Anchore Enterprise Capabilities
SBOM Generation and Management
A software bill of materials (SBOM), is the foundational element that powers Anchore Enterprise’s secure management of the software supply chain. Anchore Enterprise automatically generates and analyzes comprehensive SBOMs at each step of the development lifecycle. SBOMS are stored in a repository to provide visibility into software components and dependencies as well as continuous monitoring for new vulnerabilities and risks throughout the development process and post-deployment. See SBOM Generation and Management for more information.
About Anchore Enterprise SBOMs
An SBOM is a list of software components and relevant metadata that includes packages, code-snippets, licenses, configurations, and other elements of an application.
Anchore Enterprise generates high-fidelity SBOMs by scanning container images and source code repositories. Anchore’s native SBOM format includes a rich set of metadata that is a superset of data included in SBOM standards such as SPDX and CycloneDX. Using this additional level of metadata, Anchore can identify secrets, file permissions, misconfiguration, malware, insecure practices, and more.
Anchore Enterprise SBOMs identify:
- Open source dependencies including ecosystem type (OS, language, and other metadata)
- Nested dependencies in archive files (WAR files, JAR files and more)
- Package details such as name, version, creator, and license information
- Filesystem metadata such as the file name, size, permissions, creation time, modification time, and hashes
- Malware
- Secrets, keys, and credentials
Anchore Enterprise supported ecosystems
Anchore Enterprise supports the following packaging ecosystems when identifying SBOM content. The Operating System category captures Linux packaging ecosystems. The Binary detector will inspect content to identify binaries that were installed outside of packaging ecosystems.
- Operating System
- RPM
- DEB
- APK
- NPM
- Ruby Gems
- Python
- Java
- NuGet
- Golang
- Binaries
- Apache httpd
- BusyBox
- Consul
- Golang
- HAProxy
- Helm
- Java
- Memcached
- Nodejs
- PHP
- Perl
- PostgreSQL
- Python
- Redis
- Rust
- Traefik
How Anchore Enterprise Uses SBOMs
Identify Vulnerabilities and Risk for Remediation
Anchore Enterprise generates detailed SBOMs at each stage of the software development lifecycle and stores them in a centralized repository to provide visibility into components and open source dependencies. These SBOMs are analyzed for vulnerabilities, malware, secrets (embedded passwords and credentials), misconfigurations, and other risks. Because SBOMs are stored in a repository, users can then continually monitor SBOMs for new vulnerabilities that arise, even post-deployment.
Detect SBOM Drift
Anchore Enterprise detects SBOM drift in the build process, identifying changes in SBOMs so they can be assessed for new risks or malicious activity. Users can set policy rules that alert them when components are added, changed, or removed so that they can quickly identify new vulnerabilities, developer errors, or malicious efforts to infiltrate builds. See SBOM Drift for more information.
Meet Compliance Requirements
Using the Anchore Enterprise UI or API, users can review SBOMs, generate reports, and export SBOMs as a JSON file. Anchore Enterprise can also export aggregated SBOMs for entire applications that can then be shared externally to meet customer and federal compliance requirements.
Customized Policy Rules
Anchore Enterprise’s high-fidelity SBOMs provide users with a rich set of metadata that can be used in customized policies.
Reduce False Positives
The extensive information provided in SBOMs generated by Anchore Enterprise allows for more accurate vulnerability matching for higher accuracy and reduced false positives.
Vulnerability and Security Scanning
Vulnerability and security scanning is an essential part of any vulnerability management strategy. Anchore Enterprise enables you to scan for vulnerabilities and security risks at any stage of your software development process, including source code repositories, CI/CD pipelines, container registries, and container runtime environments. By scanning at each stage in the process, you will find vulnerabilities and other security risks earlier and avoid delaying software delivery.
Continuous Scanning and Analysis
Anchore Enterprise provides continuous and automated scanning of an application’s code base, including related artifacts such as containers and code repositories. Anchore Enterprise starts the scanning process by generating and storing a high-fidelity SBOM that identifies all of the open source and proprietary components and their direct and transitive dependencies. Anchore uses this detailed SBOM to accurately identify vulnerabilities and security risks.
Identifying Zero-Day Vulnerabilities
When a zero-day vulnerability arises, Anchore Enterprise can instantly identify which components and applications are impacted by simply re-analyzing your stored SBOMs. You don’t need to re-scan applications or components.
Multiple Vulnerability Feeds
Anchore Enterprise uses a broad set of vulnerability feed sources, including the National Vulnerability Database, GitHub Security Advisories, feeds for popular Linux distros and packages, and an Anchore-curated dataset for suppression of known false-positive vulnerability matches. See Feeds Overview for a full list of feed sources.
Precision Vulnerability Matching
Anchore Enterprise applies a best-in-class precision matching algorithm to select vulnerability data from the most accurate feed source. For example, when Anchore’s detailed SBOM data identifies that there is a specific Linux distro, such as RHEL, Anchore Enterprise will automatically use that vendor’s feed source instead of reporting every Linux vulnerability. Anchore’s precision vulnerability matching algorithm reduces false positives and false negatives, saving developer time. See the Managing False Positives section within this topic for additional ways that Anchore Enterprise reduces false positives.
