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Every line of code in your software plays a role in security and compliance. But without a structured review process, vulnerabilities can slip through, technical debt can pile up, and security gaps can widen.
That’s why you need to conduct code audits. A thorough audit identifies weak points, strengthens code quality, and ensures adherence to security best practices—all of which helps you meet compliance requirements.
In this article, we’ll break down what a code audit is, why it’s important, and how to ensure the process delivers real security improvements.
What Is a Code Audit?
A code audit, a specialized type of security audit also known as a software code audit, is a structured review process that aims to identify bugs and security issues. These audits check for outdated dependencies, design flaws, and security vulnerabilities by analyzing source code.
Application security vulnerabilities often result from unchecked risks during development. A source code audit helps mitigate these risks by identifying security gaps as early as possible, preventing potential exploits before they reach production. With detection as code, you can automate vulnerability detection within CI/CD pipelines, reducing manual effort and improving security coverage.
Depending on your desired depth of analysis, you can audit code for security issues with several different approaches:
- A static audit scans the source code without executing it, catching syntax errors and insecure coding practices.
- Dynamic audits assess running applications for runtime vulnerabilities like memory leaks and misconfigurations.
Integrating both methods allows you to build a stronger security posture while keeping development workflows efficient.
Why Do You Need to Conduct a Code Audit?
A code audit helps development teams identify weaknesses before they become security threats, performance bottlenecks, or compliance failures. Security vulnerabilities and outdated dependencies can slow development and introduce unnecessary risks without regular reviews. Here’s why performing a software code audit should be a priority:
Finds Weak Points Before They Become Problems
You don’t want to discover a critical flaw when it’s too late. A code quality audit helps you catch outdated dependencies, inefficient logic, and security gaps before they become full-blown issues. Identifying weak spots early saves time, money, and frustration.
Ensures Code Meets Industry Standards
Messy, inconsistent code slows development, creates security risks, and causes long-term headaches. A software code audit helps you assess whether your application follows recognized industry standards, making it easier to maintain, scale, and secure.
So, what does that mean? It means checking whether your code aligns with best practices like:
- OWASP secure coding practices: Prevent common security flaws like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).
- ISO/IEC 27001: This security standard ensures your software handles sensitive data correctly.
- NIST Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF): This framework provides a structured approach to writing secure code and managing vulnerabilities.
- CWE Top 25: Highlight the most dangerous coding errors that could leave your application exposed.
When your code meets these standards, you reduce technical debt, make life easier for your developers, and ensure your application complies with modern security requirements.
Strengthens Security by Identifying Vulnerabilities
You can’t afford to leave security up to chance. A source code audit helps you catch vulnerabilities before attackers do, whether it’s misconfigured access controls, hardcoded credentials, or unpatched dependencies. Strengthening software supply chain security ensures that the code you write—and the third-party components you rely on—aren’t introducing hidden risks.
Improves Maintainability and Scalability
A cluttered, inconsistent codebase slows everything down, making it harder to debug, optimize, and scale applications efficiently. If updates are a nightmare and debugging takes longer, it’s time for a code audit. Cleaning up unnecessary complexity, standardizing patterns, and removing outdated libraries make it easier to maintain and future-proof your application.
Tools to Perform a Code Audit
Manually reviewing thousands of lines of code for security flaws puts you at a disadvantage. Luckily, code auditing tools do the heavy lifting, catching vulnerabilities and enforcing best practices before they become real threats.
Here are three essential tools that should be part of your security stack.
- Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools: These tools analyze source code before execution, flagging security flaws like injection vulnerabilities, hardcoded credentials, and weak encryption. Since SAST tools don’t require the application to run, they help catch issues early in development, making fixes faster and cheaper.
- Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) Tools: Not every vulnerability appears in static code. DAST tools test your application while it’s running, simulating real-world attacks to uncover authentication flaws, misconfigurations, and API security risks. If you want to know how your application holds up under pressure, DAST tools provide insights that static analysis alone can’t.
- Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Tools: Your code might be secure, but what about the open-source libraries and third-party components you’re using? SCA tools scan your dependencies, flagging outdated packages and known vulnerabilities so you’re not introducing risk through external code. A strong software supply chain vulnerability protection helps lock down your development pipeline.
Security testing shouldn’t be an afterthought. SAST finds vulnerabilities in code, DAST exposes runtime risks, and SCA helps secure external dependencies—but together, they give you a complete view of your security posture to ensure you’re not leaving gaps attackers can exploit.
Tips for a Successful Code Audit
A code audit isn’t just a box to check. It’s an opportunity to uncover risks, improve maintainability, and strengthen security. The best audits focus on what matters, like critical vulnerabilities and sensitive data handling, instead of endless reports.
Start by defining the scope of your audit. What are you trying to achieve? Are you looking for security vulnerabilities, performance bottlenecks, or compliance gaps? If you’re looking at compliance, are you considering specific guidelines, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)? Setting clear goals helps prioritize findings so you’re not wasting time on minor issues while missing critical risks.
Use SAST, DAST, and SCA tools to automate the detection of common vulnerabilities. Combine these tools with manual reviews that examine business logic, data flow, and potential for abuse. Getting a fresh perspective from a security team or software engineer outside of development or a third-party auditor can also uncover blind spots that internal teams overlook.
Finally, make audits part of your workflow instead of a one-time event. Regular security checks—especially in fast-moving development cycles—help catch issues early, reducing the cost and effort of fixing them later. Code reviews should be woven into the development cycle, not treated as a last-minute security check before release.
Steps of a Code Audit Process
A code quality audit is a structured process designed to find vulnerabilities, assess code quality, and confirm compliance. While we touched on best practices earlier, here’s how the process typically unfolds:
- Define the scope and objectives: Before diving in, clarify what you’re trying to achieve. Are you focused on security, performance, or compliance? Setting priorities upfront keeps the audit focused and prevents wasted effort.
- Run automated security scans: SAST, DAST, and SCA tools scan the codebase for common security flaws, outdated dependencies, and misconfigurations. This step quickly flags known risks, giving you a strong baseline for deeper analysis.
- Perform a manual code review: Automated scans catch a lot, but they don’t see everything. A structured code review process identifies security flaws, inefficiencies, and architectural weaknesses that tools might miss. This includes a front-end, back-end, and infrastructure review.
- Compile findings and prioritize fixes: The final step is turning raw data into an actionable audit report. Categorizing vulnerabilities by severity helps teams focus on what matters most, ensuring security risks don’t get buried under minor issues.
A thorough audit blends automation, expert analysis, and structured reporting to give you a complete security picture. A well-structured audit process ensures that security risks are identified, prioritized, and addressed before they can impact production.
Enhance Code Audits With Legit Security
A code audit is only as effective as the tools behind it, and that’s where Legit Security makes a difference. By integrating automated security testing into your development pipeline, Legit Security helps you identify vulnerabilities faster, enforce best practices, and secure the entire software supply chain.
You can reduce risk without slowing the development process with real-time visibility into source code, dependencies, and third-party integrations. Legit Security simplifies DevSecOps by automating security testing, helping you identify vulnerabilities faster and reduce risk without slowing development.