Veracode 2026 report: The security debt crisis and high-risk vulnerability surge

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, keeping pace with software vulnerabilities is no longer an option. The pace of flaw creation is decisively outstripping the current capacity for remediation. Despite marginal gains in fix rates, the tide of security debt is rising.

"The path forward is not about running faster on a treadmill of endless flaws. It’s about making deliberate, intelligent choices about which risks to accept and which to neutralize."

The security debt crisis intensifies

Security debt, defined as known vulnerabilities left unresolved for more than a year, has surged dramatically. This is not a distant problem; it is a present reality for 82% of organizations, representing an 11% increase in a single year. The backlog is growing faster than remediation capacity can eliminate it.

Critical debt by the numbers

• Organizational impact: 60% of organizations are affected by critical security debt, a stark 20% rise from the previous year.
• High-risk surge: Vulnerabilities rated as both highly severe and highly exploitable have seen a 36% relative increase.
• Application-level debt: 49% of applications now carry security debt.

Detection vs. remediation

While organizations are successfully finding fewer flaws and improving detection rates, the data reveals a persistent struggle to fix them quickly enough to close the widening exposure window.

Progress in detection

• Flaw prevalence: The overall flaw prevalence across all scan types decreased to 78%.
• Fix speed: The half-life for flaw remediation across all scan types improved slightly to 243 days.

Struggles in remediation

• OWASP failure rate: Applications failing the OWASP Top 10 increased to 50%.
• Third-party fixes: The remediation half-life for third-party flaws remains exceptionally high at 358 days.
• Third-party challenges: Third-party code continues to dominate critical security debt, representing 66% of the most dangerous, long-lived vulnerabilities.

Actionable strategy: Prioritize, protect, prove

To combat these challenges, organizations must adopt a new approach. The pursuit of fixing every flaw is a race that cannot be won. This starts with identifying your crown jewel applications and focusing resources on the most critical areas. AI-assisted tools can help increase monthly fix capacity and efficiently address the long tail of repetitive vulnerabilities.