ASPM explained
Application security posture management (ASPM) is the continuous process of discovering, prioritizing, and remediating risks across the software development lifecycle. While tools like SAST and DAST test specific stages, ASPM unifies them. This connects findings by adding context and enforcing policy across the full application lifecycle.
Gartner describes ASPM as an approach that assesses “security signals” across the three key SDLC phases to boost visibility, enforce security policies, and ultimately, strengthen organizations’ overall security posture. With a code-to-cloud context, ASPM can connect the dots across all your tools and stages. This helps your security team with more accurate prioritization and faster remediation.
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The need for ASPM
Organizations increasingly rely on complex systems with distributed applications and new risks. For example, in the State of Code Security in 2025, Wiz Research found that 61% of organizations have secrets exposed in public repositories.
The way to combat traditional risks, while defending against new technologies, is by adopting cloud native technologies, including the right ASPM. Several factors contribute to the growing necessity of ASPM:
Accelerated development cycles: With the adoption of DevOps and Agile methodologies, software is being developed and deployed at unprecedented speeds. This rapid pace often leaves security teams scrambling to keep up, potentially leading to critical vulnerabilities slipping through the cracks.
Expanding attack surface: Modern applications are no longer monolithic structures. They're composed of microservices, APIs, and third-party components, significantly expanding the potential attack surface. This complexity makes it challenging to maintain a comprehensive view of an organization's security posture.
Cloud and container adoption: The shift to cloud-native architectures and containerization has introduced new security challenges. Traditional security tools often lack visibility into these dynamic environments, creating blind spots in security coverage.
Software supply chain risks: Recent high-profile attacks have highlighted the vulnerabilities in the software supply chain. Organizations need better visibility and control over the security of third-party components and dependencies integrated into their applications.
Resource constraints and siloed security tools: Security teams are often understaffed and overwhelmed by the volume of security alerts and vulnerabilities. Plus, with fragmented tools, it’s hard to get a unified view of security. They need tools that can help prioritize application risks and streamline remediation efforts.
ASPM addresses these challenges by providing a unified, comprehensive approach to application security. It offers continuous visibility across the entire application portfolio, helps prioritize risks based on business impact, and facilitates collaboration between security and development teams. By doing so, ASPM enables you to manage your application security posture more effectively in the face of evolving threats and complex IT environments.
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How ASPM works
These key professionals and teams would use ASPM for the following:
AppSec engineers: to prioritize and remediate code-level vulnerabilities
Cloud security teams: to correlate risks across runtime, containers, and infrastructure
Developers: to scan and fix issues earlier in the workflow
GRC teams: to manage compliance posture and generate audit trails
Implementing ASPM involves using an ASPM solution that carries out the following processes.
Software discovery and inventorying
ASPM identifies all apps—and their respective components—in an enterprise’s IT system. It then creates up-to-date and comprehensive software composition analysis (SCA) and software bill of material (SBOM) reports that help you understand the components used during app development, their origins, vulnerabilities, and how to resolve them.
Vulnerability scanning
ASPM assesses all applications and app components for threats, misconfigurations, and non-compliance violations. It also scans software development, testing, and CI/CD pipelines for code-level vulnerabilities, leaked secrets, and more.
Triage
ASPM tools collate risks gathered from across your apps and security tools into a unified list, then they’re ranked based on severity levels and projected impact to your applications and overall business.
Remediation
ASPM platforms offer step-by-step guides and tools that Dev, Sec, and Ops teams can use to fix threats at varying stages without disrupting the SDLC. This includes capabilities like:
Auto-remediation to immediately resolve misconfigurations
Bulk remediation for resolving software supply chain security vulnerabilities affecting multiple software components at once
One-click remediation (e.g., integrating with workflows or triggering infrastructure changes) to isolate vulnerable systems or enforce secure defaults
Continuous monitoring
ASPM solutions scan your software stack round-the-clock for emerging threats, new misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities to keep your apps safe 24/7.
Benefits of ASPM
Apps have complex arrays of vulnerable components, endpoints, and data/input fields that make them attractive targets for denial-of-service (DoS), ransomware, and injection attacks. These can lead to data theft and exposure, render apps unavailable to end users, and result in hefty financial losses.
In the face of such attacks, ASPM is critical to boosting overall app security, availability, and reliability. Let’s take a closer look at why ASPM is important.
Data-driven visibility and threat mitigation
Besides continuously collecting risk data across multiple software development phases, ASPM consolidates security findings from all application security (AppSec) tools in your stack—including application security testing (AST) and database security scanning tools—into one unified dashboard.
ASPM delivers real-time data on vulnerabilities in your code, software components, APIs, security policies and processes, and more—before and after app deployment. It also allows you to see exactly what’s going on in your app from code to cloud, empowering you to effectively resolve threats and vulnerabilities before they become full-blown attacks.
