Veracode, the application securitycompany today announced an early access program for a new Software Composition Analysis (SCA) service to detect software components with known high-risk vulnerabilities.
 
The SCA service will accelerate secure software development by allowing developers to benefit from the time to market advantages associated with using third-party libraries, without introducing unnecessary risk. With this service, enterprises can be confident the third-party components used to speed the software development processes are as secure as the code developed internally.
 
The new service has been integrated with the company’s cloud-based security platform. The service combines multiple analysis technologies in a unified platform to identify vulnerabilities in web, mobile and third-party applications. For global enterprises, this approach significantly reduces complexity and risk by providing a central location for defining enterprise-wide policies and managing governance across diverse business units and development teams.
 
It is not uncommon for up to 90% of an application to be made up of third-party commercial or open source components. However, components often contain vulnerabilities that can compromise the security of the software in which they are used. Additionally, developers cannot make changes to the code and are often not aware of updates addressing these flaws. To aid developer productivity, the new service also suggests secure alternatives for insecure components.
 
“Despite their many benefits to innovation and speed, the use of third-party components can also introduce risk into an organization,” said Chris Wysopal, co-founder and CTO, Veracode. “By understanding which components are in use and ensuring they are the most up-to-date and secure, organizations can speed their innovations to market without introducing additional unnecessary risk.”
 
With the SCA service, Veracode becomes the first vendor to integrate software composition analysis with binary static analysis (SAST) and dynamic analysis (DAST) in a single cloud-based platform. The service provides a comprehensive inventory of third-party components used by internal developers and in third-party applications. The Veracode platform then provides vulnerability and version information for these components, so that developers can use the most up-to-date version of a component. Automated reporting and compliance workflows with centralized policy management are also available from the Veracode platform.
 
Veracode clients can also use the SCA service as the first step toward systematically addressing overall third-party risk. Through its outsourced Vendor Application Security Testing (VAST) program, Veracode helps organizations implement enterprise-wide governance programs and works directly with software vendors to ensure they comply with customers’ corporate security policies.
 
The early access program for Veracode’s Software Component Analysis service is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2014 Veracode customers can sign up for the Software Component Analysis beta test directly on the Veracode platform.