AI-Enhanced Security Economics Impact Assessment

organization_type: Enterprise Software Company, security_focus_area: Application Security Testing

**EXECUTIVE SUMMARY** AI-enhanced application security testing demonstrates a 75-85% cost reduction compared to traditional manual approaches, with timeline compression from 4-6 weeks to 3-5 days for comprehensive vulnerability assessment. For enterprise software companies, this represents potential annual savings of $200K-500K while improving security posture. **COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS** Traditional approach requires 2-3 senior security engineers ($150K-200K annual salary) dedicating 160-240 hours per major release cycle. Total cost per assessment: $15K-25K including tools and overhead. AI-enhanced approach leverages automated testing tools with 1 security engineer providing oversight (40-60 hours), reducing per-assessment cost to $3K-5K. **ECONOMIC IMPACT ASSESSMENT** Direct savings enable reallocation of 70% of security testing budget toward proactive threat modeling and architecture reviews. ROI calculation shows 3.2x improvement in security coverage per dollar invested, with accelerated time-to-market providing additional competitive advantage worth $50K-100K per week. **STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS** Implement phased adoption starting with non-critical applications. Invest in upskilling existing team for AI tool management. Establish governance frameworks for AI-assisted security testing to maintain quality standards while capturing efficiency gains.