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Secure your code WRITTEN BY GITHUB WITH The Essential Guide to Managing Security Debt Written by GitHub with PAGE — 2 The rise of security debt Security debt is stalling DevSecOps, as developers lose trust in security tooling and alerts. Security has always been a delicate subject with development teams. Gone are the days of “move fast and break things” because security is no longer a “nice to have.” Today it’s a non-negotiable for all applications as security breaches can lead to financial losses, reputational damage, and compliance penalties. But it’s a balancing act. Companies can’t stop innovating or slow the pace of development. The cold reality is that development teams, under pressure to meet business demands, continue to introduce more security vulnerabilities to code than they fix. This results in growing security debt, which is commonly defined as the accumulation of vulnerabilities that remain in your organization’s codebase for more than a year without remediation. Security debt is a significant organizational risk because software vulnerabilities are a leading source of costly security breaches.

Not addressing security debt can have negative long-term consequences. If it’s exploited, it can ultimately lead to a data breach, financial losses, reputation damage, and regulatory fines. That’s why it’s important to have regular audits, to gather information about the size and scope of your security debt, and to ensure you’re identifying the most high-risk vulnerabilities that may be present. Fortunately, there is a way out of security debt—and that’s by leveraging developer- centric AppSec tooling and the latest advancements in AI. It’s possible to develop at a fast pace, without sacrificing security or pitting security and development teams against one another. In this guide, we’ll unpack what security debt is, why it’s important to pay down, and how you can transform your security operations. Written by GitHub with PAGE — 3 The cycle of security debt Let’s start by looking at the vicious cycle that causes organizations to rack up security debt in the first place. • Security teams already fight an uphill battle because the number of security professionals are vastly outnumbered by software developers. • Developers are measured on output and often lack security training and the guidance to find and fix vulnerabilities code. • When guidance is given, it’s often littered with false positives; E.g., alerts that aren’t really security risks. • As a result, developers often lose trust in security tooling and guidance and accept a subjective level of risk. This leads to shipping insecure code to meet deadlines, which is ultimately what they’re measured on. One survey found that 56% of developers struggle to prioritize remediation. • The end result is high-risk vulnerabilities in production code that are even more time consuming and costly to fix—or even worse, exploited, resulting in a cyber event that can cause long-term financial and reputational damage.

Apr 2018

What causes secuirty debt? Security teams are outnumbered Developers don’t get enough training to be security experts Developers are incentivized on shipping software more than security Developers suffer from alert fatigue and lose trust in security tooling Unclear prioritization of which vulnerabilities to remediate Written by GitHub with PAGE — 4 Why traditional application security tooling falls short Organizations spend billions of dollars per year on cybersecurity tooling and services. In fact, estimates show that organizations have more than 70 tools on average. Yet, we still see security and developer teams struggling to keep up with rising security debt. The major reason is that traditional security tools often fail to meet developer needs. These tools aren’t typically designed with the developers in mind, even though developers tasked with remediation are the core users. These tools require developers to leave their familiar environments and workflows to run manual tests, which require context switching. Furthermore, since most developers aren’t security experts, security issues require researching vulnerabilities and how to fix them—and that often comes at a great cost to productivity. Even more worrisome is that when these tools surface issues, the alerts they

Dec 2021 generate often provide little context and aren’t actionable. For example, many alerts are false positives. Others are low risk—meaning if a malicious actor exploits them, they won’t be able to cause much harm. Overwhelmed by alerts that are questionable or lack context, developers often end up ignoring them. What DevSecOps teams don’t need is more alerts, detection capabilities, or additional security tooling. Instead, they need help prioritizing and scaling remediation efforts to pay down security debt. At GitHub, the world’s largest developer community and the home of open source, we aim to deliver native security tooling in a true developer-first approach. There’s no need for clunky integrations or plug-ins, because GitHub Advanced Security is embedded within GitHub, which is already a core part of the developer workflow.

The risks of not addressing security debt Malicious actors exploit an unaddressed vulnerability Company or customer data is breached Reputation damage Regulatory fines Disruption to operations including downtime