How the EU Cyber Resilience Act Reshapes Open Source Risk for Commercial Software

What Changes When You Sell Software into the EU

Open source software is foundational to modern applications. Containerized workloads routinely inherit thousands of packages from upstream libraries and base images, typically consumed under permissive “AS IS” licenses that disclaim warranty and liability.

The EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) changes how this risk is treated for any organization placing or selling products with digital elements on the EU market, regardless of where the company is headquartered.

Once open source components are embedded into a commercial product sold in the EU, the manufacturer is responsible for demonstrating ongoing cybersecurity risk management across the supported lifetime of that product. This includes how third-party components are selected, secured, maintained, and documented.

The CRA does not prohibit open source or containers. It formalizes accountability.

RapidFort helps software manufacturers operationalize this accountability at the container layer by reducing inherited risk, shrinking shipped attack surface, and producing high-quality technical evidence that supports CRA-aligned due diligence, without requiring application code changes.

Who the CRA Applies To

The CRA regulates commercial products placed on the EU market, not open source projects themselves.

CRA obligations apply if you are:

• A software vendor selling SaaS, on-prem, or embedded software to EU customers
  

• A non-EU company distributing software into the EU
  
  
• A vendor whose software is bundled, resold, or deployed by EU-based customers
  
  

For many organizations, CRA readiness is becoming a market access requirement, influencing procurement reviews, customer security assessments, and contractual discussions.

What the CRA Requires in Practice

CRA expectations translate into three concrete outcomes that software organizations must be able to demonstrate consistently.

1. Know what you ship

Manufacturers must maintain accurate, version-specific visibility into operating system packages, libraries, and components embedded in each release.

2. Reduce and manage risk over time

Vulnerability handling must extend beyond detection. Organizations are expected to assess relevance, prioritize remediation, and reduce exposure throughout the supported lifetime of the product.

3. Produce defensible technical evidence

Documentation must demonstrate how secure baselines were applied, how vulnerabilities were addressed, and how the security posture was maintained over time.

These requirements are difficult to meet when container programs rely on unmanaged upstream images and scan-only workflows that generate volume without control.

Why Base Images Are a CRA Risk Multiplier

Most container images include far more software than applications actually require. Utilities and libraries accumulate without regard to runtime behavior.

Under the CRA, this matters because:

• Every shipped component expands the attack surface
  
  
• Every shipped component increases long-term maintenance obligations
  
  
• Every shipped component must be tracked, assessed, and documented
  
  

Unvetted community images often include unnecessary packages and latent vulnerabilities, increasing both exposure and documentation burden.

Raw LTS distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Alpine, and Red Hat UBI provide transparency and ecosystem maturity, but they are not hardened or continuously maintained to regulatory expectations by default. The burden of hardening, patching, and documentation remains with the manufacturer.

CRA-aligned software delivery requires container foundations that are maintained, hardened, and auditable by design.

RapidFort’s Role in CRA-Aligned Software Delivery

RapidFort is a software supply chain security platform focused on securing container images and reducing exploitable vulnerabilities at scale.

RapidFort does not certify CRA compliance and does not replace legal or governance processes. It provides the technical capabilities that enable organizations to meet CRA expectations in a practical, repeatable way.

Accurate Visibility as the Foundation

CRA-aligned due diligence begins with knowing exactly what is inside the software you ship.

RapidFort performs deep analysis of container images to identify operating system packages, libraries, and configurations, generating high-quality SBOMs and vulnerability data with reduced false positives. This establishes a reliable baseline that can be referenced across engineering, security, legal, and compliance teams.

Reducing Inherited Risk with Curated Near-Zero CVE Images

One of the most effective ways to improve CRA posture is to reduce inherited vulnerabilities before application code is introduced.

RapidFort maintains 25,000+ Curated Near-Zero CVE Images built on widely adopted LTS Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Debian, Alpine, and Red Hat UBI.

These images are:

• Continuously patched and rebuilt to address known CVEs
  
  
• Hardened using CIS and STIG benchmarks aligned with NIST SP 800-70
  
  
• Designed to reduce baseline vulnerability exposure by default
  
  

By starting from a RapidFort Curated Image, organizations materially reduce the number of vulnerabilities that must be tracked, justified, and remediated over the product lifecycle, while preserving compatibility with standard ecosystems and avoiding vendor lock-in.

Shrinking the Attack Surface You Ship

Under the CRA, manufacturers are accountable for everything they ship, not just what they intend to use.

RapidFort applies Software Attack Surface Management (SASM) by identifying which packages, binaries, and libraries actually execute in production and removing those that do not.

This typically results in:

• 60–90% attack surface reduction
  
  
• Up to 95% CVE remediation
  
  

This approach preserves application functionality while significantly reducing remediation workload, documentation scope, and long-term security obligations.

From Static Inventories to Runtime-Aware Evidence

The CRA emphasizes documentation and vulnerability handling over time.

RapidFort complements SBOMs with Runtime Bills of Materials (RBOMs) that reflect which components are actually executed. SBOMs establish composition. RBOMs establish relevance.

Together, they support proportionate, evidence-backed vulnerability handling and strengthen the credibility of technical documentation required under the CRA.

CRA Readiness as a Business Enabler

The EU Cyber Resilience Act is increasingly shaping how software is evaluated, purchased, and deployed in the EU market.

Organizations that can clearly demonstrate control over container foundations, open-source usage, and vulnerability management move faster through security reviews and procurement processes.

RapidFort helps turn CRA readiness into an operational and commercial advantage by making secure-by-design container practices measurable, explainable, and scalable.

Build with Confidence for the EU Market

The CRA does not ban open source or containers. It raises expectations for how they are managed in commercial software.

Organizations that succeed under the CRA will be able to demonstrate three things with confidence:

• They know exactly what is in their software
  
  
• They actively reduce attack surface and vulnerability exposure
  
  
• They maintain clear, time-stamped evidence of how vulnerabilities are handled
  
  

RapidFort enables this by combining accurate visibility, hardened container foundations, attack surface reduction, and runtime-aware evidence into a single, cohesive platform.

If you are selling software into the EU, preparing for CRA obligations, or reassessing how container security impacts your go-to-market strategy, we invite you to connect with the RapidFort team.

You can request access to the platform to evaluate its capabilities in your environment, or schedule a conversation with our experts to discuss how CRA-aligned software delivery fits into your product roadmap: https://www.rapidfort.com/contact-us

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