Report by Rein Security
The Great AppSec Reality Check: 2026 Survey Report
Key Findings
62% of security professionals are blind to shadow or undocumented APIs.
73% of SCA users lack visibility into whether flagged vulnerabilities are exploitable in production.
46% of security teams struggle to correlate Model Context Protocol (MCP) actions with execution outcomes.
48% of security teams report blind spots around prompt injection chains or tool-chaining abuse in AI-native applications.
88% of CISOs and AppSec executives are willing to replace API security solutions.
81% of CISOs and AppSec executives are willing to pivot to new MCP protection tools.
55% of CISOs and AppSec executives are willing to replace RASP.
52% of CISOs and AppSec executives are willing to replace SCA.
49% of CISOs and AppSec executives are willing to replace SAST/DAST.
13% of CISOs and AppSec executives use agent-based deployment.
87% of CISOs and AppSec executives prefer agentless, package-based, or simple CI/CD-based deployment.
68% of ASPM platform users struggle to prove posture and risk to leadership or auditors.
67% of ASPM platform users cite data gaps and missing telemetry that create blind spots.
Over 75% of security professionals do not have the real-time production insight necessary to validate risk and understand how their code behaves in real-world environments.
72% of SAST/DAST users are challenged by an overwhelming number of false positives.
63% of mid-sized AppSec teams (11–50 members) that use SCA cite the inability to verify if vulnerabilities are exploitable in production as their biggest pain point.
58% of large AppSec teams (50 members or more) that use SCA cite the inability to verify if vulnerabilities are exploitable in production as a major pain point.
93% of CISOs and AppSec executives are ready to replace or purchase new AI-native application protection.
60% of ASPM platform users say issues are still ranked by theoretical severity instead of real exposure or exploitability.
16% of CISOs and AppSec executives want to consolidate the AppSec toolchain into one platform.
38% of small AppSec teams (1–10 members) that use SCA cite the inability to verify if vulnerabilities are exploitable in production as their biggest pain point.