The need for software transparency

Software transparency provides development teams with a solid understanding of the components within their products. 

As of the time of writing, there are efforts to enhance the transparency of software through efforts such as the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), led by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). An argument can be made that having an IoT product SBOM is a side-effect of having good development processes in place. 

Transparency also provides a valuable tool within the software supply chain. Providing users with an understanding of the third-party libraries used within a product can provide those users with important security knowledge.

For example, the OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability discovered in 2014 resulted in a worldwide, catastrophic security hole exposing the majority...