Security teams are drowning in vulnerabilities they'll never fix. While organizations scan more frequently and hire more engineers, the fundamental math remains broken: development creates security flaws faster than anyone can remediate them.
This imbalance, known as the Vulnerability Escape Rate (VER), explains why security backlogs keep growing despite increased investment. The solution isn't scanning more or fixing faster. It's using runtime intelligence to identify which vulnerabilities actually matter.
The Numbers Game Nobody Wins
Organizations invest millions in security scanning, yet their vulnerability backlogs continue expanding. According to Contrast Security's Software Under Siege 2025 report, applications accumulate an average of 11.5 net new vulnerabilities monthly. This isn't a process problem. It's a mathematical impossibility.
Security teams know this reality intimately. They watch their backlogs grow week after week, no matter how many overtime hours they work or how many vulnerabilities they close. The accumulation never stops because the rate of creation exceeds any team's capacity to remediate.
This creates a cascade of problems. Security engineers burn out managing endless lists. Development teams lose faith in security processes that seem disconnected from real risk. Meanwhile, business leaders question why increased security investment doesn't reduce risk.
Understanding Vulnerability Escape Rate
Vulnerability Escape Rate measures the rate at which new vulnerabilities are introduced and discovered in applications. In simple terms: if you create more security flaws than you fix each month, your risk is growing.
The Software Under Siege report revealed that organizations create approximately 17.5 new vulnerabilities monthly while fixing only 6. This net accumulation of 11.5 vulnerabilities per month means security debt that compounds over time.
Unlike technical debt that might slow development, security debt directly translates to exploitable attack surface. Every unaddressed vulnerability represents a potential entry point for attackers. And with modern development velocity accelerating through AI-assisted coding, this gap will only widen.
Why Traditional Approaches Cannot Solve This
Scanning tools excel at finding vulnerabilities during development and testing. But when you're accumulating vulnerabilities faster than you can fix them, knowing about more problems doesn't help. It makes things worse.
Consider a typical scenario: Your scanner identifies 100 vulnerabilities this month. Your team has capacity to fix 10. How do you choose which 10? Most organizations use severity ratings, but these ratings lack production context. A "critical" deserialization vulnerability in dead code poses no real risk, while a "medium" path traversal in a public API might be actively exploited.
Without runtime visibility into which vulnerabilities are actually reachable and exploitable, teams waste precious remediation capacity on theoretical risks while real threats go unaddressed. You're not just fighting a losing battle; you're fighting the wrong battles.
The Power of Runtime Prioritization
Runtime intelligence changes the equation by revealing which vulnerabilities pose actual risk in production. Instead of trying to fix everything, teams can focus on the vulnerabilities that matter.
This approach works because most vulnerabilities never become exploitable in production. They exist in unused code paths, are protected by authentication, or lack the data access to cause damage. Runtime analysis reveals these distinctions that scanners cannot see.
By observing actual application behavior, runtime intelligence identifies which vulnerabilities are:
- Reachable by external users
- Processing sensitive data
- Lacking compensating controls
- Being actively probed by attackers
This context transforms an impossible task into a manageable one. Instead of trying to fix 17.5 vulnerabilities monthly, teams can focus on the 2-3 that pose genuine risk.
How Runtime Intelligence Works
Runtime intelligence operates from inside your applications, observing actual behavior rather than analyzing code in isolation. This visibility reveals the crucial context that determines real risk.
When a vulnerability exists in your code, runtime intelligence can see whether that code actually executes, whether external users can reach it, what data it processes, and whether existing controls already prevent exploitation. This isn't theoretical analysis. It's observation of what actually happens in production.
The Contrast Graph exemplifies this approach, creating a living map of application security reality. By understanding application behavior, data flows, and actual attack patterns, it enables teams to make informed decisions about where to focus limited remediation capacity.
This doesn't mean ignoring other vulnerabilities. It means fixing the right ones first. When you can confidently identify which vulnerabilities threaten your business, you can break free from the endless accumulation trap.
Breaking Free from the Accumulation Trap
The vulnerability escape rate crisis requires a fundamental shift in how we approach application security. Organizations that successfully manage this challenge share three characteristics:
- First, they accept the mathematical reality. They stop pretending they can fix every vulnerability and start focusing on fixing the ones that matter.
- Second, they implement runtime-based prioritization to identify actual risk. Whether through solutions like the Contrast Graph or similar approaches, they gain visibility into which vulnerabilities are exploitable in production.
- Third, they measure success differently. Instead of counting how many vulnerabilities they fix, they measure how much actual risk they reduce. This shift from volume to value transforms security from an endless struggle to a strategic advantage.
Making the Math Work for You
Every month of delay adds more vulnerabilities to your backlog. But the solution isn't to panic or to double down on failing approaches. It's to work smarter, not harder.
Calculate your own vulnerability escape rate. If you're accumulating more than you're fixing, you need runtime intelligence to identify which vulnerabilities actually matter. Focus your limited capacity where it counts, and let math work for you instead of against you.
The organizations that thrive in the next decade won't be those that scan the most or fix the fastest. They'll be those that see clearly through the noise to focus on real risk.
