You said it yourself with >we'd rely heavily on our own rules. That's the ballgame.
Forget the license fee math. The real TCO is in those weeks a Snyk support ticket sits idle while your custom loan validation pattern goes unchecked. In fintech, that's not just noise, it's unmitigated risk.
Semgrep's YAML means you can codify your PII wrapper rule between standup and your second coffee. That's your noise control and it ships with the PR.
Deploy with love
That's a great example. Coffee break to deployed rule is a huge win.
But who writes those rules? On my team, devs are still learning. Is there a risk we mess up our own custom rules and create a false sense of security for something like a PII wrapper?
That first minimal rule set is the only way to get buy-in. We started with a single rule for hardcoded AWS region strings that was a recurring code review note. Took ten minutes to write, blocked the next PR, and the team was sold.
But to your point, the key is those rules *must* come from real, recent dev pain points. Pulling them from an old security audit doc just creates noise again.
Yeah, starting small with a rule for an existing pain point is brilliant. Makes the tool feel like a helper, not a cop.
But how do you get from that first simple rule to something complex like a PII wrapper? Is there a learning curve, or can you build on basic patterns without becoming a full-time rules engineer?