How to Solve SBOM Sprawl: From Static Files to VEX & Automation

For a decade, the security industry’s rallying cry was “you can’t secure, what you can’t see.” We demanded to know what was in our software. But now that we have it, we are discovering a harsh truth: visibility without context is just noise. Security teams are currently drowning in a flood of disjointed manifests and static spreadsheets, creating a paradox where we have more data than ever, yet remain unable to answer the fundamental question: “Are we safe?”

This paradox, where more artifacts lead to less clarity, is what we term “SBOM Sprawl.” In our recent webinar, How to Identify and Tackle SBOM Sprawl, Alex Rybak (Anchore) and Russ Eling (OSS Consultants) dissected this growing challenge, outlining how organizations can move from simple compliance generation to intelligent orchestration.

Key takeaways from their discussion include:

The Assembly Paradox: Why modern software development mirrors the tiered supply chain of Boeing’s aerospace manufacturing
The Map vs. The Territory: Why a static SBOM is merely a roadmap, and how its value depends entirely on the tools that consume it
The 4-Day Clock: How SEC material event regulations are forcing security teams to prioritize query speed over data volume
Realistic Scope: Understanding that SBOMs are tools for managing known vulnerabilities, not magic wands for unforeseen threats

The Complexity Trap: Lessons from Aerospace

Alex Rybak, Director of Product Management at Anchore, notes a critical parallel between physical and digital supply chains.

An airplane has 10s of millions of parts, and Boeing ultimately builds the tail fin, rear fuselage and wing fairings…that’s it.

This observation highlights a fundamental reality: modern engineering is an assembly challenge, not a fabrication challenge. In the software world, dependency trees have exploded from dozens of libraries to thousands of direct and transitive components.

This complexity is fundamentally different from the monolithic applications of the past. Where traditional software was written in-house with a few trusted libraries, modern cloud-native applications are assembled from global, open source supply chains. When an organization generates SBOMs without a strategy for this complexity, they don’t gain visibility; they simply generate noise.

The Evolution of SBOM Sprawl

This isn’t the first time the industry has faced a visibility crisis. The pattern we’re seeing with SBOM regulation is remarkably similar to the early days of open source adoption. First came the explosion of usage, followed by the scramble for governance.

From Static Files to Dynamic Systems

Phase 1: The Artifact Era (Pre-2021) was characterized by sporadic, manual inventory tracking. Organizations viewed SBOMs as “nice-to-have” documentation. Security reviews were manual because release cadences were slower. Visibility was limited, but so was the volume of data.
Phase 2: The Regulatory Explosion (2021-2024) brought transformation via EO 14028 and the EU Cyber Resilience Act. Requirements exploded, leading to “SBOM Sprawl.” Every customer demanded different formats (SPDX 2.3 vs. CycloneDX), fields, and delivery mechanisms. This led to data conflicts, where the SBOM generated by engineering didn’t match the one scanned in production, complicating response to incidents like Log4j.
Phase 3: The Systemization Era (2025-Present) emerged as standards like SPDX 3.0 and ISO 5230 provided structure. Organizations realized that generation is a commodity; the value lies in ingestion, analysis, and VEX (Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange) implementation.

We are now seeing this evolution compressed into a much shorter timeframe, driven by aggressive regulatory deadlines.

Learn how to transform your SBOMs from a compliance checkbox into a strategic asset, with the controls needed to prevent sprawl and maximize value.

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The Roadmap Reality

The presence of an SBOM file does not equate to security posture. As Rybak emphasizes:

“Just having an SBOM doesn’t fix problems, it gives you a roadmap on your parts…an SBOM is only as good as the tools or people that built it.”

A static SBOM is fundamentally different from a managed software supply chain. A file on a disk ages the moment it is generated. If that roadmap is inaccurate, outdated, or disconnected from vulnerability intelligence, it becomes a liability rather than an asset.

Effective governance requires moving from “having an SBOM” to maintaining a dynamic inventory that maps assets to risks. This means integrating SBOM generation into the CI/CD pipeline, ensuring that every build produces a high-fidelity record that can be queried when the next zero-day hits.

The Financial Imperative: The 4-Day Clock

The stakes for accurate data have shifted from technical debt to legal liability. Rybak points out the specific pressure created by the SEC:

“If you look at SEC regulations, if there has been a material security event, the clock starts. You have four days to create an 8K report.”

This requirement fundamentally alters the role of the security team. Incident response is no longer just a technical triage; it is a financial disclosure workflow.

When a material event occurs, organizations cannot afford to spend days grep-ing through repositories or emailing engineering leads to ask, “Do we use this library?” The 4-day window requires instant, queryable visibility. Sprawl the enemy of speed.

Pragmatism and Scope

While SBOMs are essential, Russ Eling, Founder of OSS Consultants, offers a necessary reality check regarding their capabilities:

“SBOMs are not a cybersecurity cure-all. They’re effective at managing known vulnerabilities. They don’t necessarily extend to detecting unforeseen threats.”

An SBOM provides transparency into known components and allows organizations to map them against known vulnerabilities (CVEs). It does not inherently detect zero-day exploits or behavioral anomalies in runtime.

However, the key insight is that without an SBOM, you cannot effectively manage the knowns, which leaves zero bandwidth to hunt for the unknowns. By automating the management of known vulnerabilities through high-quality SBOMs and VEX, security teams free up human capital to focus on advanced threat hunting and architectural security.

Where Do We Go From Here?

To tame SBOM sprawl and turn compliance artifacts into security assets, organizations must adopt a phased approach.

Crawl: Standardization and Governance

Define the Standard: Select a primary internal format (e.g., SPDX 2.3 or 3.0) for storage, regardless of what customers request. Use converters for export only.
Establish Ownership: As Eling suggests, define whether the OSPO, Product Security, or Engineering owns the SBOM process.
Align with ISO 5230: Use the OpenChain standard to establish the foundational governance required to produce trusted data.

Walk: Automation and Context

Automate Generation: Integrate tools like Syft or Anchore Enterprise into the build pipeline. No manual generation.
Centralize Ingestion: Feed all SBOMs into a central management platform. A dispersed inventory is a useless inventory.
Implement VEX: Stop chasing false positives. Use VEX to communicate which vulnerabilities are not exploitable, reducing noise for downstream consumers.

The Strategic Imperative

The window of opportunity to establish these systems is open, but it won’t remain that way indefinitely. Just as organizations that ignored open source governance paid a heavy price during the Log4j crisis, those who ignore SBOM sprawl will face compounding technical debt and regulatory friction.

Organizations that transition from generating files to managing systems will gain significant agility. They will turn the 4-day SEC mandate from a crisis into a standard operating procedure, demonstrating resilience to customers and regulators alike.