Understanding SBOM Generation Across the Software Lifecycle

A practical guide to generating Software Bills of Materials at every stage from source code to runtime for complete supply chain visibility.

Your software inventory is only as accurate as the stage at which you generate it.

A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is a comprehensive inventory of all components, libraries, and dependencies that make up a software application. Think of it as a detailed ingredient list just as a food label tells you exactly what goes into a product, an SBOM tells you exactly what goes into your software.

But here's what many teams overlook: an SBOM isn't a one-time snapshot. It can and should be generated at multiple stages of the software development and deployment lifecycle. Each stage provides distinct insights into the software supply chain, helping teams strengthen security, maintain compliance, and build operational confidence.

Why does this matter? According to industry research, modern applications can contain hundreds of open-source dependencies, many of which carry known vulnerabilities. SBOMs give you the visibility to find and manage these risks before they reach production.

Let's walk through the four key stages where SBOMs can be generated, what each stage reveals, and why a layered approach is the gold standard for enterprise environments.

1. Source-Code Stage

The source-code stage is where SBOM generation begins. At this point, SBOMs are produced by analysing application dependencies directly from source repositories and package manifest files such as package.json, pom.xml, requirements.txt, or go.mod.

This is the earliest opportunity to gain visibility into what your application depends on. By examining declared dependencies at the code level, teams can identify risks long before the software is built or deployed.

Key Capabilities & Benefits

• Identifies open-source libraries, frameworks, and direct dependencies referenced by developers
• Provides early visibility into vulnerable or non-compliant components
• Enables "shift-left" security practices within the development lifecycle
• Helps developers remediate risks before build and deployment stages
• Supports dependency governance and license compliance validation

2. Build-Time Stage

While source code SBOMs tell you what developers declared, build-time SBOMs tell you what actually got packaged. During the build process, compilers, linkers, and package managers resolve dependency trees, pull in transitive dependencies, and produce the final compiled artifacts. An SBOM generated here captures all of this.

Build-time SBOMs are inherently more accurate than source-only analysis because they reflect the real-world output of the build system, including dependencies that may not appear in manifest files.

Key Capabilities & Benefits

• More accurate than source only dependency analysis
• Validates what is actually packaged into the application build
• Captures transitive dependencies and generated artifacts
• Enables signed attestations, provenance validation, and software supply chain integrity
• Integrates directly into CI/CD pipelines for automated SBOM generation

3. Container-Image Stage

In cloud-native environments, applications rarely ship as standalone binaries. They are packaged into container images layered file systems that include the application, its dependencies, OS packages, and configuration. An SBOM generated at the container-image stage analyses this final packaged unit before it is deployed.

This stage is critical because container images often inherit components from base images (such as ubuntu:22.04 or alpine:3.18) that the application team may not have explicitly chosen. Vulnerabilities hiding in these layers can easily go unnoticed without a container-level SBOM.

Key Capabilities & Benefits

• Provides visibility into deployable artifacts and runtime packages
• Detects hidden or inherited vulnerabilities from base images
• Identifies OS packages, embedded libraries, and container-layer dependencies
• Critical for Kubernetes, OpenShift, and cloud-native security environments
• Supports container registry scanning and deployment validation workflows

4. Runtime SBOM

The runtime SBOM is the final and arguably the most revealing layer of visibility. Unlike the previous stages, which analyse static artifacts, a runtime SBOM examines what is actually executing in production: the running processes, loaded libraries, active binaries, and live network connections.

Why does this matter? Because production environments can drift. Configuration changes, hotfixes, manual deployments, and dynamically loaded modules can introduce components that no earlier SBOM would have captured. A runtime SBOM provides the ground truth.

Key Capabilities & Benefits

• Detects drift between declared SBOMs and actual runtime execution
• Identifies undeclared, dynamically loaded, or unauthorised components
• Provides ground-truth visibility into production environments
• Validates what is genuinely executing across hosts, containers, and applications
• Essential for runtime security, incident response, and forensic investigations
• Supports continuous compliance and operational risk monitoring

Recommended Enterprise Approach

For enterprise and regulated environments particularly in sectors like Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) generating a single SBOM at one stage is not enough. The recommended practice is to generate and correlate SBOMs across all four stages to achieve end-to-end supply chain visibility.

Source-Code → Build-Time → Container-Image → Runtime

This multi-layered approach ensures comprehensive software supply chain visibility and validates that the SBOM accurately reflects what is ultimately deployed and running in production. It closes the gap between what developers intended, what the build system produced, what was packaged for deployment, and what is genuinely executing in your environment.

About IntelliXBOM: IntelliXBOM is a Software Bill of Materials intelligence platform built for engineering, security, and compliance teams who need more than a list. It generates accurate, standards-compliant SBOMs at every stage of the software development lifecycle and enriches them with license context, vulnerability data, and policy intelligence. Learn more at intellixbom.com.

Tags: SBOM · DevSecOps · Compliance · Container Security · Runtime Security · CI/CD · CycloneDX · SPDX · BFSI