The Business Case for AI-augmented Application Security: Beyond the Technical Benefits
			Posted by: Shanan Winters
With: David Bressler
In the race to innovate, organizations are desperately seeking AI solutions that deliver real value rather than just buzzword compliance. While many AI implementations fall short of their promises, there’s one area where the partnership between artificial intelligence and human expertise is creating transformative results: application security.
As development cycles accelerate and threats grow more sophisticated, traditional security approaches are strained under the pressure. That’s why I sat down with David Bressler, GuidePoint Security’s Practice Director of Application Security, to discuss how AI-augmented Application Security services are helping organizations transform security from a cost center into a business enabler.
AI-augmented Application Security: An Interview with our Practice Lead
Shanan Winters: As the application security practice director , you’ve been instrumental in helping our customers understand the strategic value of AI-augmented application security. Many organizations still view security as a cost center rather than a business enabler. How do you help them shift this perspective?
David Bressler: Security isn’t just about preventing breaches; it’s about enabling business velocity without increasing risk. That’s an important conversation I have with CFOs, CIOs, and the rest of the executive leadership team. Organizations that begin to shift to AI-augmented application security services can transform their security approach from a bottleneck to a business accelerator. I then show how application security becomes a competitive advantage so they can release secure applications faster than their competition.
Quantifiable Benefits of AI-augmented AppSec
SW: What are some of the quantifiable benefits of AI-augmented AppSec?
DB: GuidePoint Security can demonstrate 40-60% faster security assessment times after choosing our AI-augmented approach, depending on the service. This directly impacts time-to-market and development efficiency. But what really resonates with both financial executives and security professionals is the reduction in false positives and everything is overseen by an application security expert. Security teams stop wasting countless hours investigating non-issues and focus exclusively on genuine threats. That’s the immediate ROI they can measure. Addressing Resource Allocation Concerns
SW: How do you address resource allocation concerns?
DB: GuidePoint helps our customers get significantly more value from their existing security investments with our services. Time to remediate vulnerabilities found decreases because we prioritize vulnerabilities based on actual business impact rather than technical severity alone. s organizations scale their application portfolios, our application security coverage keeps pace without requiring proportional increases in headcount. From a financial perspective, that’s exactly the kind of scalability every CFO is looking for.
Qualitative Improvement Potential
SW: Beyond these measurable benefits, what are some qualitative improvements?
DB: We can improve the developer experience. Client developers spend less time dealing with security false positives and more time building features. This improves both productivity and job satisfaction, which helps with retention of technical talent. That’s a significant cost savings in today’s competitive market. Our solution creates a cultural shift where security becomes everyone’s responsibility, leading to a more resilient organization overall.
Delivery Advice
SW: What delivery advice do you offer?
DB: Start with a focused pilot project to establish to demonstrate value before expanding. This approach lets organizations validate the ROI model with minimal initial investment. Most importantly, partnering with GuidePoint gives organizations immediate access to human application security expertise who leverage AI agentic workflows that augment specific services and tasks within the delivery process significantly reducing time-to-value.
Final Thoughts
SW: Any final thoughts on why this service is critical?
DB: We want to create a strategic partnership that delivers measurable business and security value to our clients. Our AI-augmented application security services can help strengthen your security posture, scale with development velocity, and stay ahead of current and emerging threats. It does this while delivering a host of quantifiable business benefits.
We’ve written a whitepaper with more information. Anyone who is ready to transform their application security approach can download our whitepaper “Human Expertise Meets AI – The Perfect Partnership in Application Security”. This paper includes detailed case studies and implementation strategies across multiple industries.
SW: Thank you for helping us understand the strategic value of our AI-augmented application security services.
DB:My pleasure. I’m passionate about helping organizations recognize that security isn’t merely a technical requirement; it’s a business advantage that directly contributes to long-term success.
Shanan Winters
	Senior Product Marketing Manager,
GuidePoint Security
	
Shanan Winters is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at GuidePoint Security, where she helps make complex cybersecurity topics clear and engaging for customers and teams alike. She’s passionate about building strong messaging, connecting people, and turning technical details into stories that drive action. Based in Arizona, Shanan is also a published fiction author, artist, musician, and avid tabletop and PC gamer.
David Bressler
Principal Security Consultant - Application Security
David is a Principal Security Consultant at GuidePoint Security within the Application Security Team. David has broad-based, hands-on experience with application security assessments, source code review, architecture review, penetration testing, digital and physical social-engineering assessments dating back to 2006. Before joining GuidePoint Security, David worked within Boston Children’s Hospital’s internal security team, and was the technical lead for the application security, vulnerability management and incident response programs throughout the hospital.
David’s experience includes developing numerous open-source security tools and Paterva Maltego open-source intelligence integrations, including NWMaltego, CuckooforCanari, Bitcoin-Explorer and Nextego. He also has been a speaker at Bsides Boston, MassHackers and RSA’s Security Analytics Summit events. David holds the Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) certifications, as well as several COMPTIA certifications, including the Security+, Network+, and A+.