Veracode’s 20th Anniversary: Two Decades of Data Powering the Future of Software Security

Twenty years ago, the idea of continuously scanning software for vulnerabilities at scale was ambitious. Today, it’s essential. As Veracode marks its 20th anniversary, we’re not just looking back at what we’ve built; we’re looking forward at what the data tells us about where software security needs to go next. And the data says a lot.

What 20 Years of Security Intelligence Looks Like

Over two decades, Veracode has run more than 47 million scans, identified over 229 million flaws, and helped teams fix 148 million of them. That’s not just a record of activity; it’s one of the largest, most comprehensive datasets in application security.

Every scan, every flaw, every fix has added to an intelligence layer that gets smarter over time. It’s what allows us to tell you not just that you have a vulnerability, but how severe it is, how exploitable it is, and what to prioritize first.

That kind of intelligence doesn’t appear overnight. It’s built across millions of applications, thousands of organizations, and 20 years of relentless focus on one mission: helping teams build secure software.

The Problem That Makes This Mission More Urgent Than Ever

Celebrating 20 years doesn’t mean the hard work is done. The 2026 State of Software Security report is clear: the pace of flaw creation is outpacing remediation… and the gap is widening.

Here’s where things stand right now:

• 82% of organizations carry security debt – vulnerabilities left unresolved for more than a year. That’s an 11% increase in a single year.
• 60% face critical security debt, a 20% rise from the prior year.
• High-risk vulnerabilities jumped 36% year over year.
• 78% of applications still contain flaws.
• Third-party code—the open-source components woven into nearly every modern application—continues to be the dominant driver of critical security debt. The half-life of a third-party flaw found using Software Composition Analysis (SCA) is 358 days. That’s nearly a year before it gets fixed.

The volume of code being written is accelerating. AI-assisted development is accelerating. But remediation capacity? It’s not keeping up. That’s the core challenge your team faces, and it’s exactly the problem that 20 years of Veracode intelligence is designed to help solve.

The question your organization probably hasn’t fully answered yet: How do you trust software that was substantially built by a machine?

Speed of finding vulnerabilities was never the hard part. Attackers benefit from AI-assisted discovery too. The real challenge – and the real competitive advantage – is speed of trust, which is what our proprietary, legacy data allows us to provide.

Why Data Is the Foundation of the Future of Software Security

You can’t fix what you can’t measure, and you can’t prioritize what you can’t understand in context.

The future of software security isn’t just about scanning more; it’s about scanning smarter. It’s about knowing which vulnerabilities actually pose a risk to your organization, not just flagging everything and leaving your team to sort it out. It’s about giving developers actionable guidance at the moment they’re writing code, not weeks later when the cost of fixing a flaw has multiplied.

This is where Veracode’s 20-year data advantage becomes a real, practical edge for your team.

When Veracode surfaces a vulnerability, it draws on patterns from tens of millions of scans across industries, application types, and technology stacks. That context helps you cut through the noise. Instead of drowning in alerts, your team can focus on the flaws that matter most.

When AI-generated code introduces hard-to-spot vulnerabilities – and it does, at scale – Veracode’s analysis is equipped to catch what automated development tools miss. Our Spring 2026 GenAI Code Security report found that AI-generated code introduces security flaws that require the same rigorous detection and remediation as any other code. The source doesn’t change the risk.

What the Next Era Demands

The next era of software security will be shaped by a few key realities:

Speed without shortcuts. Development cycles are faster than ever. Security needs to keep pace without becoming a bottleneck. That means integrating security directly into CI/CD pipelines, giving developers real-time feedback in their IDEs, and automating the detection and triage of vulnerabilities before they reach production.

Intelligence over volume. More scans don’t automatically mean better security. What matters is the quality of the analysis behind each scan. With 47 million scans informing Veracode’s detection capabilities, the intelligence driving your security decisions is grounded in real-world data – not theory.

Closing the remediation gap. Finding flaws is only half the equation. The 2026 SoSS report shows that remediation timelines remain stubbornly long, particularly for third-party code. AI-driven remediation workflows, guided fix recommendations, and integrated developer tooling all play a role in shifting that curve.

Comprehensive coverage with continuous verification. Modern applications are complex. Source code, running applications, open-source components, containers – each surface introduces risk. Securing software in the next era means covering all of it, not just the parts that are easiest to scan. Continuous verification means persistent, automated assurance that what’s running in production is what was approved – and that it stays that way. As AI-generated code enters your environment faster, point-in-time snapshots leave you exposed between scans.

Governance that keeps pace with AI-assisted development. Your organization almost certainly has AI coding tools in active use. What it may not have is an enforceable policy governing what AI-generated code enters production, how it’s validated, and what standards it must meet. That gap is where risk compounds. Governance at the SDLC level – automated, not manual – is what will make the future of software security testing sustainable.

Attestation you can actually prove. Boards are asking. Regulators are updating requirements. Cyber insurers are rewriting underwriting criteria. “We have a security program” is no longer a sufficient answer. The organizations that will thrive are the ones that can produce auditable evidence of their security posture – provenance of code, verification of controls, proof that what they’re shipping is production-ready.

What This Means for Your Team

Whether you’re a developer looking to ship secure code faster, an AppSec leader trying to reduce security debt across a large portfolio, or a CISO accountable for your organization’s risk posture – the path forward is the same: better data, better intelligence, and security that works with your development process, not against it.

Veracode’s platform is built on 20 years of that intelligence. Static and dynamic analysis that surfaces vulnerabilities early. SCA that monitors open-source components in real time. Responsible-by-design AI that delivers remediation guidance right in the IDE. Container security that integrates with your deployment pipeline. And AI-powered protection that blocks threats before they reach your software.

Every capability is backed by the same data advantage: the product of two decades of securing software at scale.

Twenty Years Built for the Future of Software Security

The structural shift driven by AI in software development isn’t a future scenario to plan for. The pressure is arriving now. The organizations building governance and trust infrastructure today will have a meaningful structural advantage as the volume of AI-generated code in their environments scales up.

The future of software security isn’t about scanning more. It’s about trusting what you build, at the speed you’re building it.

That’s the problem Veracode has been working on for 20 years. And with AI redefining the scale of that challenge, the work has never mattered more.

Ready to see what that intelligence looks like for your environment? Start with a personalized Veracode demo.