My To-Do List Never Ends. Neither Does Your Vulnerability Queue.

I love a good list. In fact, right up there with the wheel, fire, and the spring, I consider the list to be one of humanity’s preeminent technologies (along with hyperbole). Among my collection of coffee-table books, I even have a book of notable lists.

It’s why, more often than not, my morning starts with the question:

“What does my to-do list look like today?”

Of course, the answer to that question looks different for everyone, but it always depends on what was accomplished (or not accomplished) yesterday, and what new tasks appeared overnight.

For a developer, the answer might include a new feature to ship, but a pull request is waiting for review when they log on. For someone working in security, it might mean another vulnerability to investigate and fix. We all have a never-ending list somewhere in our lives, and “to-do list zero” continues to elude us mere mortals.

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an opportunity for AppSec organizations and the individuals working within them to evaluate the risks they face in 2026 and what gets in the way of addressing them. Security teams have to stay on top of their vulnerabilities as software evolves, often without a corresponding increase in the time or resources available to fix them.

Meanwhile, the work itself is changing. As AI redefines how software is developed, suddenly there’s more code to secure than ever and no extra time in which to do so, and a security team whose codebase is growing faster than they can secure it is at a perpetual disadvantage. So if AI is making this an uphill battle, could it shift the incline in your favor?

When Code Moves Faster Than Remediation

Imagine opening your laptop to a list of vulnerabilities that need attention. For each one, you need to understand the issue, work out what the fix should look like, and then consider how it should be prioritized before even taking action. Meanwhile, the most recent scan run just exposed more vulnerabilities, and you haven’t even touched the rest of today’s work.

Now consider where AI contributes to this dynamic. Developers have new tools that accelerate software development to unthinkably short periods of time, but the pace of security work hasn’t necessarily kept up. When the gap between every new release is shortening and the codebase is continually expanding, plugging any gaps adds work that already competes with the other demands of your team.

The resulting imbalance is easy to understand. The tools used to create software are getting faster, while the work required to secure it remains a bottleneck. Closing that gap means looking beyond AI’s ability to write code and applying it to help teams act on the vulnerabilities they find.

A Smarter Way To Wash Dishes

One item that perpetually haunts my to-do list is the dishes. Even with the modern wonder of a dishwasher, I somehow manage to create more dishes than I wash. So if I were to have the choice between unloading and reloading my dishes each day or living with a little dish fairy that could do all of that for me so I could simply press “Start,” I would eagerly welcome this fantasy creature into my home without even asking them to split rent.

This is the difference between knowing a task needs doing and having real help getting it done. A sink full of dishes is a reminder, but a fully loaded dishwasher is just a button push away from being able to cross that item off my to-do list.

That distinction matters in vulnerability management. Identifying a vulnerability tells you what needs attention, but it doesn't do the work of fixing it. AI can act as a bridge between the two by preparing fixes automatically, giving teams a more direct path between identifying a problem and enacting a solution.

The Sensei Solution

This is where DefectDojo's Sensei comes in.

It can’t load your dishwasher (but keep an eye on our changelog for future updates!), but it can generate fixes for vulnerabilities and open pull requests for review and approval by developers. Instead of requiring you to prepare every fix from scratch, Sensei generates a proposed solution and opens a pull request that your team can review.

Teams can use Sensei in different ways. By default, a fix must be approved before Sensei opens its pull request. Teams can also enable automatic remediation for a repository, allowing Sensei to open fix pull requests without individual approval, up to the applicable fix limit.

Either way, a person on the team still reviews and merges each pull request. Sensei helps reduce the work required to prepare a fix, but deciding what enters a codebase is always up to your team.

A Little Help With Your List: 1,000 Free Sensei Fixes

Neither of us may ever reach “to-do list zero,” but that doesn't mean every task has to take the same amount of effort.

This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, DefectDojo is offering 1,000 free Sensei fixes to both new users and existing DefectDojo customers. It's an opportunity to see how AI-generated fixes can help your team move from a growing list of vulnerabilities to ready-for-review solutions.

Put Sensei to work on your list. Claim your 1,000 free fixes by November 30, 2026.

How To Claim Your Fixes

New Users

Getting your first fix takes three steps:

1. Sign up today.
2. Connect a GitHub or GitLab repository to Sensei.
3. Approve fixes one at a time, or turn on automatic remediation for the repository, then review the pull requests Sensei opens.

Existing Customers

Already a customer? Your 1,000 fixes are already turned on.