As software development becomes faster and more dependent on open source, managing exposure through third party risk management software is now a priority. However, protecting your codebase means going beyond basic audits. A modern third party risk management platform must go deep into your pipelines, your dependencies, and your runtime assets. Therefore, teams are replacing outdated third party vendor risk management software with tools that work at developer speed. In this context, third party & supplier risk management software
Introduction: Third Party Risk Is No Longer Just About Vendors
Most vendor risk tools focus on procurement, not pipelines. They tell you who sold the software, not what actually runs inside your app. Meanwhile, developers keep importing, reusing, and deploying third-party components every day.
You pull in dependencies from public registries, rely on packages with missing maintainers, and deploy Docker images that no one has ever scanned. Legal and compliance teams don’t review these third parties. Developers merge them straight into production.
So, you need a new strategy. To manage third-party risk in DevOps, you have to scan real code, trace how components behave, and enforce trust policies across your stack. The risk lives in your repo, not in a vendor contract.
2. Why Third Party Vendor Risk Management Software Can’t See What’s in Your Code
Traditionally, third party risk meant vendor risk. You’d send a questionnaire, check certifications, maybe do a quick audit, and move on. However, software doesn’t work that way anymore.
Today, your codebase pulls in packages from npm, PyPI, Maven, Docker Hub, and more. These are not vendors you contract, they are contributors you don’t know. Some of them maintain critical dependencies, others haven’t updated their code in years. And occasionally, someone uploads malware disguised as a useful module.
As a result, these “invisible suppliers” represent a growing attack surface. They can introduce:
- Critical vulnerabilities
- Incompatible or risky licenses (GPL, AGPL, SSPL…)
- Abandoned packages with no future updates
- Trojanized dependencies or obfuscated payloads
Accordingly, relying only on traditional third party vendor risk management software won’t protect you from threats already sitting inside your pipeline. If your third party risk strategy doesn’t include component-level scanning, you’re leaving a blind spot wide open.
Moreover, compliance frameworks like DORA and NIS2 now expect you to manage third party code the same way you manage third party services. That includes license governance, software provenance, and active vulnerability mitigation.
What Third Party Risk Management Platform Capabilities Actually Matter
If your third party risk management tool only tracks vendors, it’s missing the real problem. Developers now import more unvetted code than ever, from packages, containers, scripts, and CI/CD plugins. Therefore, the software you ship often contains hundreds of third-party elements you didn’t build, review, or verify.
To manage this risk properly, modern third party risk management software must meet a new standard and, It needs to work at the level where the actual risks live: in your codebase and pipelines.
Specifically, here’s what the right solution should deliver:
SBOMs and Visibility in a Third Party Risk Management Platform
You can’t secure what you can’t see. Your platform must identify all third-party components, including transitive dependencies and system-level packages. A complete and continuously updated Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is no longer optional, it’s required by frameworks like DORA, NIS2, and Executive Order 14028.
License Risk Detection and Governance
License violations can trigger lawsuits or force you to open-source your entire stack. Your tools must detect high-risk licenses (like AGPL or SSPL), enforce custom policies, and catch unknown or conflicting license types before they reach production.
Maintenance and Obsolescence Alerts
Outdated libraries are often vulnerable, unpatched, and unmaintained. Your platform must alert you when a component hasn’t been updated in years, or when its maintainer has disappeared. This helps prevent technical debt from turning into security debt.
Real-Time Malware and Supply Chain Threat Detection
Malicious packages don’t wait for audit reviews. They are designed to blend in and activate quietly. That’s why your risk management platform must include real-time scanning for trojans, backdoors, typosquatting, and suspicious scripts, before any of it hits your environment.
Built-In Reachability and Prioritization
Flooding developers with 500 unexploitable vulnerabilities doesn’t improve security. Instead, it creates noise, delays action, and wastes time. Therefore, a useful platform must go further. It should show what’s actually reachable and exploitable in your app. Additionally, it must prioritize issues based on business impact and reduce alert fatigue without hiding real risks.
How Xygeni Acts as Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software for Developers
Traditional vendor tools don’t protect your software from real-world threats. Instead, you need a third party risk management platform that looks inside your code, scans your dependencies, and blocks what’s dangerous, before it gets merged or deployed.
Here’s how Xygeni delivers real protection through a developer-first approach:
4.1 Build SBOMs with Full Dependency Visibility
Every solid third party risk management software must provide a real-time, complete inventory of your dependencies. Xygeni automatically generates SBOMs in both SPDX and CycloneDX formats.
- You get full visibility into direct, transitive, and undeclared dependencies
- SBOMs update with every build or scan, ensuring continuous compliance
- Export them or embed them into attestations to prove trust in your supply chain
As a result, you eliminate blind spots and reduce audit overhead.
4.2 Detect Maintenance Risks in Third Party & Supplier Risk Management Software
Although many tools list vulnerabilities, few show you which components are outdated or no longer maintained. Xygeni does.
It flags:
- Libraries without updates in over a year
- Projects with no active maintainers
- Unpatched components with known risks
These are silent risks. Without visibility, they persist. However, Xygeni highlights them early so your team can act before they become liabilities.
4.3 Enforce License Compliance Automatically
One critical part of any third party & supplier risk management software is license risk visibility.
Xygeni analyzes each package’s license and shows alerts when:
- A component includes Copyleft or AGPL-type licenses
- You have conflicting or unknown terms
- A dependency violates your internal OSS policy
You’ll see alerts marked with a 🚫 icon. Clicking reveals the exact license, impact level, and suggested action. That way, you prevent license violations before they reach legal.
