Buyer's guide: Software supply chain security tools

Traditional security tools were built for simpler times. As development teams increasingly incorporate open source components, third-party software, and complex CI/CD pipelines, the attack surface has expanded far beyond what these approaches can handle.

Security teams today are overwhelmed by CVE since traditional tools generate endless noise and alerts without prioritizing real risks. They also face tension from balancing compliance requirements from different organizations, security needs, and product teams' desire for speed.

The old approach of treating security as an afterthought of scanning and patching code after it's written doesn't scale well for today's software development. Organizations need tools that embed protection into the development process from the beginning. Otherwise, vulnerabilities may reach production undetected, putting your system at risk as you wait for post-deployment tools to find them. Teams play catch-up with vulnerabilities that could have been avoided entirely.

This guide will help you understand what software supply chain security tools do and which options can help your team shift left. We’ll explore the key categories worth evaluating, identify the features that matter most, and provide a framework for choosing the right solution for your team.

What are software supply chain security tools?

Software supply chain security tools protect the components, processes, and infrastructure you use to build and deliver software, including base images, open source dependencies, build systems, code repositories, artifact registries, and the pieces that connect them.

Any component in the supply chain, from open source libraries to your developers’ computers, can be an unconsenting entry point for malicious code, unauthorized access, or tampering. Traditional security testing approaches like Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) focus on finding vulnerabilities after code is written or deployed, addressing only some potential security problems.

Supply chain security tools have a larger scope. They address security risks throughout the entire software development lifecycle, from the beginning of development through deployment to production. The most effective solutions move teams from detection to prevention.

Types of software supply chain security tools

Secure-by-default infrastructure

A great starting point for proactive security is using secure components from the beginning. Secure-by-default infrastructure provides pre-hardened, minimal containers, libraries, and virtual machines that eliminate vulnerabilities at the source. Instead of requiring teams to build and secure components internally, these platforms deliver production-ready artifacts with built-in security controls.

This approach adds security into the development lifecycle with automatic software bill of materials (SBOM) generation, signed provenance, and SLA-backed patching. Teams avoid post-scan triage and can replace DIY security infrastructure with compliant-by-default components.

Chainguard: Chainguard, the only player in this category, provides a comprehensive supply chain security platform beyond traditional scanning approaches. While most tools only focus on a single part of the supply chain, Chainguard covers multiple interconnected layers: secure infrastructure (zero-CVE container images and VMs), build processes (automatic SBOM generation and cryptographic signing), compliance frameworks (SLSA attestations and audit trails), and secure distribution (immutable, signed artifacts). These layers work together so that when you deploy a Chainguard container, you get both the secure foundation and the documentation proving it was built safely. This integrated approach helps teams take a proactive stance by stopping vulnerabilities at the source, rather than creating reactive downstream effects

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

Software Composition Analysis tools identify vulnerabilities in open source dependencies and third-party software components. They scan SBOM data or package manifests, cross-referencing components against collections of known issues like the National Vulnerability Database. Most SCA tools excel at detection but vary significantly in remediation support. Many provide vulnerability reports, but leave teams to handle the toil of patching and updates on their own.

Snyk: Snyk offers a popular SCA platform with developer-friendly integration across multiple programming languages and development tools. It provides vulnerability detection, prioritization, and automated fix suggestions for open source dependencies, but teams still get stuck managing dependency conflicts, testing compatibility, and coordinating deployments across multiple environments. Once one of the only options for vulnerability scanning, it’s now one of the more expensive tools in this category compared to others with similar capabilities.

OSV Scanner: Google's open-source vulnerability scanning tool uses the OSV database to identify existing vulnerabilities in your project’s dependencies. It offers broad support for languages and product types and integrates well with CI/CD pipelines. However, as an open-source tool, it doesn’t have commercial support or the extra features, like advanced remediation or trend analysis, that paid alternatives have.

Secret and credential scanning

Secret scanning tools identify hardcoded secrets, API keys, authentication credentials, and other sensitive data in source code, code repositories, and CI/CD pipelines. They flag them for removal for teams to remediate. More advanced solutions also monitor for leaked secrets post-deployment or in public repositories like GitHub. These tools reduce the risks and damage of human mistakes by catching exposed credentials before they reach production.

