Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Explained

What is SAST?

SAST is a type of application security testing that analyzes source code, bytecode, or binaries for security vulnerabilities without executing the program.

SAST is an essential white-box testing method, meaning it doesn’t interact with the application externally but instead looks into the application source code and scans for vulnerabilities/malicious sections. Huge databases of security vulnerabilities power SAST tools, so they are optimized to find common programming mistakes that can lead to security gaps. Every security scanner that checks static assets instead of a running program can be considered a SAST tool. 

SAST is not limited to scanning lines of code, though. While some SAST tools can scan a specific programming language, others can also scan byte codes and assembly code in binaries. There are even SAST tools that scan XML files for external entity attacks. Some advanced SAST tools also analyze configuration files (e.g., XML or YAML) for issues such as insecure deserialization or XML External Entity (XXE) attacks.

Further, by allowing development and security teams to work closely together, SAST ensures code is implemented safely and needs fewer rewrites later.

Static application security testing should be part of every organization’s software development life cycle. Let’s examine SAST's ins and outs to see why.

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What challenges does SAST address?

SAST addresses common security challenges that arise early in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). By analyzing source code before applications run, SAST helps organizations:

• Identify Code-Level Vulnerabilities Early: SAST detects common coding flaws—such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and insecure API usage—before they make it into production environments.

• Shift Security Left: By integrating into developer workflows and CI/CD pipelines, SAST enables teams to catch and fix security issues during development, reducing remediation costs and delays later in the process.

• Enforce Secure Coding Standards: SAST helps teams adhere to secure coding best practices and frameworks like OWASP Top 10 and CWE/SANS by automatically flagging violations in code.

• Reduce Technical Debt: Detecting security flaws early prevents the accumulation of insecure code, minimizing future rework and keeping applications easier to maintain.

• Support Compliance Requirements: Many security and privacy frameworks—including PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and HIPAA—require organizations to adopt secure development practices. SAST provides a concrete way to demonstrate these efforts.

• Scale Security Reviews: SAST automates parts of the code review process, allowing organizations to consistently enforce security checks across large codebases and fast-moving development teams.

The benefits of SAST

SAST isn’t just about scanning code – it’s about giving teams the ability to build securely without breaking their development flow. When implemented effectively, it becomes a key pillar of scalable, developer-friendly application security.

1.Catch vulnerabilities early – when they’re easiest to fix

SAST helps teams find security issues during development, before code ever reaches production. The earlier a vulnerability is caught, the faster and cheaper it is to remediate – especially compared to fixing issues post-deployment or after an incident.

2. Give developers real-time, contextual feedback

With IDE and version control integrations, SAST surfaces issues the moment insecure code is written. Developers stay in flow while learning secure coding practices organically, reducing the need for rework and boosting security awareness over time.

3. Enforce secure coding standards consistently

SAST allows organizations to bake security into the development process. It flags violations of internal policies or external frameworks – such as OWASP Top 10 or CWE – so teams can maintain coding standards across every repo and contributor.

4. Scale security through automation

SAST fits seamlessly into CI/CD pipelines, enabling automated scans on every commit, pull request, or build. This ensures continuous coverage across large, fast-moving engineering teams without requiring manual intervention.

5. Strengthen compliance posture

Regulatory frameworks like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and ISO 27001 often require evidence of secure development practices. SAST provides auditable proof of proactive risk management at the code level, helping teams stay compliant without slowing down.

The limitations of SAST

While SAST is a powerful tool for identifying vulnerabilities early, it comes with trade-offs that teams need to understand and plan for. Without the right tuning and context, SAST can create more noise than value.

1.High signal-to-noise ratio – false positives are common

Because SAST analyzes code statically, without runtime awareness, it often flags theoretical vulnerabilities that aren’t actually exploitable. These false positives can overwhelm engineering teams, leading to alert fatigue or even tool abandonment if left unmanaged.

2. No visibility into runtime behavior

SAST can’t see how applications behave in production. It won’t detect runtime-specific issues like race conditions, logic flaws, environment misconfigurations, or abuse of external services. For that, teams need to complement SAST with dynamic testing tools (DAST) or runtime protection.

3. Requires ongoing tuning and rule maintenance

SAST isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it solution. Rules need to be reviewed and refined over time to reduce noise, reflect changes in the codebase, and account for evolving attack patterns. Without this ongoing care, SAST tools risk becoming outdated or overly noisy.

4. Limited understanding of context and impact

SAST can’t distinguish between a vulnerable piece of code running in a locked-down internal service versus one deployed to an internet-facing workload with access to sensitive data. Without cloud or runtime context, all findings are treated equally—even when the risk isn’t.

