AI Security Testing: DAST, SAST and Compliance Auditing

Security testing here means two distinct techniques run from the same platform: Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), which probes a running application, and Static Application Security Testing (SAST), which analyzes source code without executing it. Most teams need both, because they catch different classes of issue.

DAST: dynamic scanning against a running app

The DAST scanner covers the OWASP Top 10 (2021): broken access control, cryptographic failures, injection (SQL, XSS, command), insecure design, security misconfiguration, vulnerable and outdated components, identification and authentication failures, software and data integrity failures, security logging and monitoring failures, and server-side request forgery (SSRF). Findings are graded by severity — Critical, High, Medium, Low — through automated penetration testing.

SAST: static analysis of source code

• Source-code vulnerability detection without executing the application.
• Pattern matching for common security anti-patterns.
• Dependency vulnerability scanning.
• Secret detection — API keys, passwords, and tokens left in source code.
• Remediation guidance with code-level fix suggestions.

DAST and SAST in CI/CD

Both scanners run through the same CI/CD integration as the rest of NexGen QA's testing modules — GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins — with configurable quality gates. That means a security scan can be wired to the same pull-request trigger as your functional test suite, rather than run manually or on a separate schedule that lags behind the code it's checking.

Compliance auditing built on the same findings

Automated compliance auditing with evidence collection and export covers SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA and PCI-DSS. For federal and defense workloads, the FISMA Compliance Dashboard adds NIST 800-53 control mapping and assessment, Plan of Action & Milestones (POA&M) tracking, and Authorization to Operate (ATO) preparation and documentation — described here as compliance auditing mapped to those controls, not as a certification NexGen QA itself holds on your behalf.

Reading a finding: severity and remediation

Each DAST or SAST finding is graded by severity — Critical, High, Medium, Low — which is what a quality gate typically acts on (for example, blocking a merge on any new Critical or High finding while allowing Medium/Low findings to be tracked without blocking). SAST findings additionally carry remediation guidance with code-level fix suggestions, so a finding comes with a starting point for the fix rather than only a description of the problem.

Secret detection: catching what shouldn't be in the repo

A specific and common finding worth calling out: SAST's secret detection looks for API keys, passwords, and tokens accidentally committed to source code — one of the more preventable classes of security incident, and one that a pattern-matching scan catches reliably where manual code review often doesn't, simply because a secret buried in a config file or test fixture is easy to miss by eye.

Who this is for

Security teams and CISOs who need DAST/SAST results in the same place as functional test results, and compliance officers who need exportable evidence rather than a manually maintained spreadsheet. For accessibility-specific compliance (WCAG/Section 508), see the accessibility testing page; for deployment isolation, see self-hosted AI testing.

How AI helps a security review, without replacing it

AI Compliance & Code Review adds AI-assisted regulatory compliance verification against SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS controls, plus automated code quality analysis for complexity, maintainability and security, with best-practice enforcement and actionable recommendations. This is positioned as assistance for a human reviewer — surfacing likely issues and mapping them to specific controls faster than a manual first pass — rather than a replacement for a security engineer's sign-off on a finding.

The same logic applies to the FISMA Compliance Dashboard's NIST 800-53 control mapping: it organizes evidence against the controls a federal assessment will ask about, which is genuinely useful preparation work, but the assessment and Authorization to Operate decision itself remains a process your organization runs with the relevant authorizing official — the tooling here is described as compliance auditing support, not a certification.