What is ASPM, or application security posture management?

ASPM overview

Application security posture management (ASPM) aims to centralize and correlate data from multiple application security sources and can be understood both as a capability and as a specific category of tools. As a capability, ASPM supports a risk-based approach to managing security posture across the entire software development lifecycle. As a tool category, it combines intelligence from multiple data sources into a unified view of application security across development and production environments.

The crucial point to remember is that “pure” ASPM solutions don’t discover any vulnerabilities on their own. Instead, they aggregate findings from security posture and AST tools like DAST (dynamic application security testing), SAST (static application security testing), SCA (software composition analysis), and cloud security solutions to visualize application risk, track issues, and prioritize remediation across functions, cloud environments, and cloud infrastructure.

Why ASPM is important

Modern application environments are complex, with sprawling development pipelines, distributed architectures, and multiple security tools in various states of integration. Over the years, organizations tend to end up with many point solutions that only report on a small part of the overall security posture. Without centralized oversight, it’s difficult to know what assets you have, where your vulnerabilities are, and which ones matter most.

ASPM helps security and development teams get a clearer picture of their application security posture and respond more effectively. It aids issue prioritization, improves coordination across silos, supports cybersecurity governance efforts, and reduces the risk of unresolved vulnerabilities making it into production.

ASPM vs. DevSecOps: Complementary approaches to AppSec

Running ASPM does not replace DevSecOps processes but actually enhances them. By correlating findings from tools all across the SDLC, ASPM helps ensure that application security testing is consistent, complete, and continuously improving. It can also support shift-left initiatives by correlating results from SAST and SCA with other tools and making early-stage security findings more actionable.

How ASPM works

Dedicated ASPM solutions are essentially data aggregators that collect security findings from a wide variety of tools and correlate them to present a centralized view of vulnerabilities across the organization’s attack surface.

Software discovery and inventory

ASPM platforms help security teams maintain visibility into their inventory of applications, APIs, open-source components, and other assets. This includes mapping deployed environments, identifying misconfigurations, and tracking coverage of security solutions.

Vulnerability scanning

A typical ASPM tool doesn’t perform application security testing directly but relies on connected AST tools to supply vulnerability data. It ingests findings from DAST, SAST, SCA, CSPM (cloud security posture management), and sometimes IAST or manual testing.

Triage

By aggregating results across tools and contexts, ASPM helps prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity, exploitability, and business risk. This process supports cybersecurity efforts by reducing alert fatigue and aiding prioritization.

Remediation

ASPM can expedite remediation by correlating findings with code owners, development workflows, and systems. Some platforms include automation and orchestration features such as ticketing integration or remediation playbooks.

Continuous monitoring

Security posture is tracked over time to detect regressions, monitor fixes, and maintain compliance. ASPM dashboards often highlight trends, surface emerging security risks, and support end-to-end vulnerability management across the entire application lifecycle.

The benefits of ASPM

• Data-driven threat identification and mitigation: ASPM platforms provide a centralized view for understanding real attack exposure across environments. This enables risk assessment, risk management, and more effective security policies and controls.
• Enhanced security and DevOps collaboration: By connecting security data with development workflows and tools, ASPM promotes cross-team collaboration and embeds application security into the development process.
• Data protection and compliance management: Centralized tracking of security vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and dependencies supports compliance efforts and improves overall application security posture.

ASPM compared to security testing

One misconception about ASPM is that it can replace security testing tools and processes. In reality, it only serves to orchestrate them and provide a more centralized and usable view of the data they generate.

ASPM vs. vulnerability scanning

Application vulnerability scanners test live apps to discover security flaws. Most ASPM platforms don’t do any scanning themselves but rather depend on those scanners for input. Without high-quality security checks delivering accurate scan results, ASPM provides limited value.

ASPM vs. pentesting

The high-level aim of both ASPM and penetration testing is to understand security posture, but the two are very different. Penetration testing is a point-in-time activity conducted by security professionals using a variety of tools, while ASPM is intended to consume and process data from security tools in an automated and continuous way. Pentest and ASPM results are usually presented and acted on separately.

