Supercharging Your Security Pipeline: Managing Vulnerabilities in a Multi-Tool Jungle

If you’re on a security team today, your job isn’t just about securing code anymore. It’s about managing a growing ecosystem of tools, findings, dashboards and alerts. During our recent webinar, “Supercharging Your Security Pipeline: Managing Vulnerabilities in a Multi-Tool Jungle,” Mikko Nilsson, Product Security Lead for Customer Intelligence R&D at SAS, shared his team’s approach to tackling the chaos of modern AppSec: too many tools, too many findings and not nearly enough clarity.

His experience echoes what we hear from many security teams: when no single tool gives you the full picture, managing vulnerabilities becomes a lot harder than it should be. That’s why centralized visibility isn’t just helpful – it’s essential.

The Security Jungle: How We Got Here

Software development has come a long way. We’ve moved from slow waterfall cycles to fast, iterative releases and now to continuous deployment models. With each shift, the old ways of handling security testing—phased testing at the end of a development cycle—have become increasingly unworkable.

As speed increased, so did risk. Mandiant's research shows that the average time to exploit a vulnerability has dropped from 63 days in 2018 to just 5 days today. Faster exploitation timelines mean that security findings need to be identified, triaged and remediated quickly—not at the end of a development sprint, but as an integrated part of the software delivery pipeline.

Welcome to the Jungle: Security Tools Everywhere

Modern software development isn't just fast – it's complicated. Most teams rely on a stack of security tools, including:

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

• Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

• Secrets scanning

• Container image scanning

• Bug bounty findings and penetration testing

Each tool generates valuable insights, but they also create overlaps, duplication and confusion. A single issue could show up in multiple scans, each with slightly different metadata. Without centralized management, it becomes nearly impossible to get a clear view of your security posture, let alone prioritize and act on the findings.

Finding a Better Way to Manage Vulnerabilities

Managing vulnerabilities effectively starts with centralized visibility across your security tools. Without a system to correlate, deduplicate and prioritize findings, teams risk getting buried in noise – slowing down remediation efforts and missing real risks.

Organizations seeing success with their security pipelines are embracing:

• Deduplication of vulnerabilities across different scanners

• Bulk triage and filtering to reduce noise before developers see findings

• Automated workflows for ticketing and tracking

• Asset inventory that ties vulnerabilities to real services and owners

• Flexible integrations to match evolving toolsets

The goal isn’t just to collect vulnerabilities – it's to make smarter, faster decisions about what to fix and when. 

Lessons Learned: Tips for Building Your Centralized Security Pipeline

If you’re considering a more centralized approach to vulnerability management, here are a few lessons from teams that have already made the leap:

• Start early. Build centralized visibility before making major tool changes.

• Structure matters. Think through how you organize assets, findings and ownership.

• Automate wherever possible. Free up human time for triage and decision-making.

• Protect developer time. Normalize and filter findings before routing them downstream.

• Leverage the community. Open-source security communities offer resources, advice, and support to accelerate your efforts.

Taming the Jungle

Security pipelines aren’t getting simpler on their own. New tools, faster development cycles and more complex ecosystems are the new normal. But with the right approach to vulnerability management, it’s possible to build resilience, respond faster and create a security program that scales with your business.

Interested in learning more about how organizations are managing vulnerabilities across complex environments? You can watch the full SAS customer webinar or his recent talk on “Supercharging Your Security Pipeline” to hear real-world insights and lessons learned.