Cybersecurity budgets are increasing, albeit modestly. Here’s how to ensure that AppSec teams benefit and can use investments to demonstrate positive software security ROI.
It might not always feel like it, but security as a percentage of IT spending has increased steadily over the past five years, from 8.6% in 2020 to 13.2% in 2024. While budgets often surge in the wake of incidents or breaches, application security has traditionally been underfunded compared to network, endpoint, or threat detection.
A 180% increase in exploitation of application vulnerabilities as the critical path to a breach has helped change that conversation, not least because so many organizations now develop and ship their own software. In the wake of multiple, high-profile breaches, securing the software supply chain has become a critical priority for many organizations; an estimated 80% will have adopted specialized processes and tools across the enterprise by 2027.
The need for a more proactive, strategic approach to AppSec has become clear. Here are some ways to ensure you get the most out of your budget.
Get Smart About Compliance
Yes, compliance is crucial. But blind, “cookie cutter” adherence to requirements without insight into your organization’s specific risks is the path to overspending, inefficiency, and wasted resources. Compliance ≠ security.
Your AppSec budget should reflect your organization’s unique risk landscape and strategic goals. Are you using a high-end tool to comply with a regulation that impacts only 2% of your business? Do you even know?
To ensure your investments are proportionate to the risks, prioritize your AppSec choices around a thorough risk assessment that identifies critical assets and potential threats — and helps optimize your IT security budget planning.
On a related note…
Streamline Tools, Optimize Resources
At a time when it seems there’s a tool for everything (and there is), taking a more streamlined approach won’t just benefit your budget, it’ll take a lot of strain off your security teams too.
Many best-of-breed AppSec tools do a great job — at one or two things. Problem is, they leave AppSec teams manually piecing together data from disparate, fragmented solutions. And that’s before you consider the financial implications of multiple licenses and subscription fees:
- The average large enterprise spends around $7.4m annually on under- and unused software.
- Some research suggests that only 10-20% of cybersecurity technology is actually ever used.
- IDC research indicates that 50% of software developers spend 19% of their time each week on security tasks.
However you look at it, cybersecurity tool sprawl feeds complexity and redundancy while draining money and effort. Streamlining and/or consolidating AppSec tools helps reduce unnecessary spending and enhance security by bringing clarity to AppSec processes and software vulnerabilities.
Secure by Design Saves Money and Time
As far back as 2002, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) estimated that the cost of fixing a software defect after deployment was up to 880 times more expensive than doing it during the requirements phase. Go back even further and you’ll find the adage that “A stitch in time saves nine,” but the point stands: Securing software before it can be exploited ensures cost-effective AppSec and software release efficiency.
We say it a lot, but a key driver of application security risk is accelerated software development lifecycles (SDLCs). No one wants to introduce friction to an environment already struggling with tool sprawl, alert fatigue, and compliance frameworks, but the reality of software supply chain risk means that secure code is no longer optional. The good news is that baking security in from the beginning of the software development process not only makes for safer code, it saves money and time downstream. Win-win.
Teams that integrate security into the CI/CD pipeline help identify and mitigate risk earlier in the development process — when it’s less time-consuming to resolve. But doing so also prevents costly breaches downstream (when an application is already in production, for instance), where the potential for broader software compromise is significant. As it turns out, many ways of achieving secure software also save cybersecurity teams money and resources: for example, automating tools like static application security testing (SAST), software composition analysis (SCA), and secrets scanning takes the pressure off AppSec teams, allowing them to focus on more demanding tasks.
Focus on the 5%: Automation Helps Everyone
Budgets might be creeping up, but headcount growth is going in the opposite direction: at 12% in 2024, down from a heady 31% in 2022. With staff costs accounting for 37% of overall security budgets, maximizing the capabilities of existing teams without burning them out will go a long way toward getting the best for everyone.
This is where AppSec automation really delivers. Without automation in the software development process, manually tackling hundreds (sometimes thousands) of security issues across the supply chain takes hours, making triage (not to mention resolution) a days-long process. Automating vulnerability detection, analysis, triage, and response allows teams to manage more without risking burnout.
Maybe more importantly (as it relates to AppSec efficiency), automating accurate and relevant application vulnerability prioritization ensures teams can focus on the right vulnerability remediation, helping AppSec and DevOps teams ensure a secure SDLC and developer-centric security.
Automating vulnerability management reduces mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR), preventing critical issues from making their way into production code, helping mitigate risk, streamlining release times, and allowing teams to reduce technical debt.
Developer-centric Security Doesn’t Have to Mean AppSec Compromise
For many AppSec professionals, the prospect of shifting left — integrating security into developer workflows — can be a double-edged sword. Traditionally, developers have been incentivized to ship features fast; are they really going to slow down for cybersecurity? More to the point: do security teams want to risk losing visibility by putting tools in the hands of developers? Can both DevOps and AppSec teams even be sure that suggested fixes have been implemented or implemented correctly? How is that being tracked, measured, and reported?
All of the above are valid concerns, but times are changing. Modern AppSec platforms facilitate both AppSec and developer needs, allowing for a security-led, developer-centric approach that saves everyone money and time. Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) has emerged as a key approach in driving all of the efficiencies we’ve mentioned here. It centralizes, correlates, and prioritizes security data across all tools, gives actionable insights, and guides remediation steps for developers. The best platforms allow much of this to be automated, saving even more time, and ensuring that vulnerability fixes are implemented according to security policies.
Get the Balance Right with OX Security
If breach-based budgeting incentivizes all the wrong behaviors, playing exclusively to compliance and insurance needs stifles real-world security strategies, and developer-centric security is asking for trouble, how do you ensure AppSec budget optimization?
OX Security’s Active ASPM platform unifies application security across the SDLC. Seamless integration with development workflows gives you all the software security you need, with minimal disruption to your software development processes. OX’s unique no-code workflow automation reduces manual tasks, allowing developers to focus on code while ensuring that security policies are enforced automatically.
Reducing manual AppSec allows AppSec and development teams to focus on the most critical vulnerabilities, reducing security debt by up to 97%, and cutting mean-time-to-response (MTTR) from weeks to days. More secure software, more efficient development, more timely software releases: automation works for both sides of the AppSec-Dev equation. Best of all, it also works for your budget.
Learn more about how OX helps AppSec teams find the perfect balance between budget and security, try OX for free today.
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