Key Points: Software Bill of Material (SBOM)

• SBOMs provide essential visibility into software components, allowing organisations to understand exactly what is inside the applications they build or buy, which is critical for effective security and risk management.
• Supply-chain attacks and vulnerable third‑party components are now major drivers for SBOM adoption, making transparency a strategic necessity rather than a technical nicety.
• Automating SBOM generation within CI/CD pipelines ensures accuracy, consistency, and ongoing alignment with what is actually deployed in production.
• A central SBOM repository and integration into security and risk processes enable faster incident response, improved vulnerability management, and consistent compliance oversight.
• Successful SBOM implementation requires organisational alignment: clear ownership, governance, vendor expectations, and cultural change across development, security, and procurement.

In today’s digital economy, software isn’t built so much as it is assembled, often from dozens or hundreds of third-party and open-source components. The catch? If you don’t know what’s inside your applications, you can’t fully protect them. A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) addresses this by providing a comprehensive “ingredients list” for your software, enumerating every component, library, and module (and even their licenses) in each application. SBOMs turn opaque software into something you can inspect, query, and trust.

The stakes for doing so are high. Cyberattackers increasingly exploit weaknesses in the software supply chain, and they often target the weakest link, which might be a third-party component or vendor. Nearly 30% of data breaches in 2025 involved a third-party supplier, up sharply from prior years. We’ve seen how a single vulnerable component like Log4j can wreak havoc across industries, and how a compromised vendor software (like the MOVEit file transfer tool) can spill over into multiple enterprises. Meanwhile, regulators have noticed: standards and laws are emerging that expect organisations to know their software assets (the US, for instance, now mandates SBOMs for software sold to the federal government). In short, having an SBOM is moving from a “nice-to-have” technical detail to a strategic necessity for risk management and compliance.
In this article, we will cover:

• What an SBOM is and why it matters in modern software supply chains.
• What steps can an organisation take to implement SBOM, and the challenges they are likely to face.

Hopefully, this article will help you see SBOM not as a tedious technical documentation but as a powerful tool that can give your organisation a significant advantage in managing software risk. We’ll explore why ignoring SBOMs is no longer an option and how embracing them can strengthen both your security and compliance.

SBOM: Illuminating the Software Supply Chain

A SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) is a formal, machine-readable inventory of all components included in a software product. Think of it as the bill of materials that manufacturers have used for decades, but applied to software. If an application were a car, the SBOM would list the engine model, the tire types, the brand of the spark plugs, and so on. In the software context, an SBOM typically includes each library, module, open-source package, dependency, and even sometimes sub-components that make up your application, along with relevant metadata (version numbers, vendor/source, and often the license for each component).

Why is this relevant? Because modern software is highly modular. Organisations might use thousands of open-source libraries across their applications. These components accelerate development, but also mean that a vulnerability or bug in one component (outside your direct control) can introduce risk into your systems. The Log4j vulnerability in 2021 was a wake-up call precisely because it demonstrated that you can’t fix what you can’t find. Organisations that did not maintain SBOMs had to manually trawl through code and systems to figure out if Log4j was being used. This process was painfully slow. In contrast, an organisation with a complete SBOM could search their SBOM repository and find every instance of Log4j in minutes. The difference between minutes and weeks in responding to a critical zero-day isn’t just about efficiency: it can determine whether you contain the issue or suffer a breach. A well-maintained SBOM can turn a nightmare scenario into a routine query.

Beyond security bugs, SBOMs also record the licenses of open-source components. This often-overlooked aspect is crucial for legal compliance. Many organisations unknowingly incorporate code with restrictive licenses (such as GPL or AGPL ). These “copyleft” licenses can force you to open-source your entire software if you distribute it, or at least impose strict obligations to share your source code. Imagine the IP risk of accidentally including a GPL-licensed module in a proprietary application: you could be legally compelled to publish your trade secret algorithms, or face lawsuits and have to rip out that component under duress. An SBOM helps spot such landmines by flagging every component’s license, allowing your legal team to catch and replace any incompatible code before it becomes a problem. In fact, failing to comply with open-source licenses has led to real-world consequences: in 2022 a cloud and storage vendor was accused of violating an open-source license and had its rights to that code revoked until it addressed the issue. SBOMs give you the visibility to avoid these IP pitfalls.

