Software teams are releasing faster than ever, but security isn’t keeping up. Across industries, companies push updates weekly or even daily, and when vulnerabilities surface, those same teams often take weeks or months to fix them. Industry analysts have revealed that organizations take an average of 4.5 months to remediate critical vulnerabilities, while attackers can exploit these vulnerabilities within 15 days of discovery.
So, where is the misstep? The security signals exist, they’re just not going through the same pipelines teams use for quality. That gap is a direct result of how teams define “quality.” Developers often think of quality as bug-free builds and code coverage; business leaders focus on speed to market; designers care about the user interface; and somewhere in between is security, usually boxed off into its own lane and handled by a separate team. And that’s where things start to break.
Too often, vulnerability data travels a different path than functional bugs. Testing failures might trigger an automated ticket or block a release. A security finding? That might live in a spreadsheet or a siloed tool, but no one checks during the sprint. The difference isn’t detection; it’s delivery. Security can’t influence product quality if it’s never in the same place at the same time.
Signal Overload, Signal Decay
Modern tools can surface everything from misconfigurations and outdated libraries to API abuse and flawed logic. However, most development teams still lack a clear, consistent way to act on those alerts. Volume is a major part of the problem: A single static analysis scan can generate thousands of findings, and dynamic scanners and open-source dependency tools add even more noise. False positives are frequent, severity ratings vary and unless a vulnerability is tied to something urgent in production, it often slips down the backlog or gets ignored altogether.
Staffing shortages and alarm fatigue are rampant in cybersecurity, failing to address up to 30% of generated alerts. This creates major blind spots across DevSecOps pipelines. Despite security being a stated priority and part of established frameworks like ISO 25000, critical signals often fail to reach developers during active coding. Security issues lack standardized triage, consistent severity language and integration with agile workflows. Unlike functional bugs, security remains detached and operates outside this integrated cadence.
Treat Security Failures Like Product Bugs
Security vulnerabilities are just as real and urgent as traditional software bugs. They represent functional failures that can be exploited but are often managed outside the established quality assurance process. Because they come from different tools and teams, they rarely follow the same workflow as test failures or UI defects, and that isolation slows everything down.
The solution isn’t more policy; it’s better integration. When vulnerabilities are logged and tracked like other quality assurance (QA) issues, they’re more likely to be reviewed, prioritized and resolved. Feeding security signals into the same systems helps put them on equal footing with other product quality concerns. It also requires rethinking how those issues are prioritized. A sluggish user interface (UI) might trigger an immediate ticket for the next sprint, and a reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability should follow the same logic. If it’s critical, it gets addressed. If it’s lower risk, it’s still tracked, scheduled and revisited. But that only works when security is part of the broader QA and dev cycle, not floating in its own lane.
The Lag is Organizational, Not Just Technical
Security issues often require more context than a failed unit test. Before acting, teams need to know: Is the vulnerable code path even exposed? Is it running in production? Is there a compensating control in place? Getting those answers typically means multiple handoffs between security engineers, developers, QA and product owners.
That process falls apart when the tooling is disconnected and responsibilities aren’t clearly defined. QA teams are often left entirely out of security conversations because product managers may not have the technical background to interpret scanner outputs. At the same time, security engineers might flag issues without visibility into the backlog or sprint planning, where fixes get assigned.
Without coordination, findings stall. They remain unresolved because no one owns them or understands them. Meanwhile, the risk persists.
Teams that avoid this lag don’t necessarily have more advanced software tools. What they have is alignment. They treat security findings as part of the quality lifecycle, ensure the right people see them and use shared systems to act faster. It’s not about catching more vulnerabilities but moving quicker on the ones that matter.
Reframe the Risk Without Stopping the Release
Perfect builds don’t exist. Teams make tradeoffs daily, shipping with known bugs, unfinished UI elements, or workaround-heavy code due to strict release dates. Security should fit into that same decision-making process. Not every vulnerability is a showstopper, but the ones that are need visibility and urgency.
It’s not about blocking releases but making intentional calls with all the data in view. Teams already manage performance issues, testing gaps and feature flags this way. However, that only works if the information flows through the same systems. When teams leverage a unified platform that brings security, quality and testing tools together, they can better centralize insights, reduce noise and make faster, more informed decisions. If vulnerability data sits in a spreadsheet outside the sprint board, there’s no opportunity for a tradeoff, only delay.
Closing the Loop with Tools Teams Already Use
Effective security integrates directly into existing development workflows, leveraging familiar tools for test management, CI/CD and bug tracking. This approach transforms security alerts into actionable items within established processes, enabling teams to prioritize and manage risks alongside quality assurance. Crucially, it’s not the presence of vulnerabilities but their visibility and controlled management that defines secure development. By consolidating security data within existing platforms, teams gain comprehensive oversight, allowing them to address known risks strategically and prevent unknown exposures from escalating into critical problems.
The mechanics are already there. It’s just a matter of putting security on the same path.