Why SCA Should Be Part of Code Review Checks
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Why SCA Should Be Part of Code Review Checks

Publish Date: Jun 5
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Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is the practice of scanning applications to identify all open-source and third-party components, along with known vulnerabilities and license information. In 2025, SCA is mission-critical. The use of open-source software has exploded — Sonatype reports over 6.6 trillion OSS downloads in 2024, with 90% of modern applications containing open-source components. At the same time, software supply-chain attacks are surging. For example, new malicious packages surged 156% year-over-year in 2024 (think trojanized npm/PyPI libraries and backdoored binaries like XZ Utils or the Lumma malware). These risks have made real-time visibility into dependencies essential. In fact, government and industry bodies now stress SBOMs (Software Bill of Materials) as a key security practice. CISA, for instance, calls the SBOM “a key building block in software security and software supply chain risk management”-cisa.gov. In short, continuous SCA in 2025 is vital for spotting and fixing vulnerabilities before they enter production.

  • Open Source Explosion: Modern apps rely heavily on OSS. Sonatype’s 2024 report shows developers requested 6.6 trillion packages and up to 90% of code is open-source.
  • Rising Supply-Chain Threats: Attacks on the software supply chain are at an all-time high. Malicious OSS packages grew 156% YoY in 2024, highlighting why every dependency must be validated.
  • Demand for Transparency: SBOMs and continuous monitoring are now standard. Advanced SCA tools generate live SBOMs and alerts so teams can enforce license policies and discover hidden risks.

The Problem: Fragmented Security Tooling

Despite these needs, most organizations still juggle multiple disconnected tools. Static Application Security Testing (SAST) scanners check your own code, IaC security tools inspect Terraform/Kubernetes configurations, secret scanners hunt for leaked keys, and SCA tools analyze dependencies — but they often live in different systems. This fragmentation creates blind spots. Security teams lack a single pane of glass to see all risks, and developers must switch between consoles to triage issues. As one guide notes, “juggling multiple point tools slows you down”. The piecemeal approach leads to alert fatigue and gaps in coverage. In fact, security leaders urge a unified solution “instead of piecemeal with separate security tools”.

  • Isolated Scanners: SAST, IaC, secrets, and SCA reports live in separate dashboards with no common context.
  • Data Silos: Vulnerabilities get buried because different teams track them in different systems (often manually aggregating results).
  • Slow Remediation: Context switching across tools delays fixes. Without unified priorities, developers waste time on low-impact alerts.

The Solution: Panto’s Unified SCA Module

Panto’s new SCA module solves this by adding dependency scanning to its unified security platform. Panto already offered integrated SAST (code scanning), IaC security, and secrets detection; now SCA joins the suite. This means one workflow, one dashboard, one source of truth for application security. In practice, Panto gives you “all the AppSec capabilities you need, from SAST and SCA to secrets detection and IaC security – all on a single unified platform alongside automated AI Powered code reviews”. You can configure a scan, view findings, and remediate issues without hopping between tools. Panto correlates findings across code and dependencies, automatically prioritizes risk, and presents actionable intelligence in one place.

For security teams and developers, this unified approach pays off. Panto embraces this principle: its SCA module is built into the same clean UI and pipeline workflows as the rest of Panto’s tools. No new consoles or credentials are needed. Whether you’re a CISO tracking risk or a developer reviewing a pull request, you see every issue side-by-side, with cross-tool context and corporate policy checks at the same time.

Key Features of Panto’s SCA Module

Panto’s SCA delivers enterprise-grade dependency security and transparency, including:

  • Vulnerability Detection by Severity (Critical/High/Medium/Low): All known CVEs in your OSS libraries are identified and tagged with severity labels. Panto shows Critical, High, Medium, and Low vulnerabilities in different colours, helping teams focus on the most serious issues first.

  • Trends & Security Scoring: Every scan generates a composite Security Score based on the severity and number of reported issues. This score is weighted according to the intensity of detected vulnerabilities. The dashboard visualizes trends over time, tracking open vs. resolved issues (as shown in the image below), so you can evaluate whether your security posture is improving. Spikes in new vulnerabilities will be immediately noticeable in the daily trend graph.