In summary, an SBOM brings visibility to what’s under the hood of your software. For an organisation, this means:

• Faster Incident Response: When a vulnerability is announced (or a regulatory inquiry comes in), you can immediately assess your exposure by querying SBOM data, rather than mobilising a fire drill.
• Proactive Risk Management: You can continuously monitor for known flaws in components and ensure upgrades happen in a timely manner. No more “I hope we’re not using that vulnerable library somewhere…”.
• Legal/Compliance Safety Net: You know the license terms of all components, reducing the chance of a nasty surprise where you inadvertently violate a license or face compliance issues. This is particularly important in industries where the cost of legal non-compliance (or an IP lawsuit) can be enormous.
• Supply Chain Trust: You can demand SBOMs from your software vendors as well, which means you’re not blindly trusting a third-party product. If a vendor’s software has an SBOM, your security team can vet its components and be alerted if one of them later becomes a concern.

SBOMs are increasingly considered essential to software governance. Without visibility, security is impossible. Demanding and generating SBOMs is the single most crucial step towards gaining control over your software supply chain. This is why SBOMs are being incorporated into standards and regulations, such as ISO standards for open source and U.S. government procurement rules.

How to Plan for SBOM Implementation

Rolling out SBOMs is not a matter of installing a tool and walking away. It is an organisational capability: part policy, part engineering discipline, part cultural shift. And like any capability that touches development, security, procurement, and suppliers, it needs deliberate planning.

1. Start with Ownership, Policy, and Executive Backing

The most successful SBOM programs begin with clear ownership. Whether it sits with a secure development lead, a DevSecOps function, or the application security team, someone must be accountable for defining expectations and driving adoption.

This also means formalising a SBOM policy:

• Every in house software build produces a SBOM.
• Every release has an updated SBOM.
• Every third party product is expected to provide one.

Framing SBOMs as a strategic risk management requirement, not a technical nice to have, helps secure prioritisation at the executive level. As regulatory and customer expectations continue to rise, this clarity becomes critical when setting budgets, timelines, and cross team responsibilities.

2. Pick Your Standards Early (SPDX, CycloneDX, or Both)

SBOMs work at their best when they follow a standard, machine readable format. The two that dominate the industry, SPDX (Linux Foundation) and CycloneDX (OWASP), each bring strengths:

• SPDX excels in software licensing transparency.
• CycloneDX is widely used for security use cases and vulnerability mapping.

Most organisations ultimately support both, because conversion tools are common and suppliers vary in what they can provide. The key is consistency: standardise what your teams generate, and define what your procurement and vendor risk teams will accept from suppliers.

3. Automate SBOM Generation in CI/CD

The most important decision you’ll make is to fully automate SBOM creation.
If generating SBOMs relies on manual steps, they will be forgotten or skipped under deadline pressure.

Modern SBOM tools (including Syft, CycloneDX generators, SPDX tools, or commercial SCA platforms) can be integrated directly into build pipelines. At the end of each build, the pipeline outputs: the software artifact, and its corresponding SBOM.

This ensures that SBOMs remain accurate, current, and complete. For security teams, this level of automation is transformative: the SBOM becomes a true reflection of what is running in production, not an outdated document created months ago.

4. Create a Central SBOM Repository

Once an organisation begins generating SBOMs for dozens, then hundreds, of releases, storage and retrieval quickly become problems if not planned early.

A central SBOM repository solves this by becoming a searchable inventory of every dependency across every system. Teams typically store SBOMs in:

• an artefact repository (e.g., Artifactory, GitHub Packages),
• a dedicated SBOM portal, or
• a configuration management system (CMDB) enriched with SBOM fields.

During an incident, say a zero day in a widely used library, analysts can query the repository and locate every impacted system in minutes. This is the difference between scrambling in the dark and responding with confidence.

5. Embed SBOM Use Into Security, Risk, and Development Processes

Once SBOMs exist, the value comes from actively using them.

Security teams can map SBOM data to vulnerability feeds to detect when a component becomes exposed. Compliance teams can scan SBOMs for problematic or incompatible open source licences. Developers can review SBOMs post build to discover unexpected transitive dependencies bloating their applications.

The more SBOMs become woven into everyday processes: secure SDLC gates, vulnerability management, incident response, and architecture reviews, the more they shift from documentation to decision making tools.

6. Extend SBOM Expectations to Vendors and Third Party Software

The hardest but most important part of SBOM adoption is dealing with suppliers.

Many organisations now update their procurement processes so that an SBOM becomes:

• a requested artefact during evaluation,
• a contractually required deliverable for critical software, and
• an ongoing obligation when vendors release patches or updates.

