Why SBOMs Are Critical to Your IoT Security Strategy

On September 3, 2025, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published a guide titled “A Shared Vision of Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) for Cybersecurity.” CISA, along with the US National Security Agency (NSA) and sixteen international security agencies, outlined how SBOMs play an important role in managing software supply chain security. While SBOMs’ value is nearly universally acknowledged, implementations remain disaggregated and divergent. 

For organizations seeking to implement Internet of Things (IoT) security, SBOMs provide software transparency with insight into open-source and proprietary software components, modules, and libraries embedded in firmware and software. Despite the value that SBOMs offer, a lack of a standardized format makes operationalizing them a challenge. Moreover, organizations benefit the most when they map this machine-readable data to other datasets, like vulnerability databases, security advisories, or other supply chain risk information, like end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-support (EOS) data. 

As organizations increasingly leverage SBOMs to manage IoT security, they should have a way to parse the information so they can gain holistic visibility across their entire environment. 

What Information Does an SBOM Contain?

An SBOM is a nested inventory, often compared to a list of ingredients, that identifies all software components and third-party dependencies. A comprehensive SBOM provides structured data that is both machine-readable and human-readable, typically including the following key fields:

• Component Name: The software component’s official name.
• Version String: The specific version of the component being used.
• Supplier Name: The software component’s creator or vendor.
• License Information: The licenses governing each component’s use.
• Dependency Relationship: A clear map showing relationships between the components within the software’s architecture.
• Unique Identifiers: Standardized identifiers like CPE, PURL, and SPDX ID that allow for easy cross-referencing with vulnerability databases.

How Do SBOMs Enable IoT Security Strategies?

While using open-source and commercial libraries is a best practice in software development, a vulnerability in a single, widely used software component can create security issues across all applications and devices that incorporate it. 

Enhanced Visibility and Comprehensive Asset Inventory Management

Many organizations lack a complete and accurate IoT inventory, failing to account for the software that runs on them. SBOMs provide the granular detail necessary for a robust asset inventory. By collecting and managing SBOMs for all connected devices, security teams can build a comprehensive database of every software component in their environment, creating a single source of truth for risk assessment and management.

Proactive Vulnerability Management and Dynamic Risk Assessment

SBOMs transform vulnerability management from a reactive to a proactive discipline. With a centralized SBOM repository, security teams can run a simple query to get an immediate list of every vulnerable IoT device. This enables:

• Rapid patching by prioritizing vulnerabilities in critical assets. 
• Isolating affected devices to mitigate lateral movement risk. 
• Targeted security measures, such as placing devices with similar risk profiles on the same network.

Accelerating Incident Response and Digital Forensics

By understanding a compromised device’s software stack, security teams accelerate root cause analysis by:

• Rapidly identifying the potential attack vectors. 
• Understanding how attackers might have moved laterally. 
• Pinpointing the exploited software component vulnerability. 

Bolstering Compliance and Meeting Regulatory Requirements

Legislative bodies and regulatory agencies recognize the importance of managing supply chain security, evidenced by recent compliance mandates. Producing SBOMs is rapidly becoming a key security requirement. SBOMs serve as auditable proof that an organization has visibility into its software supply chain and is actively managing its security risks.

Securing the Entire IoT Device Lifecycle

An SBOM’s value extends across an IoT device’s entire lifecycle. As organizations work to reduce risk, they can leverage SBOMs across the following:

• Procurement: Demanding SBOMs from vendors to assess a device’s security, purchasing, and deploying it.
• Deployment: Establishing a baseline security posture and configuring appropriate network security controls.
• Operation: Using the living document for continuous vulnerability monitoring and threat detection.
• Decommissioning: Wiping all sensitive data and software properly before retiring the device.

Best Practices for Incorporating SBOMs into IoT Security and Risk Management

While SBOMs can be human-readable, manually ingesting the information across a myriad of devices and manufacturers becomes overwhelming. To implement SBOMs as a meaningful IoT security enabler, organizations need to leverage solutions that allow them to take data-driven actions. 

Collect Device Data

IoT devices can easily fall offline. To mitigate these risks, organizations need a solution built for IoT devices that uses passive network traffic monitoring. Further, any solution should correlate this information with the SBOM data. When looking for a solution, organizations should consider whether the platform:

• Ingests SBOMs across vendors and maps them to devices in your inventory.
• Uses safe discovery methods, such as passive monitoring and API-based identification.
• Enriches device records with details like OS, firmware, vendor, and known vulnerabilities.

Evaluate and Prioritize Vulnerabilities Based on Risk

Vulnerability and patch management teams need to know how the organization’s security architecture impacts attackers’ ability to exploit a vulnerability so they can focus remediation on the devices that pose the greatest risk. To gain these insights, organizations should look for a solution that can:

• Correlate SBOM data with CVEs, exploit availability, and patch status.
• Apply frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK to understand real-world attack paths.
• Use modeling or simulation tools to quantify the potential impact of different risks.

Mitigate Risk Using Actionable, Efficient Workflows

Vulnerability remediation may not always mean applying the security update. Organizations need solutions that provide the lowest effort risk mitigation activity that provides the most risk reward. When evaluating solutions, organizations should consider whether a platform enables them to:

• Act on recommended remediations such as patching, hardening, or segmentation.
  Automate or semi-automate routine tasks like firmware updates and password changes.
• Isolate or segment high-risk devices to reduce the potential blast radius.

Perform Pre-Purchase Risk Analyses

As part of engaging in the appropriate due diligence, organizations should understand how a device will impact their risk posture. Organizations should engage in risk modeling before procuring a device so that they can make a security-focused, data-driven decision. When looking to reduce risk, organizations should ensure that their IoT security platform enables them to:

• Simulate how different device configurations will impact overall risk posture.
• Compare devices not only on features and cost, but also on security performance and expected remediation effort.
• Factor in “hidden costs” like patching, segmentation, or ongoing configuration hardening when evaluating the total cost of ownership.
• Choose devices with a history of timely patches, secure configurations, and transparent security practices.

Integrate with Existing Security Tools & Workflows

While SBOMs provide vulnerability data, they are more powerful when the security team integrates the information into its larger threat detection and incident response capabilities. To operationalize this data, an IoT security solution should:

• Feed insights into SIEM, vulnerability management, and asset management systems.
• Automate workflows such as ticket creation and dashboard updates.
• Provide role-based views for stakeholders like procurement, operations, and compliance.

Implement and Enforce Governance and Compliance Controls

Using SBOMs as part of security risk management is increasingly critical for organizations in highly-regulated industries, like healthcare, manufacturing, and energy. To leverage SBOM data for compliance, organizations should ensure that any solution helps them:

• Define procurement standards that include SBOM transparency requirements.
• Generate compliance reports that tie device inventory and risk to frameworks.
• Track configuration and firmware changes for audit and accountability purposes.

Asimily: Using SBOMs to Strengthen Security

As IoT security increasingly leverages SBOMs, organizations need solutions that connect the visibility into components and vulnerabilities with the context of an organization’s environment. Asimily’s platform enables organizations to operationalize SBOMs by ingesting and normalizing the data, enabling vulnerability management teams to prioritize risk automatically by correlating component data with known vulnerabilities. Since Asimily can generate device risk profiles before organizations purchase IoT devices, our platform enables organizations to streamline procurement while improving their overall IoT security posture.