Improved DevSecOps acceleration
ASPM shifts application layer security left, promoting a security-first approach that motivates developers to push only secure code.
When application and code security are prioritized, you can produce better quality apps with fewer vulnerabilities. This translates into fewer attacks, faster detection, less time spent remediating threats after the fact, and more time spent on innovation.
One example of security and opt-in improvement is with Bouygues Telecom. Leveraging Wiz for cloud security, the company embedded security into CI/CD with its infrastructure-as-code practices. The brand also democratized security and improved it for a more secure SDLC and reduced the burden on its team, like:
Using Wiz to allow developers to scan (and agentless scan) code before deployment
Empowering a shift left security champion program to drive adoption and cultural change across all teams
Gaining real-time visibility and incident routing with Wiz and ServiceNow integrations
The Wiz deployment was so successful, the tool may be used across all businesses owned by our parent, Bouygues, including construction, real estate development, and media organizations.
Mael Louvet, Cloud Expertise Manager, Bouygues Telecom
Redefining Secure Development: Uniting Dev and Sec with ASPM
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Competitive advantage and business continuity
Improving your application security posture from the get-go means building secure-by-design (SbD) apps. These shave off the extra time IT teams spend on reworking vulnerable code or app components, which speeds up SDLCs and helps get your product to the market first.
Similarly, when apps are innately secure, you typically have less downtime resulting from security incidents, ensuring high availability and allowing customers uninterrupted access to your applications.
Moreover, since it’s cheaper to prevent security incidents than to face the resulting financial and reputational damage, ASPM implementation is also cost-efficient.
Data protection and compliance management
ASPM safeguards data fields and databases containing PHI, PCI, PII, and other sensitive data from threats. ASPM tools also automate the creation of compliance reports and audit trails, making compliance management less burdensome.
By implementing ASPM, you inform your users that the top priorities are protecting their data and abiding by industry best practices/regulations. This enhances your company’s reputation and builds customer trust.
For example, Aon decided to automate compliance to improve management and protection. The company used 100+ frameworks with Wiz. What took hours now only takes minutes. Plus, it now has real-time visibility throughout cloud environments.
Aon also improved M&A security evaluations before deals close, which has added strategic value to its business ventures.
How ASPM operationalizes DevSecOps
ASPM and DevSecOps are complementary concepts in cybersecurity. DevSecOps represents a shift-left approach to software development, advocating for introducing app security in the early phases of the SDLC.
However, without ASPM, DevSecOps remains a largely abstract concept, and implementation is cumbersome. This is because it requires some degree of automation, the collaboration of three varied teams, and the adoption of a security-first mindset—all of which ASPM facilitates.
Essentially, ASPM engenders secure coding practices and automates DevSecOps processes across the SDLC, while also facilitating cross-team collaboration for improved app security. It streamlines security by enabling automated security gates in CI/CD pipelines. This provides shared dashboards for your development and security teams, so it’s easier to enforce policy and work together through risk remediation.
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ASPM vs. other security tools
While ASPM is crucial, it doesn’t replace other existing security tools and frameworks, namely, cloud security posture management (CSPM), data security posture management (DSPM), application security orchestration and correlation (ASOC), and software as a service security posture management (SSPM). One thing to note: ASPM fills a gap that these tools don't cover: application layer risk visibility across the SDLC.
Below, we compare ASPM to these platforms by way of their primary use cases.
| Tool | Use case |
|---|---|
| ASPM |
|
| CSPM |
|
| DSPM |
|
| ASOC |
|
| SSPM |
|
Key features of ASPM solutions: What to look for
ASPM solutions offer a range of essential features designed to enhance the security and resilience of applications. These key features enable organizations to gain visibility, identify risks, and streamline the management of their application security posture. Below are the critical features of ASPM:
1. Full-stack visibility
ASPM solutions provide comprehensive visibility across the entire application stack, from infrastructure to the code layer. This means gaining insights into configurations, permissions, dependencies, and vulnerabilities across all components, whether on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid environments.
Full-stack visibility ensures that no security blind spots are missed and that security teams can proactively identify and address potential risks.
2. Continuous monitoring and risk assessments
ASPM continuously monitors applications in real-time, allowing for the identification of misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and other security issues as they arise. This proactive approach ensures that organizations are always aware of their application security posture and can assess risks dynamically.
Continuous risk assessment prioritizes vulnerabilities based on severity, allowing teams to focus on the most critical issues first.
3. Integration with CI/CD pipelines
To keep pace with the rapid development cycles of modern applications, ASPM integrates seamlessly with continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
By embedding security checks early in the development process, ASPM helps ensure that vulnerabilities are detected and remediated before they make it into production. This approach promotes a shift-left security strategy, allowing teams to address security concerns as part of their development workflow.