Some vendors will be ready. Others will resist due to capability gaps or intellectual property concerns. Planning for negotiation, contractual language, and secure handling of supplier SBOMs is essential to creating transparency across your entire software estate—not just what you build internally.

Common Challenges When Implementing SBOMs

No SBOM program rolls out smoothly. The following challenges are the ones most frequently encountered across industries.

1. Tooling Friction and Pipeline Integration: Different teams use different languages, build systems, and pipelines. Integrating SBOM tools across these environments takes time. Early builds may slow down, or initial scans may miss deeply nested dependencies, especially in older, monolithic, or poorly documented applications. Starting with a pilot project helps iron out tooling issues before scaling to the enterprise.
2. Incomplete or Noisy SBOMs: Large applications can have hundreds or thousands of components, and early SBOMs often generate long lists of vulnerabilities. Not all of these matter in practice, but the initial flood of data can overwhelm security teams. Refining SBOM quality, filtering out irrelevant components, and adopting emerging concepts like VEX (Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange) helps reduce noise and focus attention where it counts.
3. Maintaining SBOMs Over Time: An SBOM is only useful if it reflects the current state of the software. Fast moving agile teams, emergency hotfixes, and manual dependency additions can all lead to SBOM drift. Enforcing SBOM generation as an immutable step of every release, and versioning SBOM files alongside the product, helps keep documentation aligned with reality.
4. Scaling the Repository and Governance: As organisations accumulate hundreds of SBOMs (across multiple versions of multiple systems), basic storage solutions quickly become unmanageable. A lack of governance can also introduce ambiguity over who owns SBOM maintenance, who reviews findings, and how teams collaborate across development, security, and procurement. Successful programs define:
• clear roles and responsibilities,
• a governance forum or working group, and
• metrics that track SBOM coverage and vendor compliance.
5. Supplier Resistance and IP Concerns: Some vendors simply don’t have SBOM capabilities yet; others fear that providing an SBOM exposes trade secrets or creates legal risk. Addressing this requires a mix of education, confidentiality agreements, contractual leverage, and pragmatic compromise (e.g., phased SBOM maturity expectations). Over time, more suppliers will adopt SBOMs as customer expectations mature, mirroring the trajectory of penetration testing reports and security attestations over the past decade.
6. Cultural Change and Skills Gaps: Developers may initially view SBOM tasks as extra work that delivers little immediate value. Security teams may struggle to interpret the first waves of dependency data. Procurement teams may be unfamiliar with technical SBOM requirements during vendor onboarding. Upskilling, communication, and embedding SBOMs into existing workflows (rather than layering them on top) are essential to creating lasting, sustainable adoption.

Planning for SBOM implementation requires a mix of technology, process, and cultural alignment. Automated pipelines provide the mechanics, policy provides the direction, and cross team collaboration ensures the whole organisation benefits.

And while the challenges can be real, from reluctant vendors to noisy SBOM outputs, the payoff is transformative. With SBOMs, organisations gain visibility, precision, and confidence in managing software risk.

In Short: Turning Visibility into Control

SBOMs are no longer an emerging idea or a niche engineering practice. They are becoming a foundational element of modern software governance. As organisations increasingly assemble software from a vast ecosystem of third party and open source components, the simple truth is this: you cannot secure what you cannot see. SBOMs give us that visibility. They transform the software supply chain from something opaque and reactive into something transparent, measurable, and defensible.

While implementing SBOMs requires effort: new tools, new processes, new conversations with suppliers, the return on that investment is undeniable. Faster incident response. Stronger risk management. Clearer license governance. Greater trust in the software you build and the software you buy. In an era where regulatory expectations continue to rise and supply chain attacks continue to escalate, SBOMs are quickly becoming one of the few controls that improve security, compliance, and operational resilience at the same time.

The organisations that will thrive in this environment are the ones that see SBOMs not as a checkbox, but as an opportunity: an opportunity to modernise their development practices, strengthen vendor oversight, and build a security culture that values transparency from code to cloud. Adopting SBOMs is not just about avoiding the next Log4j, it is about building the capability to understand and trust the software that underpins your business.

If visibility is the first step toward control, then SBOMs are the map. And in today’s software landscape, you don’t want to be navigating without one.




Disclaimer: This article is not legal or regulatory advice. You should seek independent advice on your legal and regulatory obligations. The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of AMP or its staff. Artificial Intelligence Technology was used to proof-read this article.