your team to implement fixes before malicious actors can initiate a cyberattack.
