How to Scale DAST Testing: 3 Strategic Paths

After proving the value of shift-left DAST with your pilot applications, you’re now faced with a critical decision: how will you scale testing across your organization?

After working with hundreds of AppSec teams, we’ve identified 3 distinct scaling paths that successful organizations take. Each path has tradeoffs between initial investment and long-term scalability. Understanding these paths will help you align your approach with the reality of your organization rather than forcing a cookie-cutter solution. The path you choose should factor in your organization’s readiness, available resources, and company culture—there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

DAST Scaling Path 1: Champion-Led

This approach relies on security champions to drive and expand adoption within their teams when they’re ready, building toward decentralized scale through demonstrated value and peer influence rather than top-down directive.

Champions become evangelists within their development teams, sharing templates and proven patterns from the pilot. Teams adopt testing iteratively, at their own pace, when they see peer success. AppSec provides templates, training, and support—but adoption happens through influence, not mandate. 

When to Choose This Path

• You have limited executive sponsorship and budget constraints
• Your engineering culture values peer influence
• You need to prove broader value before requesting a mandate or additional investment
• You have passionate security champions ready to advocate for the program

Prerequisites for Success

Developer training: Champions need deep product knowledge to effectively support their teams and answer technical questions during onboarding.

Strong pilot results: Proof points that champions can reference when advocating to their peers—specific metrics on vulnerabilities found, time saved, or incidents prevented.

Internal documentation (“paved road”): Your “paved road” templates and guides must be comprehensive enough that champions can guide teams through self-service onboarding.

Recognition program: Champions need visibility with leadership and acknowledgment of their contributions. This can’t feel like extra responsibility without recognition.

Monthly champion syncs: Regular forums to share wins, solve blockers, and maintain momentum across the champion community.

Trade-offs

Best for organizations building grassroots momentum without a strong executive mandate, this approach fosters genuine ownership, developer buy-in, and political ease due to lower friction and long-term advocacy from champions. However, it risks slow, inconsistent adoption and potential coverage gaps in resistant teams, requiring sustained champion motivation. 

DAST Scaling Path 2: Governance-Driven

This approach relies on executive backing to expand systematically across development teams. The AppSec team shares standardized documentation and processes based on pilot learnings, then requires individual dev teams to onboard using your “paved road.”

Executive sponsorship makes DAST adoption a program requirement, not a suggestion. Teams onboard independently using standardized templates and documentation. AppSec defines compliance requirements and provides program oversight, but development teams own the implementation workload.

Regular reporting ensures teams meet adoption milestones and standards. Development teams self-service through your templates with AppSec consultation as needed, creating clear accountability while maintaining efficiency.

When to Choose This Path

• You have executive sponsorship and a clear mandate for shift-left security
• Your AppSec program has resources for oversight and compliance tracking
• You need comprehensive coverage within 6 months
• Your organization responds well to structured governance and requirements

Prerequisites for Success

Executive sponsorship: CISO/CTO/VP Engineering buy-in driving adoption as a requirement.

Internal mandate: Clear directive that implementing a DAST solution is a priority with defined timelines.

AppSec oversight: Resources to ensure consistency and compliance across teams.

Application footprint mapping: Complete inventory of development teams and critical applications to systematically track progress.

Communication plan: Ability to articulate the value proposition to all development teams, addressing concerns proactively.

Standardized documentation: Comprehensive templates covering common patterns so teams can self-serve successfully.

Trade-offs

Best for organizations with executive sponsorship and established AppSec programs, this approach offers a rapid establishment of comprehensive and consistent security coverage across the organization, providing a clear security baseline and measurable compliance. However, it requires strong executive support to overcome potential friction with development teams and dedicated AppSec resources, and there’s a risk that teams may prioritize “checkbox compliance” over genuine security buy-in.

DAST Scaling Path 3: Platform-Automated Scaling

This approach is fully automated onboarding through platform engineering. Your AppSec team scripts the entire process: when repositories are created, pipelines are automatically provisioned with test configuration, applications are created via API, and baseline YAML files are committed to repos.

Platform Engineering treats security testing as automated infrastructure that developers inherit as near-invisible infrastructure. Repository creation triggers automatic application provisioning and configuration. Generated pull requests deliver pre-configured testing setup to development teams.

Developers review and merge—testing becomes default, not optional. Continuous automation scales effortlessly as new applications emerge, eliminating manual processes entirely.

When to Choose This Path

• You manage 100+ applications with standardized infrastructure patterns
• You have platform engineering capabilities and technical AppSec resources
• Your organization has mature service catalogs and automation practices
• You’re prepared for a 9-18 month automation build with ultimate long-term scalability

Prerequisites for Success

High infrastructure standardization: Consistent repository naming, URL conventions, and authentication patterns that automation can reliably detect and configure.

Standard CI/CD workflows: Uniform pipeline structures that automation can programmatically configure without custom setup.

Service catalog with metadata: Application attributes and ownership data in queryable format for automated decision-making.

Highly technical AppSec team: Engineers comfortable with scripting, APIs, and infrastructure automation—not just security testing knowledge.

DevOps partnership and full access: Full access to development infrastructure and deployment systems for seamless integration.

OpenAPI spec generation: Automated API documentation from code to eliminate manual configuration requirements.

Trade-offs

Best for highly mature organizations with sophisticated automation capabilities, this approach offers the most sustainable and automatic scaling model, eliminating testing bottlenecks and inconsistency once the initial automation is in place. However, it requires a significant upfront investment in automation and demands a high level of organizational and skill set maturity, leading to the longest time-to-value and abstracting developers from the underlying security testing process.

Case Study: How ITV Automated API Security at Scale

ITV faced a challenge common to large organizations: hundreds of applications lacking API documentation needed for security testing. Without specs, each application required manual configuration, making scaling difficult.

ITV combined StackHawk’s OpenAPI Spec Generation with custom automation to create a self-sustaining pipeline that automatically brings applications under test. The system leverages API specs generated by StackHawk from source code, correlates repository data with deployment information, creates test configurations, and delivers them via pull requests.

The result: 136% increase in applications under security testing with zero manual effort per new application.

Read the full story

Choosing Your Path: Decision Framework for How to Scale DAST

Your choice depends on several organizational factors:

	Path 1	Path 2	Path 3
Executive Support	Not required	Strong mandate needed	Investment Commitment
Organizational Culture	Grassroots friendly	Governance-oriented	Engineering-centric
Technical Maturity	Basic templates	Standardized documentation	High infrastructure standardization
Timeline Requirements	12-18 months	6 months	9-18 months
Resources Needed	Champions + AppSec support	AppSec program management + oversight	Technical automation expertise

Your Next Steps

Keep in mind that these are not rigid. We often see organizations start with Path 1 or 2 and evolve to Path 3 as patterns emerge and the impact justifies the investment. Success comes from matching your scaling approach to your organizational readiness, not from choosing the most sophisticated path. 

If you’re building grassroots momentum, leverage champions and peer influence. If you have executive sponsorship, use governance and clear accountability. If you have platform engineering maturity, invest in full automation.

Scaling is just one piece of building a comprehensive DAST program. Once you’ve chosen your path, you’ll need to build your “paved road” for self-service onboarding and establish metrics that prove ongoing value to leadership. 

Download the Complete SOAR Framework Report to get detailed guidance on scoping, onboarding, scaling, and measuring your AppSec testing program.

Ready to scale your AppSec testing program? Schedule a demo to learn how StackHawk can support your chosen scaling path with the tools and guidance you need for success.