We’ve reached an inflection point in application security. Teams are drowning in signals from SAST scanners, SCA tools, pull request checks, and code quality analyzers— each requiring attention and management. Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) has emerged to address this challenge but what does ASPM mean when you’re the one responsible for making sense of it all?
Here’s my take: ASPM is the orchestration layer that transforms scattered signals into an actionable defense strategy. It’s not another dashboard, it’s the system that answers two fundamental questions: What is this signal telling us? And what is my next best move?
The power of ASPM emerges when we position security tools as complementary signal sources rather than competing products. Think of your pipeline as a timeline with “left” (early development) and “right” (pre-production) stages.
Static analysis and code quality tools defend the left side of the pipeline. They catch issues during active development, pointing to suspect and insecure coding patterns, dependency vulnerabilities, and quality violations that indicate deeper problems.
These tools enforce security hygiene and best practices before code ever reaches review. When developers get feedback in their IDE or during local builds, we’re building defensive habits, not just finding bugs.
Pull request (PR) scanning defends the right side. It’s your last programmatic gate before code merges into protected branches. PR checks validate that left-side defenses worked, catch issues that slipped through, and enforce policy at the most critical decision point. By the time code reaches PR review, we want security to be a checkbox, not a bottleneck.
Every security tool generates signals, but signals without context are just noise. ASPM platforms must do three things:
Your ASPM should consume findings from SAST, SCA, secrets detection, container scanning, and infrastructure checks. If a tool can’t export its data or your ASPM can’t import it, you have a gap.
That critical SQL injection finding from your SAST tool and the database security violation from code review? They’re the same issue. ASPM should connect those dots automatically.
A vulnerable dependency in a microservice that handles payment data deserves different urgency than the same vulnerability in an internal tool. An ASPM that includes some amount of the business context provides a view on risk that individual scanners lack.
The question isn’t whether you need ASPM but how you implement it. Start by mapping your current signal sources:
Then ask the hard question: What are we actually doing with these signals? What are these signals telling us? If findings sit in separate dashboards while developers ignore them, your tools aren’t providing security; they are providing security theater at best, but are more likely just providing noise.
Effective ASPM tells you what to work on next. It prioritizes the critical path through your findings. It shows you which issues block deployment (whether due to compliance, governance, or contractual requirements (GRC)), which need remediation this sprint, and which can wait. Most importantly, it connects security signals to developer workflows so remediation becomes part of the process, not a separate project.
We’re moving from asking “What did our tools find?” to asking “What should our teams do?” That’s the promise of ASPM done right.
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JD Burke is a seasoned technology professional with over 20 years of experience in product management and application security, currently serving as Director of Security Products at Sembi. His deep expertise in application security testing spans SAST, SCA, and DevOps integration, demonstrated through senior technical roles at leading cybersecurity companies. His technical foundation includes systems architecture experience. He combines strong product management skills with hands-on application security knowledge, having successfully led cross-functional teams through strategic planning, feature development, and market positioning while maintaining expertise in vulnerability assessment, compliance frameworks, and security tool integration.
