OWASP Dependency Check is a well known open-source tool which can track dependencies in your project and identify components with known published vulnerabilities. The tool supports multiple languages and platforms such as Java, .NET, Ruby and Python. One of the simplest ways how you can use Dependency Check in your project is just to run it manually. This way has at least one disadvantage: you have to make sure that you run the tool regularly. Fortunately there is a couple of ways how you can automate this process.
But unfortunately sometimes it’s not enough just to automate something. If the tool reports a vulnerability it means someone has to fix it. At least it would be good to evaluate the problem. In a perfect world, all issues are addressed immediately, but in the real world, development teams always have no time for that. Besides integrating Dependency Check to CI/CD, there may be a couple of other steps to get vulnerable dependencies updated.
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