Alert fatigue puts pressure on security and development teams

Security practitioners are under a tremendous amount of pressure to secure today’s applications, according to Cycode.

The research found that AppSec chaos reigns, with 78% of CISOs responding that today’s AppSec attack surfaces are unmanageable and 90% of responders confirmed relationships between their security and development teams need to improve. Surprisingly, 77% of CISOs believe software supply chain security is a bigger blind spot for AppSec than Gen AI or open source.

Organizations struggle with AppSec risk and activity prioritization

Prioritization of AppSec risks and activities are a significant problem for most organizations. 85% of CISOs acknowledge dev teams suffer from vulnerability noise and alert fatigue, which strains the relationship between security and dev teams.

Additionally, 88% acknowledge that because of alert fatigue developers are not focused on remediating critical vulnerabilities, which increases the potential for a security breach and puts the business at risk.

Only 21% of respondents believe that both security and development are equally responsible for application security, confirming that many security professionals question whether application security is a team sport. An overwhelming 77% majority said that understanding who owns application security is challenging, indicating that more clarity is needed about who is responsible for AppSec in most organizations.

CISOs set to consolidate AppSec tools

The report also shows that alert fatigue is not the only cause of the souring relationship between security and development teams. Many of the challenges stem from diverse vulnerability sources and the proliferation of AppSec tools. A staggering 75% of security professionals struggle with the complexity of managing multiple security tools.

According to Gartner, “By 2026, over 40% of organizations developing proprietary applications will adopt Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) to more rapidly identify and resolve application security issues.

“Despite industry forecasts, our research reveals a much more condensed time frame to ASPM adoption. While all the hype right now is focused on AI, software supply chain security issues are just as or even more critical, and any ASPM solution needs to have best in class capabilities,” said Lior Levy, CEO, Cycode.

“Much of the Cycode report findings align with what we’re seeing in the market, starting with the criticality of software supply chain security,” said Katie Norton, Senior Research Analyst at IDC. “Our 2023 DevSecOps Adoption, Techniques and Tools Survey identified a vulnerable software supply chain as a top application security gap. Our IDC research also found that companies struggle with developer and security misalignment and have prioritized fostering coordination.”

In addition, 92% of CISOs confirmed they are looking to consolidate their AppSec tools into a single platform in the next 12 months.