Prisma Cloud of Palo Alto Networks delivers context-aware software composition analysis

Palo Alto Networks has introduced the industry’s first context-aware software composition analysis (SCA) solution to help developers safely use open source software components. The integration of SCA into Prisma Cloud further demonstrates why Palo Alto Networks is the leading provider of cloud-native security.

Traditional SCA solutions are standalone products that can produce a large number of alerts but lack the runtime context to help fix vulnerabilities. With the addition of SCA to the Prisma Cloud platform, developers and security teams can proactively surface and prioritize known vulnerabilities that impact the application lifecycle (i.e., code, build, deploy and run). Prisma Cloud SCA delivers deep dependency detection and remediation of vulnerabilities in open source software before applications reach production. It can also help developers prioritize remediation based on software components that are already in use. These capabilities are not possible when SCA solutions are deployed as single point products.

“Developers leveraging open source software should be able to build applications with the confidence they aren’t opening the organization up to risk,” said Ankur Shah, senior vice president, Prisma Cloud, Palo Alto Networks. “With the average application consisting of 75% open source components, SCA on Prisma Cloud is key to protecting the organization from code to cloud and empowering developers to build with speed.”

As a complete cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP), Prisma Cloud is context-aware at every stage of the application lifecycle to provide a unified view of risk across organizations' cloud environments. Where current approaches to cloud security rely on siloed products that provide intermittent visibility without remediation, Prisma Cloud approaches cloud security with a comprehensive, prevention-first framework. With 188% increase in cloud incident response cases over the past three years, this shift in approach has become mandatory.

In addition to SCA and to further increase the safety of cloud-native applications, Prisma Cloud introduced a software bill of materials (SBOM) among other capabilities for developers to easily maintain and reference a complete codebase inventory of every application component used across cloud environments. Implementing SCA and SBOM ensures Prisma Cloud aligns with these principles.