  • Real-Time Dashboard & Repo-Level Insights: A unified dashboard (see below) shows metrics like overall security score, issue count, and severity breakdown per repository. You can search or filter by project/CVE/library. Heatmaps and vulnerability summaries let you compare risk across teams or codebases instantly.

  • Developer-First UI & Contextual Guidance: Panto’s interface is built for developers. Each finding links back to the exact repository and dependency version. The UI provides fix suggestions (for example, recommended patch versions) and references to public advisories. According to Checkmarx, embedding security insights into the developer’s workflow is key to fixing issues fast. Panto’s SCA results integrate with version control system and issue trackers, so developers “fix vulnerabilities fast and get back to work” without disrupting velocity.

How Teams Benefit

By unifying all tools in one platform, Panto SCA empowers teams to proactively reduce risk and ship secure code faster:

  • Proactive Risk Reduction: Teams catch vulnerable libraries early—in commit hooks or pull requests—before builds, reducing production incidents. Automatic severity labels ensure the riskiest issues (e.g. Critical CVEs) are fixed first.
  • Policy Enforcement: You can define policies on allowed licenses or minimum severity. The SCA module will flag any violations. Combined with SAST and IaC policies, this enforces your security and compliance standards automatically.
  • Seamless Dev Experience: Scanning happens in the background and integrates with your CI/CD and Git workflows. Modern security tools should “fit in seamlessly” into developers’ workflows. Panto’s SCA plugs into GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps seamlessly. Developers don’t need to switch tools – Panto raises issues where they code.
  • Collaborative Dashboarding: CISOs and VPs get an executive view (security scores, trend charts, compliance status), while engineers see detailed, actionable findings. A shared dashboard breaks down silos between Dev and Sec. For example, a security manager can track SBOM compliance across projects, while dev leads drill into which team has the most High-severity issues.
  • Continuous Improvement: The platform’s scoring and trend metrics create a feedback loop. You see the impact of remediations on your security score and can measure progress in real time. This data-driven visibility is exactly the kind of security frameworks (DORA, NIS2, etc.) demand for audit readiness.

Security Page

Panto’s SCA dashboard provides an at-a-glance view of risk. The Security Score (left) and Open Issues counter highlight current risk exposure vs. previous periods. The Security Issues by Severity chart (bottom left) breaks down all vulnerabilities into Critical/High/Medium/Low (colour-coded), while the Security Trends chart (right) plots issue counts over time. This transparent, real-time visualisation helps teams quickly understand and prioritise their most urgent dependency vulnerabilities.


SCA Reports

Drilling into details, Panto’s issues list (shown above) lets developers filter and search by repository, CVE or library. Each row shows the Vulnerability ID (e.g. CWE/CVE), affected repo and library, severity tag, and status. Here we see multiple dependencies (aiohttp, django, etc.) with Medium/High/Critical findings. The colour-coded severity badges and “Open” status flags make it easy to sort by risk. A developer can click through to a finding and see exactly where the vulnerable package is used in code.


Vulnerability Reports

The SCA Reports view gives a repo-centric summary. Each line lists a Git repository and a bar chart of vulnerability counts by severity (red=Critical, orange=High, blue=Medium, green=Low). The example shows, for instance, craft-backend has 2 Critical, 5 High, 5 Medium, and 1 Low issue.The Last Scan date indicates how fresh the data is. Teams can export these reports or SBOMs for compliance. This repository-level insight means you can quickly see which projects need the most attention and ensure no repo is a blind spot.

Call to Action: Try Panto SCA Today

Ready to unify your application security? Panto’s new SCA module is available now as part of the Panto platform. Get started by signing up for a free trial or visiting the Panto product page to learn more. Panto SCA integrates seamlessly into your existing CI/CD pipeline and source control (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure Devops.), so you can automate OSS scanning on every commit.

For detailed guidance, see Panto’s documentation or platform overview for best practices on integrating SCA with SAST and IaC security. Empower your developers and SecOps teams with the visibility and tools they need to enforce policy and ship secure code – without slowing down delivery.


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