The intricacies of cloud environments make understanding and analysis highly complex. For many organizations, the continued migration to cloud—in particular, for software development purposes—imposes challenges to security and management.
At OX Security, we’ve recognized the problem that exists between cloud security and application security, and we are excited to help our customers address the long-standing challenge of integrating cloud and AppSec data by introducing the OX Cloud Bill of Materials (BOM) as a core component of our ASPM platform. This capability breaks down silos between cloud data and AppSec data and presents a unified way for AppSec and DevOps teams to focus on the risks that matter most.
What is a Cloud Bill of Materials?
OX’s Cloud BOM is a comprehensive inventory of cloud assets, detailing services like AWS EC2 instances, S3 buckets, IAM roles, and Kubernetes objects such as services, jobs, and pods. Cloud BOM provides a granular view of each asset, highlighting associated security issues and configurations.
Cloud BOM is a crucial element of application security because it extends visibility beyond application code to the underlying cloud infrastructure where applications reside. Vulnerabilities in cloud configurations, permissions, or services can directly impact application security. Therefore, our Cloud BOM enables organizations to identify and mitigate risks across the entire application lifecycle, from design to runtime.
Why Does AppSec Need Cloud Security Posture Management?
Modern applications no longer exist in isolation; they rely on a web of cloud services, including databases, storage, compute instances, and serverless functions. This reliance creates a significantly larger cyber attack surface, where attackers can target not only the application code itself but also vulnerabilities in the underlying cloud infrastructure. Without visibility into cloud-related risks, ASPM cannot provide a complete security picture.
Cloud environments are highly configurable and misconfigurations are a common source of security vulnerabilities. Examples include open S3 buckets exposing sensitive data, excessive IAM permissions that grant unauthorized access, and unsecured network configurations. To be effective, ASPM must identify these misconfigurations so operators can act to remediate them. Software and their cloud dependencies are tightly coupled, and therefore a vulnerability in a cloud service can directly impact the security of an application. What’s more, greater insight into cloud environments during runtime allows for improved threat detection and response.
OX’s Cloud BOM gives customers a security tool to help them achieve:
Enhanced visibility and management: With an always up-to-date Cloud BOM, organizations will now be able to use the OX Platform to gain a clear understanding of the cloud services in use, their purposes, and configurations. This clarity helps customers identify redundant or underutilized resources and optimize their cloud expenditures.
Improved security posture: Helping our customers improve their security posture is a mainstay of our mission. As such, our detailed Cloud BOM enables organizations to promptly assess the impact of newly discovered vulnerabilities in specific cloud services. This proactive approach facilitates timely mitigation strategies and strengthens overall security.
Streamlined compliance and risk management: By incorporating Cloud BOM, organizations have one unified console to ensure that all deployed cloud services adhere to regulatory standards and internal policies. This structured documentation—viewable in one place and associated with the entirety of the software development lifecycle—simplifies audits and supports robust risk management practices.
Technical Benefits:
- Evidence collection: Beyond traditional Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs), the Cloud BOM offers customers insights into their cloud infrastructure, illuminating how applications are deployed and helping AppSec teams identify potential risks associated with software development and deployment.
- Individual asset analysis: With Cloud BOM page, users can investigate security issues tied to specific assets, facilitating targeted remediation efforts.
- Shadow IT detection: With this enhancement, OX provides visibility into all cloud assets and uncovers shadow IT resources that may be used by development teams throughout the software development lifecycle.
- Configuration management: With a consistent view of cloud configurations, OX helps ensure that security policies are enforced across all environments, reducing the risk that a misconfiguration results in unauthorized access.
Business Benefits:
- Risk assessment: Customers can now easily learn the vulnerabilities and risks of each cloud asset (as it pertains to software development), providing a streamlined way to prioritize security efforts based on factual data, leading to more effective risk management.
- Automated security: Cloud BOM data can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines to automate security checks and ensure security is built into cloud-native software deployments from the start.
- Informed decision-making: The detailed insights from OX’s Cloud BOM empower teams to make data-driven decisions, enhance overall security posture, and improve operational efficiency.
The formal announcement of Cloud BOM as a part of OX Security’s ASPM platform signifies our commitment to providing a holistic AppSec solution that demonstrably reduces risk. In essence, OX Security’s Cloud BOM transforms AppSec and software supply chain security from an application code issue to a comprehensive AppSec management solution for the entire cloud ecosystem. It bridges the gap between cloud security and application security, and gives organizations the ability to focus on the cloud risks that impact overall cybersecurity posture.
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