The Key to Unifying SBOM, Vulnerability, & Compliance Workflows
Discover how Finite State’s platform delivers a single risk picture across your software supply chain & eliminates engineering, security & compliance silos
Mike Hatherall
Security’s Silo Problem: Why We’re All Working Harder Than We Should Be
After years spent working with security, engineering, and compliance teams across different industries, there’s one truth that keeps rearing its head: we're all working towards the same goals, but speaking entirely different languages. And it’s slowing everything down.
Engineering wants to ship. Security wants to reduce risk. Legal and compliance want a documented, traceable paper trail. All valid priorities, but the tools we use, the data we collect, and even the terms we use to describe risk are often completely disconnected.
That’s where the problems begin.
The Real Risk of Disconnected Tools
When teams operate in siloes, the result is version drift, duplicated effort, and endless debates over which data set is the “right one.” Security teams often flag vulnerabilities that engineering has already resolved. Compliance may be reviewing data from last quarter, while legal departments are stuck piecing together evidence from fragmented systems. Everyone is doing their best, but no one is truly aligned, which means decision-making slows, risk visibility becomes distorted, and compliance becomes a mad dash rather than a repeatable process.
One Platform, One Risk Picture
In a perfect world, every team would work from the same set of facts. That doesn’t mean forcing everyone to use the same dashboard; instead, it involves unifying the data underneath, so each team sees what they need, filtered for their role, but all based on the same foundation.
And that’s exactly what Finite State offers. With one unified platform, teams can:
- Generate and ingest SBOMs for all types of software
- Correlate vulnerabilities using over 200 threat sources
- Enforce policy aligned with your internal governance models
- Support VEX so you can prioritise what's actually exploitable
- Provide compliance-ready reporting as a native capability
The result is a unified platform where product, component, vulnerability, and compliance data all come together—clean, traceable, and ready for action.
Why It Matters
Bringing everything together on one platform doesn’t just make life easier; it transforms how your teams operate. Engineers can focus on actionable tickets, security teams gain the visibility they need, and legal teams get instant access to the evidence required to satisfy auditors and regulators. Everything is traceable, every decision documented, and you gain confidence that your compliance efforts are meeting regulatory standards like the EU CRA, FDA 524B, and Executive Order 14028.
Here’s what unified workflows deliver:
- Faster audit prep
- Significantly reduced vulnerability noise
- Clearer role-based outputs for every team
- Real-time traceability of every decision made
- Greater assurance across regulatory frameworks
From Chaos to Clarity: A Real-World Example
One of our customers—a global manufacturer—came to us burdened with five different SBOM generators, multiple scanners, and compliance teams manually pulling together evidence from scattered tools. The environment was complex, slow, and hard to scale.
We helped them consolidate onto one unified platform. The results were immediate. Their compliance preparation time dropped from weeks to just days. Vulnerability noise was cut by more than 90 percent. Release cycles became more predictable, and most importantly, teams across engineering, security, and compliance finally worked from a shared source of truth.
It wasn’t about replacing everything they used. It was about aligning everyone around the same data and creating a unified risk picture that each team could act on with confidence.
Closing Thoughts: Security Starts with Shared Understanding
If I could offer one bit of advice to any team looking to mature their security programme, it would be this: define your data model. Know what a product is. Know what a component is. Know what constitutes a finding or a vulnerability. Get everyone using the same definitions.
Once that’s done, automate what you can and ensure that every team is working from the same, trustworthy foundation. That’s when real collaboration begins—and where real security takes root.
Ready to unify your product security workflows?
Mike Hatherall
Mike Hatherall is Lead Solutions Architect for EMEA at Finite State and a seasoned cybersecurity and network engineering professional. He brings deep expertise in asset management, vulnerability response, and OT security, with hands-on experience in platforms like Forescout, Armis, and ServiceNow. Mike previously ran his own MSP for 12 years, successfully growing and selling the business.