Vulnerability Management and Remediation
Focusing solely on identifying vulnerability and security issues without remediation is not good enough for today’s modern DevSecOps teams. Anchore Enterprise combines the power of a rich set of SBOM metadata, reporting, and policy management capabilities to enable customers to remediate issues with the flexibility and granularity needed to mitigate disruption or slow down software production.
Managing False Positives
Anchore Enterprise provides a number of innovative capabilities to help reduce the number of false positives and optimize the signal-to-noise ratio. It starts with accurate component identification through Anchore’s high-fidelity SBOMs and a precision vulnerability matching algorithm for fewer false positives. In addition, allowlists and temporary allowlists provide for exceptions, reducing ongoing alerts. Lastly, Anchore Enterprise enables users to correct the false positives to avoid being raised in subsequent scans. “Corrections” help increase results in accuracy over time and lower signal-to-noise ratio.
Flexible Policy Enforcement
Anchore Enterprise enables users to define automated rules that indicate which vulnerabilities violate their organizations’ policies. For example, an organization may raise policy violations for vulnerabilities scored as Critical or High that have a fix available. These policy violations can generate alerts and notifications or be used to stop builds in the CI/CD pipeline or prevent code from moving to production. Policy enforcement can be applied at any stage in the development process, from the selection and usage of open source components through the build, staging, and deployment process. See Policy for more information.
Streamlined Remediation
Anchore Enterprise provides capabilities to automatically alert developers of issues through their existing tools, such as Jira or Slack. It also lets users define actionable remediation workflows with automated remediation recommendations.
Open Source Security, Dependencies, and Licenses
Anchore Enterprise gives users the ability to identify and track open source dependencies that are incorporated at any stage in the software lifecycle. Anchore Enterprise scans source code repositories, CI/CD pipelines, and container registries to generate SBOMs that include both direct and transitive dependencies and to identify exactly where those dependencies are found.
Anchore Enterprise also identifies the relevant open source licenses and enables users to ensure that the open source components used along with their dependencies are compliant with all license requirements. License policies are customizable and can be tailored to fit each organization’s open source requirements.
Compliance with Standards
Anchore Enterprise provides a flexible policy engine that enables you to identify and alert on the most important vulnerabilities and security issues, and to meet internal or external compliance requirements. You can leverage out-of-the-box policy packs for common compliance standards, or create custom policies for your organization’s needs. You can define rules against the most complete set of metadata and apply policies at the most granular level with different rules for different applications, teams, and pipelines.
Anchore offers out-of-the-box policy packs to help you comply with NIST and CIS standards that are foundational for such industry-specific standards as HIPAA and PCI DSS.
Flexible Policy Enforcement
Policies are flexible and provide both notifications and gates to prevent code from moving along the development pipeline or into production based on your criteria. You can define policy rules for image and file metadata, file contents, licenses, and vulnerability scoring. And you can define unique rules for each team, for each application, and for each pipeline.
Automated Rules
Anchore Enterprise enables users to define automated rules that indicate which vulnerabilities violate their organization’s policies. For example, an organization may raise policy violations for vulnerabilities scored as Critical or High that have a fix available. These policy violations can generate alerts and notifications or be used to stop builds in the CI/CD pipeline or prevent code from moving to production. You can apply policy enforcement at any stage in the development process from the selection and usage of open source components through the build, staging, and deployment process.
Anchore Enterprise Policy Packs
Anchore Enterprise provides the following out-of-the-box policy bundles that automate checks for common compliance programs, standards, and laws including CIS, NIST, FedRAMP, CISA vulnerabilities, , and more. Policy Packs comprise bundled policies and are flexible so that you can modify them to meet your organization’s requirements.
FedRAMP
The FedRAMP Policy validates whether container images scanned by Anchore Enterprise are compliant with the FedRAMP Vulnerability Scanning Requirements and also validates them against FedRAMP controls specified in NIST 800-53 Rev 5 and NIST 800-190.
DISA Image Creation and Deployment Guide
The DISA Image Creation and Deployment Guide Policy provides security and compliance checks that align with specific NIST 800-53 and NIST 800-190 security controls and requirements as described in the Department of Defense (DoD) Container Image Creation and Deployment Guide.
DoD Iron Bank
The DoD Iron Bank Policy validates images against DoD security and compliance requirements in alignment with U.S. Air Force security standards at Platform One and Iron Bank.
CIS
The CIS Policy validates a subset of security and compliance checks against container image best practices and NIST 800-53 and NIST 800-190 security controls and requirements. To expand CIS security controls, you can customize the policies in accordance with CIS Benchmarks.
NIST
The NIST policy validates content against NIST 800-53, NIST 800-190, and NIST 800-218.
CISA KEV Vulnerabilities
The CISA Vulnerabilities Policy validates images against the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog that is maintained by CISA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
SSDF Policy Pack
The NIST 800-218, or SSDF, policy pack provides evidence against container images scanned by Anchore Enterprise. This policy pack is meant to be used during evidence collection during a NIST 800-218 compliance effort, not as a policy enforcement mechanism.