CyberGlossary

Application Security

SCA (Software Composition Analysis)

Also known as: Open-source security, Dependency scanning

Definition

Automated analysis of an application's open-source and third-party components to identify known vulnerabilities, license issues and outdated or risky dependencies.

SCA tools inspect package manifests (package.json, pom.xml, go.mod, requirements.txt, etc.), lockfiles and binary artifacts to build a software bill of materials (SBOM) and match it against vulnerability databases such as the NVD, GitHub Advisory Database and OSV. They flag vulnerable versions, recommend safe upgrades, detect transitive dependencies and surface license risk. Modern SCA increasingly performs reachability analysis to prioritize CVEs that are actually exploitable in the codebase. Common tools include Snyk Open Source, Dependabot, Sonatype Nexus IQ, Mend (formerly WhiteSource), JFrog Xray and OWASP Dependency-Check.

Examples

  • Dependabot opening pull requests to upgrade vulnerable npm packages.
  • Running Snyk Open Source in CI to fail the build on Critical CVEs with a fix available.

Related terms