SBOM (software bill of materials)

A software bill of materials (SBOM) is a machine-readable inventory of the components and dependencies inside a piece of software. It lets organizations quickly find where a newly disclosed vulnerability affects them. Common formats are SPDX and CycloneDX.

Why it matters at a CIO Cafe table

Terms like SBOM (software bill of materials) turn up at tables because the disagreement is usually about scope, not definition. Agreeing what the word means is the cheapest way to shorten a decision — which is why every table starts by framing the question in plain language.