GitGuardian: This tool leads the market with real-time detection of leaked secrets across dev workflows and public repos. It’s designed for the scale of large organizations, returning fewer false positives than comparable products. It offers comprehensive secret detection with broader coverage than the alternatives. It has automated remediation workflows and integrates well with existing dev tools.

TruffleHog: This open-source secrets scanner from Truffle Security is popular with dev teams for Git repository and codebase analysis. It’s powerful and offers flexibility and customization options, but requires more configuration and management than other tools.

Gitleaks: Gitleaks provides a lightweight, fast secrets scanner designed explicitly for Git repositories and CI/CD integration, available as both an open-source tool and an enterprise product. The main advantage of Gitleaks is that it not only scans your latest source code but also the entire git history, identifying any secrets committed to your source code in the past, too. It’s limited to Git workflows and doesn’t include remediation assistance, so it isn’t the right fit for all teams.

CI/CD pipeline security

CI/CD pipeline security tools protect build systems, artifact integrity, and pipeline configurations from tampering, misconfigurations, and malicious code injection. These solutions validate the source and integrity of software components, enforce security policies, and detect unauthorized changes in development workflows. Pipeline security is an important part of SLSA compliance and tamper-resistance because it makes sure software components maintain integrity throughout the entire build process.

StepSecurity: StepSecurity secures CI/CD pipelines with network egress controls and runtime security. Its purpose-built security agent runs on CI runners to provide detailed visibility into pipeline activity, detecting anomalies such as unexpected outbound connections or file changes that indicate supply chain attacks like the tj-actions compromise. The platform also maintains a curated set of secure GitHub Actions to replace unmaintained or risky third-party actions, reducing supply chain risk. You can read about how Chainguard uses StepSecurity to harden CI/CD pipelines here.

Jit: Jit provides a developer-centric platform that puts security controls directly into CI/CD pipelines with automation and real-time monitoring. It offers comprehensive pipeline security orchestration, but may require significant configuration to integrate with complex workflows.

Chain-bench: Developed by Aqua Security with the Center for Internet Security (CIS), Chain-bench audits software supply chain compliance using over 100 CIS recommendations. It provides nightly benchmark updates and actionable remediation reports for GitHub and GitLab repositories. While ideal for teams seeking budget-friendly compliance auditing, it requires technical expertise to configure effectively.

Container image hardening and runtime protection

Container security tools focus on minimizing container images and reducing vulnerabilities in base layers. These solutions help teams move away from bloated, CVE-heavy images toward hardened alternatives with smaller attack surfaces. While some organizations start with enterprise base images like Red Hat UBI or Google's Distroless images, dedicated container security tools provide more comprehensive hardening and automation.

Some tools offer runtime protection or post-build image optimization, but starting with secure container images provides better security than fixing problems after deployment.

Chainguard: As a tool that spans multiple parts of the security supply chain, Chainguard is a solid option for providing container hardening and runtime protection, with pre-hardened container images with zero known CVEs. Chainguard Images are continuously rebuilt and cryptographically signed to ensure immutability, SLSA compliance, and runtime safety without requiring post-build patching or slimming processes.

Aqua Security: Aqua Security combines container vulnerability scanning with runtime protection across Docker and Kubernetes environments, focusing primarily on detection and monitoring. It provides comprehensive and sweeping security, with good integrations with a number of container services. However, users sometimes report trouble with scalability and poorly organized documentation.

SBOM and provenance

SBOM and provenance tools automatically generate, sign, and validate SBOMs for transparency and compliance. These tools generally support industry standards like CycloneDX and SPDX for SBOM formatting to provide cryptographic attestations verifying where, how, and by whom software components were built.

During security incidents, SBOM generation and provenance tracking also help you quickly identify affected components and meet compliance requirements.

Chainguard: Besides serving as a container hardening tool, Chainguard generates signed, SLSA-compliant provenance and SBOMs by default as part of every container build. The platform embeds cryptographic attestations at the source, so you don’t need retroactive signing or another external tool. All images are verifiably linked to their build process and source code to maintain artifact integrity.

