Trends in Application Security Testing

Application security testing plays an increasing role in DevSecOps practices to help reduce the risks that come with the massive sharing of data over the web. To better understand the successes and challenges that professionals have experienced with their use (or lack of use) of application security testing technologies, HCLSoftware sent a survey to more than 45,000 professionals in fall of 2023.

The survey results in this report provided keen insight to highlight how different companies have divergent needs and strategies for secure software development, and the considerable consensus around issues of vendor consolidation, artificial intelligence and modern deployment models.

Let’s take a look at just a few key highlights from the survey.

Vendor Consolidation

Of those companies asked about their vendor preferences, a significant 85 percent have already completed the consolidation of the number of application security testing vendors they use. Their preferences for single-platform solutions to achieve a more centralized security strategy far out-weighed the desire to purchase best-of-breed standalone technologies.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The majority of respondents (38%) believed that AI will impact testing automation more than other areas of application security, such as anomaly detection or widening coverage. Interestingly, auto-remediation is increasingly becoming one of the areas that is less impactful in application security according to these survey results..

Deployment Models

A clear trend in this year’s survey is the movement to cloud and cloud-native deployment models in application security testing. Only 31 percent of respondents described their software as deployed fully on-prem (self-managed), but aspects of security are still being handled on-prem as part of popular hybrid deployments strategies. These strategies include testing different segments of data on private cloud and others on public cloud.

We invite you to take a look at the full survey results and key findings to better understand application security trends taking place in a fast-moving, digital environment.

Get the 2023 Application Security Testing Trends Report now.