How to tell what program is launching softwareupdated?

To answer your question which program is launching the softwareupdated:

In your System Preferences, click on the App Store.

It will show you the settings for updates.

Normal is to have it check for Software Updates continuously, that will explain the softwareupdated running in your Activity Monitor.

There you can also set what happens next, like download and auto install or not etc...

I was wondering why softwareupdated was always running in activity monitor as well. I believe i fixed my issue by turning off "Check for new software updates automatically" in iTunes, in Advanced Preferences.

(1) iTunes (2) Preferences (3) Advanced Preferences (4) unselect: "Check for new software updates automatically"

So far, that has solved the problem. Before doing this, I would force quit softwareupdated, only for it to pop up again almost immediately after.

It's not popping up now.

Similar to previous answers but I simply went to System Preferences -> App Store. Once there unchecked "Automatically check for updates"

Noticed that softwareupdated was still running in the activity monitor so I did a force quit on it since I was too lazy to reboot. Been going for about a half hour now and that process did not appear again. Glad to have ended it because it was using up almost half a GB on my 4GB machine.