4.4 Detect and Block Malware in Real Time
Standard third party vendor risk management software misses this completely: malware inside your dependencies.
Xygeni scans for known malware using threat intel from GitHub, OSV, and the NVD. Additionally, it runs behavioral scans to catch zero-day and polymorphic malware before it spreads.
Malicious packages get flagged with a ☣️ icon. So, you can review full metadata, see origin, and quarantine the component instantly. This level of protection is essential for modern pipelines.
4.5 Prioritize What Actually Affects Your Application
Not all vulnerabilities are equal. With traditional tools, you waste time fixing CVEs that don’t affect your code.
Xygeni’s third party risk management platform prioritizes real risks using:
- Reachability Analysis: checks if vulnerable code is actually used
- EPSS Scoring: predicts the likelihood of real-world exploitation
This combination filters noise and ensures your team fixes what truly matters—fast.
4.6 Remediate Risks Automatically from Your PRs
Most third party risk management software leaves remediation up to you. But Xygeni goes further.
When it detects an issue, it helps you fix it automatically:
- AutoFix suggests the best secure version
- It opens a pull request with context and changelog
- You can apply multiple remediations in bulk
This saves hours of manual work and removes the guesswork from patching.
Together, these capabilities turn Xygeni into a true third party & supplier risk management software
Third Party Vendor Risk Management Software vs. Code-Level Controls
| Feature / Risk Area | Legacy Vendor Risk Software | Xygeni Third Party Risk Management Platform |
|---|---|---|
| Tracks legal and procurement data | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes (via SBOM + license metadata) |
| Analyzes code dependencies | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (real-time SCA with SBOM generation) |
| Detects abandoned or unmaintained packages | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (via metadata + maintenance analysis) |
| Identifies risky or Copyleft licenses | ⚠️ Partial (manual review) | ✅ Yes (automated license risk detection) |
| Blocks known and unknown malware | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (via Early Warning + behavior scanning) |
| Prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (Reachability + EPSS scoring) |
| Auto-generates remediation pull requests | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (AutoFix + bulk PRs) |
| Integrates into CI/CD pipelines | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (pre-merge, pre-deploy, attestation gates) |
| Meets DORA / NIS2 third-party requirements | ⚠️ Limited | ✅ Yes (code, license, and provenance coverage) |
5. Using Third Party Risk Management Software to Stay Compliant with DORA and NIS2
Security isn’t just about protecting your pipelines, it’s also about proving that you’re doing it. As new regulations raise the bar, companies need a third party risk management platform that helps meet compliance without blocking delivery.
Let’s break down how Xygeni makes this possible.
DORA and NIS2: From Third Party Vendors to Open Source
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the NIS2 Directive both push for stricter third-party oversight. However, they don’t stop at vendors. These laws explicitly include the software components you use in your stack, especially open source.
Accordingly, your third party risk management software must:
- Monitor OSS components in real time
- Detect known and unknown threats (including malware)
- Enforce license compliance
- Track provenance and software integrity
- Maintain an up-to-date SBOM per release
Xygeni does all of this out of the box, integrating it into your existing CI/CD and version control tools. No extra steps.
Executive Order 14028 and SBOM Requirements
In the US, EO 14028 makes SBOMs a legal requirement for federal software providers. But even outside government, vendors must now show full transparency over what’s in their builds.
Xygeni helps you stay ahead:
- It auto-generates SBOMs for every build in SPDX or CycloneDX
- It signs and stores these SBOMs alongside build artifacts
- It includes license and vulnerability metadata
- It supports both public registry and private artifact storage
With this level of traceability, you can pass audits, respond to customer inquiries, and maintain complete software transparency at scale.
Continuous Attestation and Policy Enforcement
Xygeni isn’t just a scanner. It enforces trust automatically using:
- Signed in-toto attestations
- Real-time policy gates based on scan results
- Centralized dashboards for audit and compliance review
This helps your team demonstrate that all third-party risks, whether vendor-based or code-based, are identified, verified, and controlled.
Developer-First Compliance
Unlike legacy third party vendor risk management software, Xygeni doesn’t require new workflows. Developers keep working as usual while the platform handles licensing, malware, and SBOM validation behind the scenes.
This balance between automation and visibility ensures that:
- Developers don’t slow down
- Security teams stay in control
- Auditors get full traceability
And ultimately, your organization stays compliant without friction.
6. Why Third Party Risk Management Platform Coverage Must Start with Code
Third party risk is no longer just a procurement problem. Instead, it’s a software problem that developers face every day. Your exposure comes from untrusted dependencies, outdated libraries, malicious packages, and license violations hidden deep in your stack.
Although many teams still rely on traditional tools, legacy third party vendor risk management software was never designed to handle this level of complexity. It focuses on vendors, not code. As a result, it leaves blind spots that attackers can exploit. In modern DevOps, you need more than checklists. You need a third party risk management platform that actually scans what you build and secures what you ship.
That’s exactly what Xygeni delivers. It goes beyond surface-level analysis and gives your team real protection. From malware detection and SBOM automation to license tracking and reachability-based prioritization, it helps you:
- Control what enters your software supply chain before it reaches production
- Comply with frameworks like DORA, NIS2, and EO 14028 effortlessly
- Remediate issues automatically with pull request fixes in context
- Prove trust across every build, repo, and pipeline consistently
