Software Industry Leader: More Work Needed on Taxonomy to Make NTIA Initiative Successful

Inside Cybersecurity, July 9, 2020

By Sara Friedman

A Commerce Department-led initiative to develop a common software component vulnerability framework is still a work in progress, says BSA | The Software Alliance leader Tommy Ross, and more development is needed to mature the project before it can widely adopted by agencies and industry.

The most valuable components of the SBOM will be the “naming conventions” which are “the ways vendors or developers will have to communicate to users of components downstream [how] they have potentially mitigated some of the risks that may be associated with components because of SBOM,” Ross said. Developing the nomenclature is ongoing.

BSA | The Software Alliance wants to build “a clear understanding among users of what the SBOM is and what it is not,” and to figure out “what aspects of software security that SBOM is useful in addressing and the remaining areas of security that SBOM doesn't cover,” Ross said.

“SBOM isn't going to be a stand-in for software security as a whole,” he said. “It is one potential tool that may be useful in addressing third party components, hopefully their integration in a security manner and their upkeep and maintenance. But it is no substitute for a broader secure development lifecycle and in fact needs to live within a broader secure lifecycle in order to be effective.”

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