To get the most out of SAST, teams need to integrate it thoughtfully, tune it regularly, and combine its insights with tools that offer deeper runtime and cloud visibility.

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How does SAST work?

SAST tools analyze code without executing it. They scan source code, markup, bytecode, or binaries for patterns that match known security vulnerabilities, insecure configurations, or common coding flaws.

These tools rely on rulesets or vulnerability databases, either local or cloud-based, to detect risky constructs. For example, they might flag unsanitized inputs, insecure function calls, or outdated libraries based on language-specific rules.

Developer integrations: IDEs and CLIs

SAST tools are typically integrated into two developer workflows:

• IDE extensions provide real-time feedback as developers write code, surfacing security issues inline before code is committed.

• Command-line tools can be connected to version control systems, allowing scans to run automatically during commits, pull requests, or builds.

The goal is to catch issues as early as possible. Ideally, SAST identifies problems before they reach version control, but it can still uncover risks in existing code when run later in the pipeline.

Continuous scanning through CI/CD

Because vulnerability lists are constantly updated, it's important to integrate SAST into CI/CD pipelines. This allows your codebase to be re-scanned continuously as new threats emerge, ensuring older code remains secure over time.

Embedding SAST into development and CI/CD workflows helps create a continuous feedback loop that improves security posture without slowing down delivery.

SAST vs. DAST: What’s the Difference?

SAST and DAST take fundamentally different approaches to application security testing, each with its own strengths and blind spots. Understanding how they differ helps teams build a more complete testing strategy.

SAST: White-box analysis of static code

SAST analyzes source code, bytecode, or binaries without running the application. It inspects the internal logic of the code to identify issues like injection flaws, insecure configurations, or hardcoded secrets. Since it doesn’t require a live environment, SAST is fast, shift-left friendly, and works early in the development process.

• Input: Source code, markup, binaries

• Focus: Code structure and logic

• Strengths: Early detection, developer-friendly, integrates into CI/CD

• Limitations: Lacks runtime context, prone to false positives

DAST: Black-box testing in a running environment

DAST tests an application from the outside, mimicking how an attacker might interact with it. It sends known attack payloads (e.g., SQL injection, XSS) to live endpoints and observes how the system responds. Because it works against the deployed app, DAST can uncover runtime-specific vulnerabilities that SAST can’t see.

• Input: Running application or service

• Focus: Runtime behavior and responses

• Strengths: Finds logic flaws, misconfigurations, runtime issues

• Limitations: Slower, less granular, can't pinpoint issues in code

Complementary approaches for defense in depth

SAST and DAST aren’t competitors—they’re complementary. SAST is ideal for catching issues during development, while DAST excels at detecting vulnerabilities that only appear when the application is live. Teams can also explore Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) for a hybrid approach that combines elements of both.

When used together, along with runtime protection and cloud context, SAST and DAST help build a layered security posture that catches more issues, earlier and later in the lifecycle.

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What are the most popular open-source SAST tools?

For teams testing SAST or operating in OSS-heavy environments, these free SAST tools offer strong coverage across common stacks.

While open-source tools are valuable, enterprise-grade SAST tools are effective, particularly for integration with cloud-native environments.

Put SAST Findings in Cloud Context with Wiz Code

SAST helps teams catch code-level vulnerabilities early – but without runtime or deployment context, even critical findings can get lost in the noise. Traditional security tooling has long operated in silos, with SAST focused on static code and CNAPP platforms focused on cloud infrastructure and runtime. But in today’s fast-moving, cloud-native environments, security teams need more than isolated results – they need a unified view.

Wiz Code bridges this gap by ingesting SAST findings from tools like Semgrep and Checkmarx through the Wiz Integration (WIN) Platform and correlating them with real-time cloud data in the Wiz Security Graph. This lets teams see which code-level vulnerabilities actually affect live workloads, are publicly exposed, or sit adjacent to sensitive data – so they can prioritize what truly matters.

Whether it’s a cookie misconfiguration detected by Checkmarx or a logic flaw caught by Semgrep, Wiz Code links those issues to the relevant cloud resources, deployment paths, and access identities. This context turns static alerts into actionable, risk-ranked insights. The result is a more complete approach to application security – one that connects code to cloud, reduces noise, and helps teams remediate the highest-impact risks faster.

Learn more about code security with Wiz’s free State of Code Security in 2025. 

If you want to improve your SAST scanning and security, try Wiz. The platform offers a context-aware vulnerability assessment that considers both static code analysis and the runtime cloud environment. Prioritize and validate vulnerabilities identified through SAST today.