Every line of code has the potential to be a security vulnerability. SAST and SCA tools help integrate security into the software development process and improve organizations’ security posture. Here’s how SAST and SCA tools work together – and why you need them.
Few software applications today are developed from scratch; in our world of accelerated software development lifecycles (SDLCs), the reuse of code, libraries, and other components are facts of life. Why should development teams keep starting over when pre-built, proven libraries exist?
Greater efficiency, lower manual effort, faster project delivery times…What’s not to love?
The use of third-party components and open-source code has brought many benefits, but it has also introduced risk: much of today’s software supply chain contains code that has been around for many years, often without update. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Unfortunately, research shows that 95% of organizations have at least one high, critical, or apocalyptic risk within their software supply chain, with the average organization having nine. It gets worse: The most common vulnerabilities are tied to attack vectors that have been known for many years — and are known to contribute to security breaches.
What can organizations do to mitigate the supply chain security risks caused by vulnerabilities in their software applications? And how can AppSec teams ensure that new ones aren’t introduced during the development process? Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Software Composition Analysis (SCA) can help. Here’s how.
What are SAST and SCA? AppSec tools breakdown 101
First things first: What do each of these tools do?
Static Application Security Testing (SAST):
SAST capabilities focus on proprietary code. As the first letter in the name suggests, it looks for vulnerabilities in code in its static state. Used in the earliest stages of development, SAST analyzes code before the application is built, looking for software security weaknesses such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, or security configuration errors.
One of the key benefits of SAST is that it can analyze every line of code in an application, making it truly comprehensive. On the downside, because it can deep dive into code, SAST can yield false positives and a lot of alerts, requiring human expertise to maximize the insights.
Bottom line: SAST tools scan your code for vulnerabilities and address software security issues. Because it provides detailed insights into vulnerabilities, SAST supports developers in adopting a more security-minded approach to software development.
SAST is important because it allows developers and security teams to identify vulnerabilities early in the software development lifecycle (SDLC), before the software is deployed. Early detection using SAST significantly reduces the cost and effort required for post-production remediation.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA):
Software composition analysis detects and manages potential security vulnerabilities and licensing issues across the open-source and third-party libraries chain. Software Composition Analysis tools scan code, analyse the software components that form an application, identify and manage any vulnerabilities detected.
This information is used to create a software bill of materials (SBOM) – a detailed inventory of an application’s dependencies. The SBOM is compared against databases of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs), after which threats can be scored and prioritized based on the organization’s needs.
Bottom line: SCA tools scan open-source and third-party code and dependencies for potential security issues that can lead to breaches. Because it tracks license requirements, SCA helps mitigate compliance risks related to open-source components.
SCA is important because it helps AppSec and security teams manage and mitigate risks in the software supply chain. Its automated processes reduce the need for manual security checks, taking friction out of the software development process.
Similar goals, different scope for addressing security issues:
When it comes to SCA vs. SAST, it’s important to understand that each tool has a different scope when it comes to software security, meaning that they complement each other as part of a comprehensive application security approach. To understand how that works, let’s first take a look at some of the key differences between SAST and SCA.
SAST vs SCA: Key differences
Software Composition Analysis and Static Application Security Testing tools are aligned around their ultimate goal: securing software development processes and helping eliminate known vulnerabilities and potential vulnerabilities from code. But they differ in key ways:
Focus and scope:
- SCA is focused on analyzing open-source dependencies and third-party components.
- SAST analyzes proprietary and custom source code.
The vulnerabilities they detect:
- SCA identifies known vulnerabilities in open-source libraries and components.
- SAST detects weaknesses and potential vulnerabilities in proprietary or in-house developed code.
Code access requirements:
- SCA analyzes binaries and dependencies, meaning it can usually work without needing direct access to source code.
- SAST needs access to source code to analyze it.
Speed of analysis:
- SCA can complete scans in seconds or minutes, regardless of the size of the project.
- SAST often performs in-depth scans of large, complex codebases, making it more time-consuming.
Ultimately, SAST is all about identifying security vulnerabilities in proprietary and/or custom code. SCA supports broader use cases, from vulnerability management through license compliance, and SBOM generation. As we’re about to see, this makes them excellent teammates.
SAST and SCA tools — a reliable security strategy
The differences between them go a long towards underlining the ways in which SAST and SCA complement each other when it comes to supply chain security. Between them, they give AppSec and developer teams coverage — and a security strategy — across the entire software stack – from open-source to proprietary and custom – and throughout each stage of the SDLC.
The more complex the project, the more dependencies, the harder it can be for AppSec and development teams to balance the need for speed against an ever-growing list of software vulnerabilities. Working together, SAST and SCA tools can detect a wider range of security errors that creep into code in today’s accelerated SDLCs.
Automation for enhancing security posture
Understanding the nature of weaknesses and security vulnerabilities in the software supply chain is crucial for AppSec teams looking to develop a proactive security approach. Both SCA and SAST scans can be integrated into continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, enabling secure code across the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
When SAST and SCA tools are integrated into CI/CD, they can be automated to streamline communication around fixes, facilitating remediation and response processes, and reducing friction across the SDLC. Five ways SAST / SCA automation streamlines application security posture management include:
- Automatically scan code at each commit or build.
- Generate and distribute security reports highlighting critical issues.
- Automated dependency monitoring.
- Automated license compliance checks.
- Automated policy enforcement.
Workflow automation takes the sting out of many AppSec and supply chain security processes. The result: more secure, responsive, and efficient development, with faster version releases and greater productivity.
That’s SCA and SAST… But what about DAST?
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) – a.k.a. “outside in” security testing – takes an attacker’s approach to code, simulating attacks on applications to expose vulnerabilities. DAST helps identify security gaps in code or identify unforeseen outcomes that could have a downstream effect on application security.
Like SAST and SCA, DAST tools can be automated or performed manually. And like the others, it’s less about SAST vs. DAST vs. SCA than it is about how the tools can be leveraged in a complementary way. DAST rounds out the capabilities of the other tools by testing applications while they’re running, giving developers and security teams insights into how the application behaves under attack, exposing weaknesses that might only surface once an application is deployed. In this respect, DAST is reactive— a final step in the SDLC, sweeping up any errors that survived through coding, into build, and now deployment.
Bringing it all together: OX’s code-to-cloud analysis
While SCA, SAST, and DAST tools do a great job of enabling a more holistic approach that integrates security into DevOps processes, they don’t often “talk” to each other. Many tools lack sufficient context to manage growing software supply chain risk, leaving defenders staring down the barrel of a coverage and visibility gap compounded by alert fatigue and inadequate remediation capacity.
OX’s Active ASPM platform removes the historical siloes between application and vulnerability scanning tools, providing more context and giving AppSec practitioners the ability to prioritize, fix, and track issues throughout the SDLC. Read our ASPM guide.
OX unifies application security practices and prevents risks across the software supply chain, giving organizations the tools they need to eliminate manual practices and enable scalable, secure development.
Find out how you can pinpoint vulnerabilities in minutes with OX’s built-in SCA solution, start for free now.
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