Secure Code Audit
Strengthen your security posture by identifying and eliminating vulnerabilities before code ever reaches production.
Do you need a secure code review?
A quick self-check. If several of these sound like you, it is worth a short conversation.
You likely need this if
- You build software in-house and want flaws caught before they ship
- You handle sensitive logic: authentication, payments, access control or cryptography
- You want depth a black-box test cannot reach, with developer-ready fixes
- A framework or customer expects evidence of secure development practices
Not sure where you land? A short scoping call will tell you plainly, including if you do not need this yet.
Book a scoping callWhat is secure code audit?
A systematic examination of your application's source code to find security vulnerabilities, coding errors, and architectural flaws - at the point of origin, during development, before they ever reach production.
It combines automated SAST tooling with manual expert analysis by certified reviewers, so issues are caught and fixed where remediation is cheapest.
Find insecure authentication, unsafe input handling, and logic flaws before they ship.
Automated scanning plus expert review for coverage scanners alone cannot reach.
Fixing in review is far cheaper than fixing the same flaw post-production.
Documented vulnerability identification and remediation for GDPR, DORA, NIS2, and ISO 27001.
The threat landscape we review for
Source code is where risk is introduced. We focus on the flaws that cause real financial and supply-chain damage.
Validate cryptographic controls and multi-party authorization so financial transactions cannot be tampered with.
Ensure fraud and AI controls are correctly invoked at every transaction point.
Detect malicious or vulnerable dependencies introduced through pipelines and third parties.
Review AI model handling, prompt-injection prevention, and data-leakage protection.
Secure code, in detail
Scoping
Define targets, environments, languages, and rules of engagement.
Reconnaissance
Passively map assets, dependencies, and architecture to understand the codebase.
Vulnerability Assessment
Find weaknesses in auth, input handling, crypto, and access control using SAST plus manual analysis.
Validation & Reporting
Confirm exploitability, then document findings with severity, proof-of-concept, code snippets, and fixes.
Every review delivers findings by severity, code-level evidence, and specific remediation - documentation that satisfies regulators and developers alike.
Learn what's best for your company
Regulatory compliance
Secure code review is the development-phase control that turns several EU mandates into documented evidence.
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DORA: Documented vulnerability identification, remediation tracking, and ICT risk-management evidence from code analysis.
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EU AI Act: Validates AI model security, prompt-injection prevention, and data-leakage protection for high-risk systems.
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GDPR (Art. 25): Data protection by design - encryption, access-control logic, and audit-logging completeness.
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NIS2: Continuous vulnerability identification and remediation documentation.
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ISO 27001: A secure development lifecycle integrated into your ISMS as an application-security control.
Use cases
Vulnerability detection & remediation
Find and fix injection, XSS, CSRF, and access-control flaws before release.
Security architecture review
Assess design and trust boundaries for systemic, not just point, weaknesses.
Sensitive data protection
Validate encryption, key handling, and access logic across the codebase.
Compliance & standards audit
Produce the documented evidence auditors expect for GDPR, DORA, NIS2, and ISO 27001.
Reporting structure and metrics
Management Report
An executive overview of risk, compliance alignment, and a prioritized remediation roadmap.
Technical Report
Findings by severity with code snippets, CWE references, attack paths, and specific fixes.
Findings by severity, density per KLOC, time-to-remediate, percentage fixed pre-release, and recurrence of issue patterns.
Ready to strengthen your code security?
Catch the injection, access-control, and logic flaws in your codebase before they ship - and before auditors find them. Get a scoped review proposal in less than 48 hours.
Your trusted partner in code integrity
Eliminating technical security debt
We find vulnerabilities embedded deep in the codebase - including issues automated SAST alone misses - and turn them into prioritized, fixable findings.
Exposing business-logic exploitation
We trace real user and data flows to surface logic flaws - privilege escalation, workflow abuse - that scanners cannot understand.
Accelerating compliance readiness
We document controls and remediation to a reviewable, audit-ready standard for GDPR, DORA, NIS2, and ISO 27001.
Secure code audit FAQ
Secure code review systematically examines application source code to identify security vulnerabilities, coding errors, and architectural flaws - at the point of origin during development - while penetration testing validates whether weaknesses can be exploited in a live environment.
| Dimension | Secure code review | Penetration testing |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | During development (pre-production) | After development (post-production) |
| Method | Source-code analysis (SAST + manual) | Live-environment exploitation |
| Scope | All code paths, logic, architecture | Exploitable vulnerabilities only |
| Cost impact | Lower remediation cost | Higher (fixing post-production) |
It is a preventative control that intercepts risk during development rather than waiting for exploitation in production. Key benefits:
- Roughly 5-10% lower remediation costs versus fixing post-production.
