Case Study: Thales Alenia Space achieves enhanced code quality, security, and compliance with Black Duck

Ensuring Software Reliability and Security from Design Through Development

Thales Alenia Space, a Thales Group business and Europe’s largest satellite manufacturer, needed to ensure the reliability and security of software used in navigation, Earth observation and onboard satellite systems. With a corporate mandate to address cybersecurity at every stage and coding rules based on SEI CERT and MISRA, the company faced the challenge of detecting defects and managing open‑source risks across hundreds of projects and millions of lines of code in automated CI pipelines.

Thales Alenia Space deployed Black Duck Coverity for static analysis and Black Duck SCA for software composition analysis, integrating both into its continuous integration workflow. Coverity provided fast, scalable SAST that supports cross‑compilation and standards compliance (SEI‑CERT, MISRA), while Black Duck delivered open‑source detection, SBOM generation and license/vulnerability management. The result: improved code quality and security, earlier vulnerability detection and lower remediation costs, broader OSS visibility, and positive vendor support.

Thales Alenia Space

Nicolas Leclercq

Product Security Officer for Software Engineering