SBOM Management with MergeBase: The Software Vendor’s Guide

As more governments institute software supply chain security laws, software companies selling into critical industries will be required to provide customers with a software bill of materials (SBOM).

This introduces an extra step in the sales and vetting process for software companies: you need to provide every vendor with an SBOM specific to the solution they purchase from you. And beyond this, you need to keep every buyer’s SBOM current with the solution they’re using for as long as they’re your customer.

This is why SBOM management is one of the key competencies to look for in a software composition analysis tool—and it’s why we built MergeBase with the ability to continuously (and automatically) monitor and manage all your SBOMs in a single, simple solution.

In this article:

Benefits of managing your SBOM with MergeBase

Several SBOM management tools are available on the market—but MergeBase gives you comprehensive SBOM management within your SCA solution, which gives you a host of advantages. With MergeBase, you can:

Generate SBOMs with a few clicks

With MergeBase, generating a current SBOM document is as easy as it gets. In fact, once you’ve opened MergeBase, you can generate a current and comprehensive SBOM with a single click.

Get a human-friendly view of SBOM content

An SBOM document is machine-readable by design—which means it isn’t very friendly to the human eye. MergeBase turns SBOM content into easy-to-read trees, showing how the various components and subcomponents nest together. Plus, we make it easy to see where known vulnerabilities come from and how detrimental they are to your solution’s security.

Accelerate enterprise sales

Because MergeBase makes it easy to generate and interpret your SBOMs, your sales team is better equipped to address and discuss any security concerns a prospective customer might have.

Manage your supply chain security all in one place

Several SBOM management tools already exist—and every new tool comes with its own learning curve. By managing your SBOM and third-party vulnerabilities in a unified SCA solution like MergeBase, you only need to learn and license one tool. This saves you time and effort, and consolidates your already expanding cybersecurity toolkit.

Keep your SBOMs current automatically

Because MergeBase integrates with your build environment, your SBOMs will be automatically updated whenever you update your software product.

Track every SBOM variant

Many software companies who sell to multiple enterprise customers need to tailor solutions to various buyers’ needs. MergeBase keeps track of every variant of your product, and keeps each corresponding SBOM current with each iteration of your offering.

Stay ahead of the SBOM learning curve

Software supply chain security management is still an emerging discipline. By handling your SBOM management within your SCA solution, you can keep in step with SBOM norms without needing to learn an entirely new set of tools.

If you’re using MergeBase, it’s easy to stay compliant with SBOM regulations. Plus, as SBOM management grows in popularity, MergeBase’s analysis tools equip you to respond to the growing number of SBOM-related questions from both internal colleagues and customers.

How to manage your SBOM with MergeBase

Below is a series of walkthroughs of the MergeBase product showing how easy it is to manage your SBOMs with MergeBase.

How to generate your SBOM with one click

How to get a human-friendly view of your SBOM content

One problem in the SBOM management practice today is that SBOMs are not designed for human readers. Instead, they’re long files of machine-readable text, like this:

This is great for telling a machine where the vulnerabilities are in a given product, but it’s not very useful for helping the decision makers (humans) see how third-party vulnerabilities might work their way into a given software product.

MergeBase fixes that by giving you a human-friendly view of your software composition. You can easily see how the various components and subcomponents fit together, as well as how various threats of third-party vulnerabilities can work their way into your final solution.

Using this tool, you can quickly and intuitively see how old your third-party libraries are, which known vulnerabilities are active within them, and what you can do to patch each one.

How to translate your SBOM with MergeBase

How to integrate your SBOM with other tools using MergeBase

Manage your SBOMs and third-party vulnerabilities in one place with MergeBase

Managing your SBOMs can be a hassle—but it doesn’t have to be. MergeBase makes SBOM management simple, quick, and intuitive. (And on top of that, it’s a full-featured software composition analysis solution!)

If you want a thorough understanding of how you can improve your software supply chain security with MergeBase, feel free to book a demo with us. We’d love to learn more about your product and show you how we can help!