2024 State of Application Security Report

Application security is the practice of protecting and securing applications throughout the software development life cycle. As organizations shift their focus to driving revenue through software, application security (AppSec) is becoming one of the most essential forms of security for modern enterprises to invest in.

Beyond generating revenue, software is also the backbone of the customer experience and is vital to creating a respected brand. In short, applications run the world.

At the same time, the attack surface is shifting to application and APIs from classic infrastructure configuration and permissions. Eight out of the top 10 data breaches of 2023 were related to application attack surfaces.

These eight breaches alone are estimated to have exposed around 1.7 billion records. The staggering number of records exposed proves that the status quo in application security isn’t enough. But before we can develop the next generation of preventive and remediative AppSec solutions, we need to understand the predominant challenges facing those on the front lines. Much like developing a vaccine or an antiviral, we need some data to figure out if we’re addressing the most critical issues. Which problems are we trying to solve? What’s really going on in application security teams? What are their greatest challenges? How are they doing their jobs today?