Software development processes have undergone significant changes and innovations over the past years. In response, application security practices have had to evolve accordingly, adapting to new processes, technologies, and approaches.

It would not be an overstatement to say that the most significant change in application security processes has been the increased use of automation. While software products are developed and delivered rapidly and continuously by engineering teams consisting of hundreds — or even thousands — of developers, relatively small application security teams, often ranging from 1 to 20 people, are expected to ensure that the entire process remains secure. As a result, automating as many security controls as possible has become critical for building sustainable application security practices.

It would be fair to say that many organizations began their automation journey by integrating SAST (Static Application Security Testing) tools, which have a long-standing history in application security. As it became clear that open-source dependencies used in development processes make up a significant portion of modern software projects, SCA (Software Composition Analysis) tools were subsequently introduced. This evolution continued with the integration of tools for detecting sensitive data such as tokens and passwords, container security solutions, and similar technologies, gradually expanding the scope of automated security within development pipelines.

Over time, security teams began to realize that they were struggling with a new set of challenges: managing a growing number of security tools, dealing with findings generated in different formats, relying heavily on expert review, and handling duplicate vulnerability reports identified repeatedly by multiple tools.

When we pause to reflect, we begin to see that the very automation tools introduced to simplify our work have also started to challenge security teams in new and unexpected ways.

This is where ASPM — Application Security Posture Management — tools entered the cybersecurity landscape as a solution. But what exactly are ASPM tools?

A centralized and manageable vulnerability database that integrates with various application security scanning tools.

ASPM tools can be defined as platforms that integrate with application security scanning tools, allow teams to import vulnerabilities identified during testing or through penetration testing services, and enable all detected findings to be assigned to the relevant teams or individuals. The key benefits of ASPM tools can be summarized as follows.

• Consolidating vulnerabilities from multiple tools into a single centralized location, managing all findings from one place, and gaining a unified view of the overall security posture of an organization's applications.
• Deduplicating similar findings identified by different tools to prevent security teams from wasting time on repeatedly reported vulnerabilities.
• Managing false-positive findings generated by automated security scans through a single platform, and preventing teams from repeatedly spending effort on the same false positives.
• Providing ease and efficiency for security teams during audit and compliance processes through detailed reporting capabilities.
• Centralizing and tracking your organization's SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) components from a single platform, enabling rapid identification of affected projects in the event of a library vulnerability.
• Enabling the automation of day-to-day security workflows, such as generating automated reports at the beginning of each week, scanning every newly onboarded application with predefined security tools, and similar routine tasks.
• By providing CLI tools that integrate seamlessly into DevSecOps pipelines, ASPM solutions enable security-driven actions to be enforced directly within development workflows. For example, blocking new deployments if critical findings remain unresolved for more than 30 days, or preventing projects that fail security scans from being promoted to customer environments.

In summary, modern application development requires detecting as many vulnerabilities as possible through automation, while allowing security experts to focus on high-value work where they can truly make an impact and identify critical issues. By adopting this approach, organizations can create the time and space needed for more effective security efforts. When evaluated in this context, the use of ASPM and similar tools clearly offers significant benefits in achieving this goal.