Sigstore: Sigstore is a suite of open-source tools (cosign, fulcio, rekor) for signing, verifying, and logging container images and software artifacts using keyless signing and public transparency logs. However, to automate signing in your CI/CD pipelines, you'll typically need integration tools like GitHub Actions workflows, Tekton Chains, or custom scripts to call cosign during your build process. It also doesn’t cover patching or broader supply chain risks, so you need to pair it with more tools for full coverage.

GUAC: This open-source security tool, developed by Google and collaborators, compiles software security metadata like SBOMs, SLSA attestations, and vulnerability feeds. It aggregates all the data into one graph database for supply chain analysis. GUAC (Graph for Understanding Artifact Composition) was built to help organizations understand relationships between their software components. However, because the project is still relatively new and requires significant technical expertise to implement and maintain, it’s generally better for research-oriented teams rather than product teams that need immediate security solutions.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and configuration security

IaC security tools scan cloud configurations, Terraform files, Kubernetes manifests, and other infrastructure code for misconfigurations and compliance violations. These solutions help teams catch security issues before they reach production environments, preventing infrastructure drift and unauthorized changes.

Wiz: Wiz is a unified cloud security platform for building, deploying, and managing IaC with extensive scanning capabilities. Its IaC scanner covers a variety of formats while providing validation against over 1,000 rules for various IaC tools. However, as an enterprise platform, it comes with high licensing costs that may be a non-starter for smaller organizations.

Checkov: Maintained by Prisma Cloud, Checkov is a static code analysis tool for detecting security misconfigurations in IaC and performing software composition analysis. Checkov analyzes multiple frameworks, including Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, Dockerfile, and ARM templates, with over 1,000 built-in policies. However, it can produce many false positives and requires substantial tuning for larger environments.

KICS (Keeping Infrastructure as Code Secure): This open-source tool from Checkmarx scans infrastructure code to find security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and misconfigurations. KICS ships with over 2,000 heuristics that detect possible issues through a unified scanning engine. While comprehensive, it requires technical expertise and engineering resources to set it up effectively.

Features to look for in a software supply chain security tool

Many vendors claim to offer comprehensive supply chain security, but capabilities vary significantly between solutions. Focus on features that provide measurable protection rather than just visibility into security issues.

Secure-by-default architecture

The most effective tools prevent vulnerabilities before they occur. Look for solutions that minimize risk with hardened artifacts like minimal containers, pre-vetted open source libraries, or secure base images.

By using artifacts with zero known vulnerabilities, teams can avoid the headaches of managing CVE backlogs.

Built-in SBOMs and provenance

SBOMs should be automatically generated, not crafted by hand, and attached to every software component. Provenance data like SLSA attestations ensures both traceability and build integrity, supporting cybersecurity requirements as well as compliance frameworks.

By default, Chainguard images ship with SBOMs, provenance, and cryptographic signatures, providing end-to-end supply chain transparency without additional configuration.

Developer-friendly integration

Supply chain security solutions should integrate with existing CI/CD pipelines, artifact managers, and development workflows without introducing deployment friction. Engineers will resist tools that slow them down and may find workarounds that undermine the security goals they’re supposed to help.

Chainguard works with existing developer workflows without requiring retooling, supporting popular container registries, package managers, and deployment tools.

Compliance-readiness

Make sure your tools have built-in support for SLSA, NIST SSDF, FedRAMP, and other frameworks. Software components should ship audit-ready rather than requiring extensive downstream hardening. When compliance is baked into the engineering process rather than added afterward, organizations can accelerate certifications and reduce audit overhead.

Chainguard's hardened open source components meet the requirements of many frameworks by default, making ongoing compliance nearly automatic.

Ready to eliminate supply chain risk at the source? Start with Chainguard

Most software supply chain security approaches focus on scanning and detection, leaving teams managing vulnerability backlogs and remediation cycles. A better approach starts with prevention rather than detection.

Chainguard offers secure-by-default containers, libraries, and VMs with zero known CVEs. Built-in SBOMs and provenance support compliance requirements without additional tooling overhead. Developer-friendly integration ensures adoption across DevSecOps teams without workflow disruption. Instead of managing vulnerability backlogs, teams can start with components with a high security standard from the beginning.

Ready to move beyond vulnerability management? Get in touch to learn how Chainguard can eliminate vulnerabilities in your supply chain before they reach production.