Burlington, MA – April 14, 2009 – Veracode Inc., provider of the world’s leading Application Risk Management Platform, today announced the findings of an independent commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Veracode titled, “Application Risk Management in Business Survey.” The survey revealed that enterprises are struggling to protect their organizations from the costly and growing threat of application security breaches. The study interviewed development, security and risk professionals across the US & UK, and confirmed that risk associated with insecure software is a very real concern and a top priority for management and developers alike.

The survey of nearly 200 businesses, found that more than 62% of organizations have experienced a security breach in the past 12 months due to exploitation of vulnerabilities in their critical software applications. The study also found that while companies feel they know the make-up and business criticality of their mixed application portfolios, there is little confidence in the security quality of their applications.

“Companies are not doing enough to ensure the security of open source code, outsourced code and commercial applications,” according to the study by Forrester Consulting.

Other key findings:

 

• Few companies know the security quality of business critical applications.

Only 13% of respondents know the security quality of all their business applications which they deem critical to the enterprise.

• Enterprises are increasing scrutiny on ISVs and outsourcers for delivering secure code.

60% of respondents stated they are actively incorporating (or have already adopted) third party security assessments as part of software procurement processes for COTS or outsourced code.

• Security as part of the software development process is not widely practiced.

Only 34% of companies have a comprehensive SDLC process which integrates application security.

• Most enterprises lack formal secure development training programs.

57% of organizations don’t have systematic training programs addressing application security training for their developers.

• Security spending is not immune to economic conditions.

64% of respondents stated that while application security is important to them, they are struggling to meet the challenge on existing budgets.

“The same economic forces driving enterprises to use 3rd party applications are also increasing the risk of insecure software” says Matt Moynahan, CEO of Veracode. “Given the prolific use of third-parties to build business critical applications, global enterprises need a single flexible and cost-effective solution to seamlessly test the security across their entire application portfolio regardless of whether it was built internally or externally.”

Veracode will be sharing the complete findings of the survey in a webinar event on Thursday, May 7th at 1pm ET, featuring Forrester analyst, Chenxi Wang, and Veracode CTO, Chris Wysopal. Register for the webinar event at:

http://www.veracode.com/resources/survey-webcast-signup.html

About Veracode

Veracode provides the world’s leading Application Risk Management Platform. Veracode SecurityReview‘s patented and proven cloud-based capabilities allow customers to govern and mitigate software security risk across a single application or an enterprise portfolio with unmatched simplicity. Customers include the world’s largest and most security aware organizations in every industry. Recognized as a Gartner “Cool Vendor,” The Wall Street Journal’s “Technology Innovation Award,” The Banker’s “Information Security Project of the Year” with Barclays, SC Magazine’s “Best Vulnerability Assessment Solution,” Information Security “Readers’ Choice Award,” and AlwaysOn Northeast’s “Top 100 Private Company,” Veracode is Software Security Simplified™. For more information, visit www.veracode.com.

Contact:
Beth Cossette
Lois Paul & Partners
781-782-5715 Beth_Cossette@lpp.com