From Vulnerability Overload to Clear Priorities: Software Composition Analysis in Code Insights
Software composition analysis (SCA) should do more than surface issues. See how SCA in Code Insights helps teams prioritize security vulnerabilities and reduce open-source risk.
Open-source software now underpins nearly every application today – often over 70% of the codebase. This speeds up delivery, expands capability, and allows teams to build on proven foundations instead of rebuilding what already exists.
It also creates an unmanageable volume of security alerts.
When every dashboard is full and every alert feels urgent, it’s hard to know what to fix first, and backlogs grow. Vulnerability data becomes more noise. The real issue is prioritizing security vulnerabilities in a way that meaningfully reduces risk without slowing delivery – and that’s where software composition analysis (SCA) must evolve.
Key takeaways:
- Open-source risk is constant and distributed
- Visibility alone doesn’t reduce exposure
- Severity scores aren’t enough to guide action
- Clear prioritization is essential to sustained progress
Why Traditional Software Composition Analysis Tools Aren’t Enough
Software composition analysis tools have helped teams identify open-source risk for years. But many still stop at exposure, and the experience gets fragmented:
- Vulnerabilities appear across repositories and pipeline scans, often presented as isolated findings.
- Severity scores dominate remediation decisions, even though they rarely reflect fixing effort, dependency depth, or development impact.
- Teams switch between branch views, build outputs, and dependency graphs, trying to assemble context manually.
Security posture is captured as a snapshot instead of a trend. And when SCA is delivered as another standalone system, it adds integration work and workflow friction that slows adoption.
Visibility increases; decision clarity doesn’t.
Many legacy SCA tools were designed for compliance officers and security managers, not the team leads who actually need to make fix-or-defer decisions. The interface prioritizes executive reporting over actionable workflows.
In contrast, SCA in Code Insights is centered on the Team Lead and Senior Developer. The interface aligns with the Secrets Detection module, creating consistency across security workflows; and the information hierarchy is structured specifically for delegation and sprint planning.
Introducing the New SCA Experience in Code Insights
The new software composition analysis experience inside Code Insights replaces legacy views with a redesigned, decision-focused approach.
It’s built for Team Leads and Senior Developers who need to make realistic remediation decisions, understand how development activity impacts exposure, and demonstrate improvement over time.
Instead of presenting vulnerability data as a static list, SCA inside Code Insights ties exposure to decision-making, scanning your repositories (branches) and showing the results of CI/CD scans (builds). Trends reveal whether risk is increasing or decreasing, and context makes prioritizing security vulnerabilities more practical and less reactive.
The shift is from reporting risk to enabling measurable progress.
What’s New – and Why It Matters
Here's what's changed in SCA.
- Dual Perspectives: Branch and Build Views
SCA provides two complementary perspectives: Branch View and Build View.
Branch View shows how commits influence risk exposure across repositories, with results refreshing every 24 hours and on every commit or pull request. Build View reflects vulnerabilities identified during CI/CD pipeline scans, updating every time a build triggers.
Together, they create continuity between development activity and security posture. You see both the ongoing code health across branches, and the gate-check protection before deployment.
What that means:
You can connect day-to-day engineering work directly to risk reduction.
- Unified Drill-Down Hierarchy in Branches View
The redesigned Branches View introduces a clear path from organizational exposure down to the specific dependency and vulnerability involved.
You move logically from organization → repository → file → dependency → vulnerability path. This structure reduces investigation time and removes guesswork.
Instead of navigating disconnected dashboards, you follow a coherent trail to identify the source of risk and determine the appropriate fix.
What that means:
You can trace vulnerabilities to their origin and confidently assign remediation.
- Smarter Risk Prioritization Signals
Not all vulnerabilities require immediate attention – effective prioritization depends on more than severity.
SCA now combines severity with contextual signals like dependency type and exposure trends. This makes prioritizing security vulnerabilities a structured process rather than a reaction to the highest score.
The system surfaces Risk Exposure Metrics showing what percentage of your aggregate codebase contains vulnerabilities. It refreshes vulnerability mappings every 24 hours to reflect the latest threat intelligence. It also distinguishes between direct dependencies (libraries you explicitly added) and transitive dependencies (nested packages pulled in by your direct dependencies).
This layered approach ensures you're fixing vulnerabilities in code you control first, before addressing deeper dependency chain issues.
What that means:
You can focus engineering time where it drives meaningful risk reduction.
- Developer-Friendly CLI Experience
The updated SCA CLI mirrors the command structure and output format of our Secrets Detection module. Developers who've already integrated secrets scanning can add SCA with minimal learning curve – same syntax patterns, same parseable JSON outputs, same pipeline integration approach.
You're extending a workflow instead of learning a new one.
What that means:
You can smoothly integrate open-source scanning into development and delivery.
- Expanded Coverage Across Languages and Build Tools
Today’s engineering environments are rarely uniform. Teams work across languages, frameworks, and build systems.
SCA in Code Insights supports broad language and build tool coverage, enabling consistent visibility across repositories. Instead of fragmented scanning strategies, teams get a unified understanding of open-source risk across their stack.
What that means:
You can keep security coverage reliable across today’s polyglot environments.
How This Looks in Practice
Let’s look at a real-world scenario to see how SCA helps.
Your team commits a dependency update on Tuesday morning. In the Branch View, you see a sudden spike in exposure in your codebase. You drill down: organization → repo → manifest file → dependency list.
The culprit is a transitive dependency three levels deep in your authentication library. The vulnerability is marked Critical (CVSS 9.2), but it sits inside a transitive dependency your team doesn’t call directly.
There’s a clear recommended upgrade path: update the parent dependency to v4.2.1, which pulls in the patched transitive package. You assign the fix to a developer, including the exact file path and upgrade recommendation.
Thursday's build scan confirms the vulnerability is resolved. Exposure drops back to normal levels. The entire investigation took 15 minutes instead of cross-referencing multiple tools for an hour.
That's the change: from hunting through fragmented data to following a clear remediation path.
Designed for How Engineering Teams Really Work
For Team Leads, SCA becomes a planning tool:
- Clear prioritization signals inform sprint decisions
- Drill-down visibility supports delegation
- Trend tracking makes it easier to demonstrate measurable improvement to leadership
For Senior Developers, context is embedded directly in the workflow:
- Dependency paths are easier to follow
- Investigation time shortens
- Alert fatigue decreases
Put simply, security is integrated into delivery, instead of competing with it.
The Bigger Impact: From Visibility to Progress
Effective security is about measurably and sustainably reducing exposure.
Confidence grows when teams can see how commits affect risk, understand how CI/CD scans stop vulnerable components from progressing, and track exposure trends over time.
Decisions feel grounded. Progress is visible. Risk reduction becomes demonstrable.
Software composition analysis shouldn’t just surface problems. It should help teams solve the right ones first.
Getting Started
We’re currently rolling out SCA to select partners and users. If you’re ready to move from vulnerability visibility to clear remediation priorities, contact your Customer Success Manager today to request free access.
Not a customer yet? Tell us your security needs, or find out more about Code Insights here.
