Jane Edwards
A new Veracode study shows that 82 percent of applications developed by public sector organizations exhibit security flaws compared with 74 percent of applications created by private sector entities.
Veracode said Monday it analyzed data gathered from over 27 million scans across 750,000 applications for the State of Software Security 2023 report and found that public sector apps had 7 to 12 percent higher chances of having a vulnerability introduced in the past 12 months.
“The difference between the rate at which flaws appear in public and private sector applications is significant. Efforts by the government to close the gap are necessary and should continue,” said Chris Eng, chief research officer at Veracode.
“As stewards of public safety, agencies have a responsibility to close this gap and strengthen security to protect the nation and its citizens,” added Eng.
According to the report, the public sector showed progress when it comes to addressing high severity flaws, which was detected in only 16.5 percent of the sector’s applications in a 12-month period. Such flaws were observed in 19 percent of non-public sector applications.