- Elimination of accumulating technical debt from undetected flaws.
- Integration with governance frameworks that mandate secure development (GDPR, DORA, NIS2, ISO 27001).
It reduces breach risk, accelerates compliance audits, improves code quality, and demonstrates security investment to customers.
| Industry | Regulatory drivers | Focus areas |
|---|---|---|
| Financial services & banking | DORA, PCI-DSS, SWIFT CSP, NIS2 | Transaction integrity, multi-party authorization, fraud-prevention logic |
| Software development | ISO 27001, EU AI Act | CI/CD supply-chain security, secure API design, input validation |
| Healthcare | GDPR (and HIPAA where applicable) | Patient-data encryption, access-control logic, audit logging |
| Cloud services | DORA, NIS2, ISO 27001 | Infrastructure-as-code security, orchestration, authentication flows |
| Government / public sector | NIS2, DORA, PSD2 | Data-classification logic, identity management |
| Phase | Activities | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Scoping | Define targets, environments, languages, rules of engagement | Establish boundaries and expectations |
| 2. Reconnaissance | Passive discovery of assets, dependencies, architecture | Understand structure and integrations |
| 3. Vulnerability assessment | SAST plus manual analysis of auth, input, crypto, access control | Detect security flaws |
| 4. Exploitation validation | Test identified issues (SQLi, XSS, CSRF) | Confirm real-world impact |
| 5. Reporting | Risk levels, proofs-of-concept, code snippets, remediation | Provide actionable guidance |
| Vulnerability | Code-level cause | Business impact |
|---|---|---|
| SQL injection | Unsanitized input in database queries | Data theft, privilege escalation |
| XSS | Improper handling of untrusted data shown to users | Script execution, session hijacking |
| CSRF | Missing anti-CSRF tokens on state changes | Unauthorized actions, transaction manipulation |
| Broken access control | Inadequate authorization checks | Unauthorized data access |
| Security misconfiguration | Hardcoded credentials, insecure defaults | Account takeover, system compromise |
| Vulnerable components | Outdated libraries with known CVEs | Exploitable supply-chain attacks |
It also catches authentication bypass, session-management flaws, cryptographic weaknesses, and business-logic errors.
Undetected vulnerabilities persist through development and testing; in production the consequences are severe. Review intercepts them at the source.
| Vulnerability | Exploitation outcome | Prevention through review |
|---|---|---|
| SQL injection | Database access, data theft, ransomware | Detects unsanitized input concatenation |
| Command injection | System-level control, server compromise | Identifies unsafe shell-execution patterns |
| XSS | Script execution, session hijacking | Validates output encoding and sanitization |
| CSRF | Fraudulent transactions | Ensures anti-CSRF tokens on state changes |
| Broken access control | Privilege escalation | Validates authorization on sensitive resources |
| Framework | Requirement | Code-review alignment |
|---|---|---|
| DORA | ICT risk management incl. vulnerability identification | Documented identification, remediation tracking, risk evidence |
| EU AI Act | Security assessment of high-risk AI during development | Validates model security, prompt-injection and data-leakage protection |
| GDPR (Art. 25) | Data protection by design | Encryption, access-control logic, audit-logging completeness |
| NIS2 | Regular assessments and vulnerability management | Continuous identification and remediation documentation |
| ISO 27001 | Secure development lifecycle | Integrates into the ISMS as an application-security control |
| Consequence | Impact | Example |
|---|---|---|
| GDPR fines | Penalties for data breaches | Up to 20 million euro or 4% of global turnover |
| Average breach cost | Direct financial impact | Around $4.88M, rising year over year |
| Late fixes | Post-production remediation multiplier | Up to ~30x costlier than fixing in review |
| Lost business | Churn, delays, reputation damage | Significant, hard to quantify |
| Forensics | Post-breach investigation | Hundreds of thousands to millions |
Reviewing early lowers total cost of ownership by catching vulnerabilities before they become breaches.
| Environment | Frequency | Approach |
|---|---|---|
| High-risk (financial, healthcare, critical infra) | Continuous | CI/CD scanning at every commit plus manual review of critical changes |
| Medium-risk (SaaS, e-commerce, enterprise) | Per feature / sprint | Review at major merges, automated scans on pull requests |
| Low-risk (internal, non-critical) | Scheduled milestones | Release-milestone or quarterly reviews, continuous static analysis |
| Third-party dependencies | On update | Reassess when upstream components change significantly |
| Post-incident / major refactor | Immediate | Targeted review to validate remediation |