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19/08/2026 3:45 pm
TL;DR: Security teams continue to struggle with shift left because tooling alone cannot fix the workflow, ownership, and enforcement gaps that determine whether findings are acted on, according to Pynt’s survey of 250 security professionals. The underlying problem is governance, not visibility, and it mirrors the same lifecycle failure patterns seen across API, NHI, and application security.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Pynt: We Surveyed 250 Security Professionals About Shift Left. Most Can't Make It Work
By the numbers:
- Pynt surveyed 250 security professionals about shift left and found that most cannot make it work in practice.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams make shift left actually reduce risk?
A: They should connect early testing to ownership, remediation deadlines, and release enforcement.
Q: Why do API security findings often fail to change outcomes?
A: Because detection is not control.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about shift left in vulnerability management?
A: They often assume that better pre-deployment scanning is enough to manage production risk.
Practitioner guidance
- Assign ownership to every finding Map API test results to a named application owner, a remediation deadline, and an escalation path so issues do not disappear into a shared backlog.
- Link API findings to secrets governance When tests expose credential use, token exposure, or overbroad service access, push the result into NHI inventory, rotation, and revocation workflows.
- Define release-blocking criteria Classify which defects must block deployment, which can be accepted with compensating controls, and who can approve an exception.
What's in the full article
Pynt's full report covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Survey methodology and respondent breakdown for the 250 security professionals included in the study
- The specific shift-left failure patterns identified by practitioners across API security and DevSecOps
- Workflow friction points that stop findings from reaching developers, owners, and release gates
- The report's own recommendations for making early security checks more actionable in practice
👉 Read Pynt's survey of 250 security professionals on why shift left is hard to operationalise →
Shift left for API security: why most teams still struggle?
Explore further
19/08/2026 4:22 pm
Shift left fails when security is treated as an inspection layer rather than a governed operating model. The article reinforces a pattern seen across application and identity security: earlier detection is not the same as earlier control. When findings are not tied to ownership, enforcement, and lifecycle management, organisations create visibility without reduction. Practitioners should treat shift left as a governance design problem, not a tooling rollout.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do IAM and platform teams share responsibility for API security?
A: IAM teams should own entitlement model, lifecycle policy, and review standards, while platform teams enforce those decisions in gateways and service controls. The goal is not split accountability, but one operating model for machine access that both teams can measure and enforce consistently.
👉 Read our full editorial: Shift left for API security still fails without governance
