Understanding CRA Compliance: Overcoming Challenges with an Integrated Security Testing Approach

Shipping software into the EU now comes with serious strings attached. The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), in effect since December 2024, sets strict new rules for any company offering digital products or services in the region, whether you’re a local startup or a global platform.

The regulation aims to improve cybersecurity across connected devices and cloud-based software. However, it raises the bar for engineering and security teams on everything from secure development to continuous vulnerability management. Missing the mark and the penalties are steep: fines up to €15 million or forced removal from the EU market.

Key challenges of CRA compliance

The CRA doesn’t just add paperwork. It reshapes how teams build and ship software. And for most organizations, compliance is more complicated than it looks.

Visibility across the supply chain is limited

The CRA requires continuous security validation across everything you ship, including open source libraries, third-party dependencies, and proprietary code. That’s a huge surface area. Without tooling built into dev workflows, even finding the vulnerabilities, let alone fixing them, becomes slow, manual, and risky.

Speed and security still compete

In fast-paced DevOps environments, security is often viewed as friction. Developers are under pressure to ship, and quality controls get skipped. That’s precisely the scenario CRA wants to prevent, but without smoother security integration, the tradeoff is real.

Legacy tooling and fragmented visibility slow teams down

Many teams still rely on outdated scanners or one-off scripts that don’t scale. As developers adopt tools like AI code assistants to move faster, security teams struggle to keep pace and stay compliant. The result is gaps in coverage, reactive patching, and more risk during audits.

Best practices for achieving CRA compliance 

CRA compliance comes with high stakes and tight expectations, but it’s manageable with the right approach. Organizations can stay fast while staying compliant by aligning teams, modernizing tooling, and building security into daily workflows. 

Adopt a security-first culture

Compliance starts with culture. Teams need to treat security as part of how they build, not just something to check after deployment. That shift doesn’t happen overnight but starts with how developers are trained, supported, and equipped.

Security-first teams build with secure-by-design principles in mind. They review code with risk in view, fix issues early, and know where to go when something breaks. It’s not about slowing developers down; it’s about giving them the context and tools to make secure decisions without breaking flow.

Implement a vulnerability management program 

CRA compliance depends on your ability to spot and fix vulnerabilities early, often, and across your entire stack. That’s where a strong vulnerability management program comes in.

The best programs continuously scan for new risks, prioritize what matters most, and make it easy to patch issues before they spread. When integrated into day-to-day workflows, this kind of system helps teams stay ahead of threats without slowing down delivery.  

Automate security testing across the SDLC

Manual checks don’t scale, especially when your team is moving fast. Automating security testing across the SDLC helps teams catch issues early, apply policies consistently, and reduce the overhead of chasing down vulnerabilities by hand.

For developers, that means fewer manual tasks and fewer blockers. For security teams, it means better coverage, faster feedback loops, and more time to focus on what matters: keeping systems secure and compliant.

The role of security testing in CRA compliance 

CRA compliance hinges on your ability to find and fix vulnerabilities quickly, consistently, and across your entire stack. That’s where security testing comes in.

Security testing helps teams meet regulatory expectations without slowing delivery when embedded into development workflows. Each testing type plays a distinct role:

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST): Scans source code as it’s written to catch issues early before they make it into production. The best tools integrate directly into IDEs and CI/CD pipelines, offering automated scans and fix recommendations in context.

• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): DAST tests applications at runtime to uncover vulnerabilities that only surface when the system is live. It simulates real-world attacks, helping teams validate protections and secure exposed endpoints.

• Software Composition Analysis (SCA): Tracks and secures open source dependencies, identifying known vulnerabilities in third-party code. It is essential for managing software supply chain risk at scale.

• Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC): IaC tools find misconfigurations in cloud infrastructure before deployment. By scanning Terraform, CloudFormation, and similar files, they help enforce secure defaults and prevent drift.

No single tool covers everything, but together, they offer the coverage CRA demands. Compliance becomes continuous when these scans run automatically as part of your pipeline, and your team can focus on building secure, reliable software.

How Snyk’s solutions support CRA compliance

The Cyber Resilience Act raises the bar, but Snyk makes it easier to meet. As a developer-first platform, Snyk integrates security testing directly into the tools and workflows teams already use, helping you stay compliant without slowing down.

Here’s how Snyk aligns with CRA requirements:

• Secure from the first line of code: Snyk Code uses SAST to catch issues as developers write code without switching tools or slowing down. It helps enforce secure-by-design principles from the start.

• Manage open source risk at scale: Snyk Open Source provides complete visibility into third-party dependencies, using SCA to prioritize and fix known vulnerabilities across the software supply chain.

• Enforce a secure cloud infrastructure:Snyk IaC scans cloud configuration files for misconfigurations before deployment, helping teams maintain control and meet compliance standards for infrastructure security.

• Validate security at runtime: Snyk API & Web simulates real-world attacks to detect vulnerabilities in running applications critical for uncovering risks that only appear in production.

These tools and developer training through Snyk Learn help teams stay audit-ready, build secure-by-default products, and simplify CRA compliance without piling on extra work.

Want to dive deeper? Download the CRA compliance cheat sheet for actionable tips.