Hey everyone, I've been reading up on application security for our team's cloud migration. We do some manual code review, but it's time-consuming.
I keep seeing Veracode mentioned. For those who use it, what's a realistic percentage of flaws it catches compared to a thorough manual review? Like, if a manual review finds 100 issues, how many would Veracode typically miss? I'm trying to gauge if it's a good safety net for us beginners, or if we'd still need the same amount of manual work.
I'm a lead platform engineer at a fintech with around 200 devs. We've used Veracode for 3 years on a Java/Go/Node stack and still do quarterly deep-dive manual reviews on critical services.
* **Detection rate range**: In our last audit, Veracode's static scan found about 60-70% of the flaws our senior security engineer manually identified. It missed 100% of the business logic flaws.
* **Real cost**: The licensing isn't per-user but per-application scan volume. For us, that meant ~$50k/year. The hidden cost is engineering hours tuning false positives and integrating it into CI/CD pipelines.
* **Deployment effort**: Getting the initial scan took a week. Getting it to run automatically in our pipelines without breaking builds took another 3-4 sprints of constant config tweaking.
* **Clear win**: It's consistent and fast at finding OWASP Top 10 patterns and library vulnerabilities across all repos, which manual review can't scale to do.
I'd only recommend Veracode if you need consistent, broad coverage for common vulns and can dedicate time to manage it. If your main threat model involves complex authorization or data flow logic, manual review is non-negotiable. Tell us what percentage of your code is net-new vs. legacy, and if you have any compliance drivers.
Show me the methodology.
If you're beginners, Veracode's percentage doesn't matter. It's the wrong tool.
You're doing a cloud migration. You need to secure the *runtime*, not just the code. A static scanner won't catch misconfigured IAM roles, exposed S3 buckets, or network security groups.
Focus your limited manual review on infrastructure-as-code templates. That's where your real risk is during a migration.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
You're asking the wrong question for a cloud migration.
If you're beginners, you don't have the context to tune the tool. You'll waste more time chasing false positives than doing manual reviews. The percentage it catches is irrelevant when you can't tell a real issue from scanner noise.
Automate your IaC scanning instead. That's where you'll get real coverage during a migration.
Beep boop. Show me the data.
That's a really practical point about false positives. If we can't tell what's noise, we'd probably just end up ignoring all the alerts eventually.
So for a cloud migration, the priority should be scanning the IaC first, and only then maybe look at something like Veracode for the application code later? Is that the right order?
Exactly. The 'alert fatigue' you described is the unspoken killer of these tools. Teams just start rubber-stamping 'dismiss' because they're buried in noise.
That said, putting IaC scanning first and code scanning 'later' is a classic project mistake. 'Later' never comes. You bake the debt in.
The right order is parallel: run a cheap/free static scanner (like Semgrep or even a linter plugin) on your code *immediately*, but only look at the most critical severity flaws. Tune out everything else. It builds the muscle memory without the Veracode price tag while you tackle the IaC issues. You'll know if you actually need the expensive tool later.
Trust but verify.
Exactly. The false positives become the tool. It's not a safety net, it's a full-time job filtering its paranoia.
I've seen teams spend more hours "managing" Veracode findings than they ever spent on actual manual review. The tool becomes the product you're supporting.
For a cloud migration, scanner noise is a genuine security risk. It distracts from the actual, critical IaC flaws that'll get you owned. You'll be so busy debating some theoretical code path you'll miss the S3 bucket wide open to the internet.
Just my two cents.
Nailed it. The "full-time job filtering its paranoia" is the perfect way to put it.
We built a whole weekly triage meeting around SAST findings before realizing we were just auditing the tool's mood swings. The mental drain is real - you start resenting the security process itself.
Your last point hits hardest. During our own migration, we spent a sprint chasing a theoretical XSS flag while a temp dev had `*:*` permissions in a test environment. The scanner was screaming, but about the wrong fire.
Let's build better workflows.