Understanding the Challenges of Securing the Software Supply Chain

Why Do Organisations Struggle with Software Supply Chain Security?

As digital transformation accelerates, modern software development increasingly relies on open source components and cloud-native technologies. But this reliance also opens the door to rising risks in the software supply chain — an area where many organisations face significant challenges.

Events like the SolarWinds compromise and Log4j vulnerabilities have shown how threats can slip through even well-established practices. These incidents highlight a key question: why do organisations still struggle to secure their software supply chain?

The Complexity of Modern Software

Today’s software is not built from scratch. It’s assembled from hundreds or thousands of dependencies, libraries and third-party packages. While this accelerates delivery, it also increases vulnerability. Many development teams lack full visibility into all their software components, making it difficult to detect and mitigate potential risks at every stage of the development lifecycle.

Lack of a Unified Toolchain

Security is often siloed from development and operations — a model that doesn’t work in fast-paced CI/CD environments. Using multiple tools for scanning and compliance leads to gaps between detection and response. This fragmented toolchain hinders collaboration and slows down incident resolution.

Insufficient Automation

Security controls must keep pace with rapid deployment cycles. However, without automated security testing and monitoring integrated directly into the CI/CD pipeline, vulnerabilities can persist undetected and be deployed into production. Manual reviews are too slow and reactive for today’s agile software teams.

Compliance Pressures and Talent Gap

Regulatory compliance requirements and internal governance add further challenges. Meeting frameworks such as NIST, SLSA or ISO often demands rigorous tracking, validation and audit trails. Unfortunately, many businesses also lack the in-house expertise to build an effective DevSecOps strategy, hampering both compliance and risk mitigation.

A Better Approach: Embedded DevSecOps

To address these challenges, organisations must adopt a shift-left mindset and embed security throughout the development pipeline. Platform-based solutions like GitLab bring development, security and operations together into a single application — offering end-to-end visibility and control over the supply chain.

By unifying tools and automating scans for code quality, container vulnerabilities, secrets detection and licence compliance, GitLab enables teams to act faster and reduce risk without compromising productivity.

Taking control of your software supply chain requires more than just add-on scanners or firewalls. It demands a cultural and organisational shift towards integrated, automated, and continuous security.

Need help securing your software supply chain? IDEA GitLab Solutions is a trusted GitLab Select Partner offering consulting, training and licensing in the UK, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, and remotely in Israel, South Africa and Paraguay. Let our experts guide your DevSecOps journey.

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