Who should be accountable for maintaining software inventory across code and runtime?

Why This Matters for Security Teams

Accountability for software inventory is not just a paperwork issue. If code dependencies, embedded secrets, runtime packages, and deployed components are not tied back to clear owners, teams lose the ability to answer basic questions during incident response: what is running, who approved it, and what changed. That gap becomes more dangerous when inventory spans both source repositories and live environments, where drift is normal and unmanaged change is inevitable. The control objective aligns closely with NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 Security and Privacy Controls, which treats configuration and accountability as operational disciplines, not one-time audits. NHIMG research also shows why inventory blindness is costly: in the The State of Secrets in AppSec report, organisations maintain an average of 6 distinct secrets manager instances, creating fragmentation that undermines centralised control. In practice, many security teams encounter inventory gaps only after an exposure, outage, or compliance review has already forced them to reconstruct ownership retroactively.

How It Works in Practice

The practical answer is a shared operating model with named accountability at the application level. Product or application owners should be accountable for inventory accuracy because they are closest to the software lifecycle, while security, platform engineering, and DevSecOps provide the controls, automation, and verification needed to keep it current. That means inventory must cover both build time and runtime: source repositories, dependency manifests, containers, packages, service accounts, and cloud workloads need to be mapped into a single ownership model. A workable approach usually includes:

• an application owner for each service or product line
• automated discovery from source control, CI/CD, and runtime telemetry
• policy checks that fail builds when inventory data is missing or stale
• scheduled review cycles for drift, exceptions, and ownership changes
• escalation paths for orphaned assets or unapproved components

This is where security frameworks become operational. NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 Security and Privacy Controls supports the discipline of maintaining authoritative records, while NHIMG guidance in The State of Secrets in AppSec underscores how fragmented secrets and code tooling quickly erode that discipline. Inventory should be treated as a living control, with evidence generated continuously rather than assembled during audits. These controls tend to break down when ownership is split across many short-lived delivery teams because no one is explicitly responsible for reconciling code, runtime, and exception data.

Common Variations and Edge Cases

Tighter inventory governance often increases operational overhead, requiring organisations to balance accuracy against delivery speed. In fast-moving engineering environments, a strict central registry can become stale if teams must file manual updates for every deployment, while a fully decentralised model can leave orphaned assets and unclear accountability. Current guidance suggests the best result comes from federated ownership with central standards, but there is no universal standard for this yet. Edge cases matter:

• Shared platform services need joint accountability, but one team should still be the system of record.
• Legacy applications may lack modern telemetry, so manual attestations and periodic reconciliation become necessary.
• Ephemeral containers and preview environments require runtime discovery because static CMDB-style records will miss short-lived assets.
• Third-party managed services still need business ownership, even when technical operations are outsourced.

NHIMG’s LLMjacking: How Attackers Hijack AI Using Compromised NHIs shows how quickly exposed credentials can be abused, which is why inventory should include not only software components but the identities and secrets they rely on. In mature environments, the practical test is simple: if a team cannot identify the owner of a runtime component within minutes, that component is already outside effective control.

Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group

• Who is accountable for securing MCP-related APIs across code, cloud, and runtime?
• What is the difference between static software inventories and real-time code-to-runtime inventory?
• Who is accountable for maintaining visibility into identity access chains across the organisation?
• Who is accountable when Infrastructure as Code changes create compliance or security failures?