Configure SCA for Vulnerability and License Compliance

SCA Configuration Expert enables Claude to expertly configure and optimize Software Composition Analysis tools for vulnerability detection, license compliance, and dependency management across multiple platforms. It covers tool selection across popular SCA tools - Snyk, WhiteSource/Mend, Black Duck, FOSSA, and GitHub Dependency Scanning - based on language support, CI/CD integration, accuracy, and reporting, and a comprehensive coverage strategy combining manifest-file analysis, lock-file scanning for precise version detection, binary analysis of compiled dependencies, and container-image scanning of runtime dependencies. Configuration policy covers vulnerability severity thresholds that block builds on Critical or High findings, license compliance rules with approved and restricted license lists, dependency age and maintenance-status checks, and known-malicious-package detection.

Use it to configure SCA scanning end to end: multi-stage CI/CD pipelines combining vulnerability scanning (Snyk) and license compliance (FOSSA) in one workflow, language-specific policy files for Node.js/JavaScript (a .snyk policy), Java/Maven (the OWASP Dependency Check plugin with a CVSS fail threshold), and Python (a safety policy file with time-bound, justified CVE exceptions), custom vulnerability-database and NVD mirror configuration for organizations that can't rely solely on public feeds, license-compliance policy defining approved, conditional, and prohibited licenses with copyleft-notification obligations, multi-stage Dockerfile container scanning with Trivy, SBOM generation and validation with Syft and Grype, SCA metrics for vulnerability trends, license compliance, and dependency health, GitLab CI dependency scanning, and performance-optimization guidance for large repositories. It closes with an explicit maintenance expectation: regularly review and update SCA configurations to keep pace with evolving threats and compliance requirements, rather than treating a configuration as a one-time setup.

Input is a codebase, its language/dependency stack, and the CI/CD platform in use. Output is SCA configuration: CI pipeline YAML combining vulnerability and license scanning, language-specific policy files (.snyk, Maven plugin XML, safety YAML), custom vulnerability-source and NVD mirror configuration, license-policy YAML with approved/conditional/prohibited lists, a multi-stage Dockerfile with an embedded Trivy scan stage that fails the build on High/Critical findings, SBOM generation and validation commands, and a metrics configuration tracking vulnerability trends, license-policy violations, and dependency health over time.

# GitHub Actions SCA Pipeline
name: SCA Security Scan
on:
  push:
    branches: [main, develop]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  sca-scan:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      
      # Snyk vulnerability scanning
      - name: Run Snyk to check for vulnerabilities
        uses: snyk/actions/node@master
        env:
          SNYK_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.SNYK_TOKEN }}
        with:
          args: --severity-threshold=high --fail-on=upgradable
      
      # FOSSA license compliance
      - name: FOSSA Scan
        uses: fossas/fossa-action@main
        with:
          api-key: ${{ secrets.FOSSA_API_KEY }}
          container: fossa/fossa:latest

Documented tools and integrations include Snyk and GitHub Actions for vulnerability scanning, FOSSA for license compliance, the OWASP Dependency Check Maven plugin, Python's safety, Trivy for container filesystem scanning, Syft for SBOM generation in SPDX and CycloneDX formats, Grype for SBOM vulnerability validation, and GitLab CI's Gemnasium-based dependency scanning analyzer.

Application security and DevOps teams setting up or hardening dependency vulnerability scanning and license compliance across their CI/CD pipelines, who want language-specific policy configuration, SBOM generation, and metrics tracking rather than a single generic scanner with default settings.