Full Report
Ready to hit Zero Code Criticals? Here's how Wiz helps you get there and stay there, with the badge to prove you did.
Analysis Summary
# Best Practices: Achieving Zero Code Criticals
## Overview
These practices address the rapid proliferation of critical security vulnerabilities in modern software development—specifically code generated or assisted by AI. The goal is to eliminate all critical code issues that have a known fix and establish a sustainable "zero-backlog" posture for high-severity exposures.
## Key Recommendations
### Immediate Actions
1. **Inventory AI Integration:** Map out every AI framework, model, and IDE extension (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Lovable) currently in use across the organization.
2. **Enable AI-BOM Visibility:** Generate an AI Bill of Materials (AI-BOM) to identify where AI-generated code is entering your environment.
3. **Filter by Fixability:** Identify all "Critical" severity issues that have an existing patch or remediation path available.
### Short-term Improvements (1-3 months)
1. **Deploy IDE Guardrails:** Embed security scanning directly into developer IDEs to catch critical issues before code is committed to the repository.
2. **Implement Agentic Remediation:** Use AI-driven security agents to analyze code context and suggest/deploy fixes directly in the developer’s console.
3. **Automate Triage:** Set up automated workflows to route identified criticals to the specific code owner via collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams.
### Long-term Strategy (3+ months)
1. **Code-to-Cloud Contextualization:** Integrate security graph data to ensure remediation efforts are prioritized based on actual cloud exposure and environmental risk.
2. **Self-Healing Infrastructure:** Transition to a model where developers use "remediation skills" (pre-built automation) to burn down vulnerabilities as a standard part of the sprint cycle.
3. **Continuous Compliance Badge:** Formalize the "Zero Code Criticals" status as a KPI for engineering health and report this to executive leadership/the board.
## Implementation Guidance
### For Small Organizations
- Focus on **visibility**. Since teams are lean, use AI-BOM tools to see what developers are experimenting with and prioritize fixing only the most critical, fixable items first.
### For Medium Organizations
- Focus on **workflow automation**. Use automated routing to ensure security issues don’t sit in a general backlog; assign them directly to the developer who generated the code to reduce friction.
### For Large Enterprises
- Focus on **guardrails and scale**. Implement "agentic coding flows" that inject security best practices *before* the AI writes the code. Use a centralized "Champion Center" to gamify the "race to zero" across different product teams.
## Configuration Examples
*While the article refers to Wiz-specific features, the following technical concepts apply:*
- **Remediation Commands:** Implement a CLI-based command (e.g., `wiz-fix`) within AI IDEs that pulls context from the security graph to propose a code change.
- **Guardrail Policy:** Configure "Deny" policies in CI/CD pipelines for any code containing vulnerabilities with a CVSS score of 9.0+ that have an available vendor fix.
## Compliance Alignment
- **NIST SSDF (Secure Software Development Framework):** Aligns with tasks for vulnerability remediation and producing secure code.
- **CIS Controls:** Supports Control 7 (Vulnerability Management) and Control 16 (Application Software Security).
- **ISO/IEC 27001:** Supports A.14 (System acquisition, development, and maintenance).
## Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- **Alert Fatigue:** Routing every minor issue to developers. Focus strictly on *Criticals with available fixes* to maintain developer trust.
- **Shadow AI:** Ignoring the IDE extensions developers use personally. If secure guardrails aren't in their preferred tool (e.g., Cursor), they will bypass security.
- **Manual Triage:** Trying to have a security team manually review every AI-generated PR; this cannot scale with the speed of agentic coding.
## Resources
- **Wiz Security Graph:** [hXXps://wiz.io/lp/wiz-security-graph]
- **AI-BOM Academy:** [hXXps://www.wiz.io/academy/ai-security/ai-bom-ai-bill-of-materials]
- **Wiz Champion Center:** [Internal Platform Tool]
- **Green Agent Documentation:** [hXXps://www.wiz.io/blog/introducing-wiz-green-agent]