Building Your CBOM for Stronger Digital Security

A Cryptography Bill of Materials (CBOM) is an essential tool for clearly understanding your digital security, especially with powerful new computing capabilities on the horizon. A key question for organizations to ask is: how did you actually create this invaluable CBOM? 

While building a CBOM is a significant undertaking, rest assured that established guidelines and smart, automated tools are making this process more manageable and efficient than ever before.

Step 1: Set Your Objectives and Leverage What You Already Have

Before diving deep, it’s wise to define the scope of your CBOM project. Are you aiming to document every single cryptographic asset across your entire enterprise? Or, perhaps as a first step, are you focusing on your most critical systems and the areas most susceptible to future security challenges? 

Crucially, don’t start from scratch! Maximize the value of your existing resources: 

• Your Current Asset Lists: Begin by reviewing any existing IT asset management systems or configuration databases. These provide a foundational list of your systems and applications. 
• Your Software Component Lists: If you already maintain inventories of your software components (often called SBOMs – Software Bill of Materials), you’re in a strong position! A CBOM is specifically designed to build upon an SBOM, adding specialized cryptographic details. If you don’t have SBOMs yet, consider developing them concurrently; they provide a solid starting point for your CBOM. 

Step 2: Finding All the Cryptographic Elements

This is often the most resource-intensive, yet absolutely critical, part of the process. It involves systematically discovering every encryption algorithm, key, certificate, and secure communication protocol used across all your systems, whether it’s embedded in your applications, residing on hardware, part of device firmware, or configured within your network settings. Cryptography can be deeply embedded within digital systems, making it challenging to uncover without the right approach. 

Given the scale and complexity of most IT environments, attempting this manually with spreadsheets is simply impractical and highly prone to errors. This is where smart, automated tools become indispensable: 

• Code and Binary Scanners: These tools “read” your software code or compiled programs to identify how cryptography is invoked and utilized. While general code analysis tools can provide some hints, specialized cryptographic discovery tools offer much more in-depth insights. For instance, tools exist that can dig into software packages (like containers) and directories to unearth these crypto pieces. 
• Observing Live Systems: For certain cryptographic uses, especially those configured at runtime or involving dynamic negotiations, like secure website connections, it’s beneficial to observe your systems in action. These tools monitor network traffic or system behavior to capture live cryptographic details. 
• Integrate into Your Daily Workflows: To ensure your CBOM remains continuously accurate, it’s best to weave its creation directly into your software development and deployment processes. Automated actions can generate an updated CBOM every time your team makes a code change, ensuring your inventory is perpetually current. 
• Plugins for Existing Tools: If your team uses popular code quality platforms, specialized plugins can directly detect cryptographic assets in your source code and produce a CBOM as part of your regular quality checks. 

Step 3: What Goes Into Your CBOM?

A robust CBOM expands upon standard software component data by adding crucial cryptographic attributes. The key categories of information to capture include: 

1. Core Software Information: This includes all the standard details from your basic software component list, such as library names, dependencies, versions, and suppliers.
2. The “Crypto-Asset” Designation: A specific type for any cryptographic entity found.
3. Deep Cryptographic Properties: This is where the magic happens, with attributes categorized by the type of asset:
   • Algorithms: Beyond just the name (e.g., AES), it includes its primitive (what kind of mathematical operation it performs), its variant (e.g., AES-128-GCM), the platform it’s implemented on (e.g., x86_64), any certification level it holds (e.g., fips140-3-11), its mode of operation (e.g., cbc), padding scheme (e.g., pkcs7 padding), and specific crypto functions used (e.g., keygen).
   • Certificates: Comprehensive details like the certificate’s subject and issuer names, its validity dates, the algorithm used within the certificate, its format (e.g., X.509), and any special extensions.
   • Related Cryptographic Material: Information about items like private keys or public keys, their size (in bits), format (e.g., PEM), and whether they are secured.
   • Protocols: For communication rules, it specifies details like the TLS cipher suites your systems support.
4. Security Strength Ratings
   • Classical Security Level: How strong the crypto asset is against today’s known attack methods.
   • NIST Quantum Security Level: A crucial measure, ranging from 0 to 6, indicating how well it aligns with established security categories against powerful new computing threats.
5. Traceability: Your CBOM also tracks which tool (the “scanner”) found the crypto asset and exactly where it was detected (file path, line numbers, etc.), which is incredibly helpful for verification and remediation.
6. Relationship Clarity: A key feature is differentiating between when a software component simply has a crypto algorithm available (e.g., a library) versus when it’s actively using that algorithm in practice. This distinction is vital for understanding real-world risk.

