Top 5 Application Security Tools Your Team Needs in 2026

Cyberattacks are growing in frequency and sophistication. Data from the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report shows that breaches exploiting application vulnerabilities have increased by 180% in the last year alone. Applications remain a primary target, yet development teams are under constant pressure to innovate and deliver faster. Using disconnected or inadequate application security tools creates security gaps, slows down development pipelines, and ultimately increases business risk.

A modern approach requires moving beyond siloed tools to a unified Application Risk Management platform. Integrating security into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is no longer a “nice-to-have” but an operational necessity. This post outlines the five essential application security tools that enable teams to build, deploy, and manage secure software without sacrificing speed or innovation.

1. Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) is a foundational tool for any modern security program. It analyzes an application’s source code, bytecode, or binary code to identify security flaws. By scanning code before it moves into production, SAST empowers developers to find and fix vulnerabilities early in the SDLC when they are simplest and least expensive to resolve.

This “shift left” approach is critical for reducing security debt. Key benefits include:

• IDE and CI/CD Integration: The right SAST tool integrates directly into developer environments (IDEs) and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. This provides immediate, real-time feedback without forcing developers to switch contexts or use separate tools.
• Early Risk Reduction: By identifying flaws at the source, SAST helps prevent vulnerabilities from ever reaching production. Veracode’s SAST solution delivers scans with a 90-second median scan time, ensuring security keeps pace with development.
• High Accuracy and Coverage: An effective SAST tool must be accurate to maintain developer trust and cover the languages your team uses. Veracode SAST supports over 100 languages and frameworks, providing broad coverage with a low false-positive rate.

2. Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

Modern applications are built using open-source components, but this reliance introduces significant risk. Research shows that 70% of critical security debt comes from third-party code. Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is an essential tool for managing this risk by identifying vulnerabilities and license compliance issues within open-source libraries.

SCA is non-negotiable for securing your software supply chain. An effective SCA tool should:

• Identify All Dependencies: Scan for known vulnerabilities (CVEs) in both direct dependencies (the libraries you directly import) and transitive dependencies (the libraries your dependencies rely on).
• Generate an SBOM: Create a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), which is a complete inventory of all components in your application. SBOMs are becoming a standard requirement for regulatory compliance.
• Monitor Continuously: Your software ecosystem is dynamic. SCA continuously monitors your applications and alerts you when new vulnerabilities are discovered in the components you use.

As a bonus, teams focused on software supply chain security should also consider a package firewall. While SCA identifies known vulnerabilities, a tool like Veracode Package Firewall proactively blocks malicious packages from entering your development environment in the first place, adding a critical layer of preventative security.

3. Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

While SAST inspects code from the inside, Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) tests applications from the outside-in. DAST simulates an attacker’s perspective by probing a running application to find vulnerabilities and configuration errors that only appear at runtime. These are issues that static analysis cannot see.

DAST is critical for gaining a complete view of your application’s risk profile. It identifies weaknesses such as:

• Runtime Vulnerabilities: Finds issues related to server configuration, authentication, and other runtime behaviors that are not visible in the source code.
• OWASP Top 10 Risks: Effectively discovers many of the most critical web application security risks, such as injection flaws and broken access control.
• Comprehensive Coverage: Veracode DAST can securely scan applications in pre-production and production environments, including those behind a firewall or requiring authentication. This ensures comprehensive coverage for your entire web application and API portfolio.

Combining different testing methods gives you a more complete picture of your security posture. You can learn more about this in our post on advanced application security testing.

4. AI-Powered Remediation Tools

Finding vulnerabilities is only half the battle; fixing them is what reduces risk. AI-powered remediation tools represent a major leap forward in application security efficiency. These tools help automate the most time-consuming part of the security workflow: remediation.

By providing developers with AI-generated code fixes, these tools significantly accelerate the remediation process. This empowers developers to fix flaws quickly and learn secure coding practices along the way. Key benefits include:

• Context-Specific Fixes: AI-driven tools like Veracode Fix analyze the vulnerability and surrounding code to generate a precise, secure code suggestion directly within the developer’s IDE.
• Reduced MTTR: Automating remediation guidance dramatically reduces the Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR). For instance, Veracode Fix has been shown to cut fix times by an average of 50%.
• Increased Developer Productivity: By handling the heavy lifting of remediation research, these tools free up developers to focus on building innovative features.

5. Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)

With findings coming from SAST, SCA, DAST, and other scanners, security and development teams can quickly become overwhelmed with data. Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) tools solve this problem by unifying security signals into a single, cohesive view of risk.

An ASPM platform like Veracode Risk Manager ingests and normalizes findings from all your application security tools. It then prioritizes vulnerabilities based on business impact and exploitability, not just technical severity scores. This approach provides clear, actionable guidance on what to fix next to achieve the greatest risk reduction. You can read more about mastering ASPM on our blog.

Key capabilities of an ASPM solution include:

• Unified Risk Visibility: Aggregates findings from disparate tools into a single dashboard.
• Intelligent Prioritization: Uses business context and threat intelligence to surface the most critical risks.
• Actionable Insights: Provides clear metrics and reporting to help teams justify security investments and demonstrate progress.

Build a Mature Security Program with Veracode

Using a disparate collection of application security tools is no longer enough to defend against modern threats. A successful program requires a unified platform that integrates these core capabilities to provide complete visibility and automated risk reduction across the entire SDLC. While some may consider free testing tools, a comprehensive platform delivers far greater value and security.

Don’t just take our word for it. See why Gartner has named Veracode a Leader in the Magic Quadrant™ for Application Security Testing for the 11th consecutive time. Download the full report to gain expert insights and learn how to build a mature security program that empowers you to ship secure software, faster.

Download the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Application Security Testing Report