ASPM vs. DAST

DAST solutions are built around an application vulnerability scanner but provide far more functionality than only running scans on previously known targets and returning results. Invicti, in particular, offers an entire DAST-first AppSec platform that also incorporates discovery, multiple AST modules, API security, vulnerability management, and more, in effect doing many of the things expected from ASPM.

When using a standalone ASPM, runtime analysis with DAST serves as one of many data sources that are being aggregated. Because of its potential to verify exploitability, DAST can greatly improve the quality of ASPM results—but only if the DAST tool provides accurate and reliable findings, as with Invicti’s proof-based scanning.

Key features and benefits of ASPM

ASPM platforms provide a structured approach to managing application security data from disparate sources. While ASPM itself is a very young market category, it’s interesting to note how many of the most valuable ASPM features align directly with capabilities found in Invicti’s DAST-first platform, which is built on decades of vulnerability scanning expertise. This overlap illustrates the importance of addressing the core AppSec problem of getting actionable insights from AST tools and data sources.

Unified visibility across your entire application stack

Both ASPM and Invicti’s DAST-first platform offer a consolidated view of applications, services, APIs, and software supply chain components. In addition, Invicti’s continuous discovery capabilities help surface unknown or forgotten assets and highlight weak spots in your attack surface.

Real-time monitoring with risk-based assessments

Most ASPM tools rely solely on ingested data to monitor security posture, but Invicti provides real-time vulnerability validation through active scanning at runtime. By confirming exploitability, Invicti enables more accurate risk assessment and better prioritization of security issues.

Seamless integration into CI/CD workflows

One driver of ASPM adoption is to get a single point of CI/CD integration for multiple AST tools. This application security orchestration (ASOC) capability enables ASPM platforms to receive current, actionable data without manual effort. Invicti’s DAST-first platform was also designed to integrate into CI/CD pipelines, providing similar orchestration across all its native and partner-supplied AST modules.

Proven vulnerability detection with automated validation

The primary reason for the existence of ASPM is to extract actionable insights from noisy AST data. With Invicti’s DAST-first platform, this problem doesn’t exist in the first place. Invicti’s proof-based scanning technology confirms many types of vulnerabilities during scanning, making the data inherently trustworthy and easier to act on—whether fed into ASPM dashboards as DAST results or consumed within the Invicti platform and its integrations.

Built-in compliance tracking and reporting

ASPM helps track compliance over time by aggregating security tool data and identifying trends. The Invicti platform can support this with accurate, verified DAST security findings mapped to frameworks, but it also provides vulnerability trend tracking and customizable reporting in its own right.

Developer-ready remediation steps and secure coding guidance

Whether used standalone or plugged into an ASPM, Invicti DAST provides detailed remediation guidance alongside confirmed findings, helping development teams resolve issues quickly. When surfaced through ASPM workflows, this is extremely valuable to aid prioritization and speed up fixes.

ASPM and DAST-first: Two approaches to zero-noise AppSec

The need for dedicated ASPM ultimately comes from security tool sprawl. ASPM provides the structure to interpret security data—but without the right data sources, it’s only part of the picture. On top of that, you are adding yet another tool into the mix to make sense of all the tools you already have.

One way to curb tool sprawl without sacrificing flexibility is with a DAST-first application security platform like Invicti. When acting as DAST alone, it feeds ASPM tools with validated, actionable findings to greatly improve overall result quality. But when used to its full potential, Invicti offers many capabilities of an ASPM—backed by an entire AST toolkit.

By combining multiple native and partner-supplied AST tools with continuous discovery, real-time risk visibility, proof-based validation, and developer-ready remediation, Invicti helps security teams understand and manage their true security posture across applications and APIs—whether or not a separate ASPM platform is involved.

To see how Invicti enables complete, continuous, and proven application security and API posture management at scale, get a demo or talk to our team.