4. Automated threat detection and remediation
Automation is a cornerstone of ASPM solutions, enabling automated threat detection and response capabilities. ASPM leverages intelligent automation to identify threats based on patterns, behaviors, or predefined rules.
Additionally, ASPM can offer automated remediation suggestions or trigger workflows to resolve vulnerabilities quickly, reducing the time between detection and resolution.
5. Compliance mapping and reports
ASPM solutions help organizations stay compliant with industry regulations and security frameworks by continuously monitoring applications for compliance-related issues. They provide comprehensive reporting and audit trails, ensuring that security and compliance teams can track and verify adherence to standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and more.
ASPM’s automated compliance checks reduce the burden of manual audits and ensure that applications remain secure and compliant over time.
6. Contextualized alerts and insights
Rather than overwhelming teams with endless security alerts, ASPM solutions deliver contextualized insights that help prioritize responses.
By correlating data from across the application stack, ASPM provides a deeper understanding of each vulnerability's context—whether related to a critical component, a high-value asset, or a low-risk issue—allowing teams to make informed decisions quickly.
7. Remediation guidance and best practices
ASPM solutions go beyond simply identifying issues—they also provide actionable remediation guidance. This includes offering recommendations for resolving vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or compliance gaps.
Many ASPM tools include access to security best practices and automated workflows to streamline remediation efforts, helping development and security teams stay aligned.
Wiz's approach to ASPM
Traditional appsec tools stop at detection. Wiz Code goes further by tying vulnerabilities to runtime context and business risk. Additionally, Wiz combines ASPM and CNAPP capabilities so organizations can seamlessly connect code-to-cloud visibility with contextual risk prioritization for faster and more effective remediation. Wiz Code offers the following:
Built-in scanners
Wiz's built-in scanners detect a wide range of application security risks:
Software composition analysis (SCA): Identifies vulnerabilities in open-source dependencies
Static application security testing (SAST): Detects security issues in custom code
Infrastructure as code (IaC) scanning: Finds misconfigurations in infrastructure definitions
Container image scanning: Identifies vulnerabilities in container images
These scanners work across multiple programming languages and frameworks, providing broad coverage for application security.
Code-to-cloud context
Wiz Code provides a comprehensive view of application security by connecting code vulnerabilities to their runtime impact in the cloud. This approach does the following:
Identifies vulnerabilities in application code and third-party dependencies
Maps these vulnerabilities to their actual deployment in cloud environments
Provides context on whether vulnerable code is exposed to the internet or contains sensitive data
Risk prioritization
Idan Cohen, Technology Procurement at Wiz, explains the platform’s approach to risk prioritization in a Wiz Bite talk:
“We reduce the alert fatigue of the enormous amount of vulnerabilities companies are facing by focusing on the resources that truly matter—the ones with the biggest attack surface, the biggest blast radius through identity or secrets, or the most critical assets.”
What does reducing alert fatigue and improving security look like? Wiz's approach to risk prioritization in ASPM includes:
Considering both the severity of code vulnerabilities and their cloud exposure
Highlighting high-risk issues that are actively exploitable in production
Reducing alert fatigue by focusing on the most critical security concerns
Third-party findings integrations
Wiz doesn't limit itself to its own scanners. It also ingests findings from third-party tools:
Integrates results from external SAST and DAST tools
Consolidates security findings from various sources into a single view
Provides a holistic picture of application security across different testing methodologies
The integration depth can vary by tool, so it’s important to research your third-party tools for Wiz capabilities. You can schedule a Wiz demo yourself to learn more about how the platform can work with your ecosystem.
Integrated security workflow
The ASPM capabilities of Wiz Code streamline the security workflow by:
Offering a single pane of glass for both cloud and application security
Enabling security teams to triage and remediate vulnerabilities more efficiently
Providing developers with actionable insights to fix issues earlier in the development cycle
Continuous monitoring
Wiz Code supports continuous ASPM by:
Scanning code repositories and cloud environments in real-time
Detecting new vulnerabilities as they emerge in the application lifecycle
Tracking the remediation progress of identified issues
Enhanced collaboration
By integrating ASPM capabilities, Wiz Code fosters better collaboration between security and development teams through the following:
Providing a shared view of application risks across different stakeholders
Facilitating clearer communication about security priorities
Supporting a shift-left approach to security in the software development lifecycle
Watch 5-min demo: How Wiz secures applications
See how Wiz connects code to cloud context using the Security Graph, highlights real code issues, enforces CI/CD policies, and enables one-click remediation—all in a single platform.
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Wiz Code's approach to ASPM represents a significant evolution in application security, moving beyond traditional SAST and DAST tools to provide a more holistic, cloud-native security solution that addresses the complexities of modern application development and deployment. Want a security layer that connects code to cloud risk? Book a Wiz Code demo to see how ASPM should work—agentless, contextual, and built for real-world DevSecOps workflows.
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