Step 4: Turning Information to Action

Once your CBOM is built and populated, you’re in a powerful position to take strategic steps toward stronger digital security: 

1. Spot Your Vulnerabilities: Using the detailed information in your CBOM, especially the security ratings, you can systematically identify which parts of your system might be most susceptible to future security challenges. This helps you focus your efforts where they’re most needed. Be aware that upgrading cryptography in older, legacy systems can sometimes be complex! 
2. Engage with Your Vendors: Your CBOM provides clear data for informed conversations with your software and hardware providers. Ask them directly about their plans for upgrading to more resilient cryptographic solutions. This intelligence is key to deciding if you need to switch products or partners to meet your own security timelines. 
3. Plan Your Resources: Having a detailed CBOM helps you accurately estimate the financial investment required to upgrade your cryptographic systems across your organization, including potential software licenses, hardware refreshes, and development efforts. 
4. Prioritize Smartly: With a clear picture of your cryptographic environment, you can strategically decide which systems require the most urgent crypto upgrades (e.g., those handling your most sensitive data or critical operations) versus those that can be addressed later. 

It’s crucial to remember that your CBOM isn’t a one-time project, it’s a living document that needs continuous attention. As your software and systems change, new applications are added, older ones are retired, and updates are installed, your CBOM must be refreshed accordingly. Automated tools are incredibly valuable here, ensuring your cryptographic environment remains accurate, strong, and ready for whatever the digital world brings next. 

By meticulously building and maintaining your CBOM, your organization gains the clarity and foresight necessary to manage cryptographic challenges proactively and secure your valuable digital assets for years to come. 

How Encryption Consulting can Help?

We are a globally recognized leader in applied cryptography, offering PQC Advisory Services designed to help organizations like yours gain full visibility and control over their cryptographic environment. 

Our services are built on a structured, end-to-end approach: 

• PQC Assessment: We perform cryptographic discovery and inventory to locate all your keys, certificates, algorithms, and dependencies. This delivers a clear Quantum Threat Assessment and a Quantum Readiness Gap Analysis that highlights your vulnerabilities and urgent priorities. 
• PQC Strategy & Roadmap: Based on your inventory data, we develop a custom, phased migration strategy aligned with NIST standards, incorporating a Cryptographic Agility Framework to prepare you for future changes. 
• Vendor Evaluation and PoC: We help you identify, evaluate, and validate PQC and cryptographic management solutions through rigorous proof-of-concepts to ensure they fit your critical systems. 
• Implementation & Integration: We seamlessly integrate PQC-ready algorithms and hybrid cryptographic models into your PKI and security ecosystem for a secure, disruption-free transition. 

With our deep expertise and proven framework, you can build, assess, and optimize your cryptographic infrastructure, ensuring both immediate resilience and long-term readiness against quantum threats.

Conclusion

Building and maintaining a CBOM is a powerful step toward strengthening your organization’s security posture. It equips you with the clarity to spot vulnerabilities, engage confidently with vendors, prioritize upgrades, and prepare for the post-quantum era. But creating a CBOM is only part of the journey, keeping it current and integrating it into your long-term cryptographic strategy is where true resilience lies. With Encryption Consulting’s expertise in cryptographic assessment, PQC strategy, and implementation, you can ensure your CBOM becomes a living, actionable tool that continuously protects your digital assets and prepares you for the challenges ahead.