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Navigating Security Debt in the Citizen Developer Era

While low-code/no-code platforms democratize app creation, they're silently accumulating security vulnerabilities. Here are tips on managing citizen application developer platform security debt.

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Industry Perspectives

August 12, 2025

4 Min Read

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Alamy

By Amichai Shulman, Nokod Security

Citizen application developer platforms (CADPs) are transforming software development by lowering entry barriers, but beneath the surface, they are quietly piling up security vulnerabilities that traditional risk management frameworks and security tools are ill-equipped to handle.

While these platforms empower citizen developers to create applications that accelerate innovation, their lack of technical expertise also introduces a new challenge: security debt .

Understanding Security Debt

Security debt, akin to technical debt , refers to the accumulation of vulnerabilities within an organization's IT systems that result from postponed or insufficient security measures. In the case of citizen developer platforms, this debt often builds up because organizations initially prioritize speed and innovation — using these tools to test business potential before committing resources to formal security oversight.

Over time, what began as small-scale experimentation can evolve into a widespread citizen development program. But without parallel investment in governance, visibility, and controls, security vulnerabilities quietly accumulate — creating a growing, often hidden, layer of risk across the environment.

Security debt can be viewed as a sibling to technical debt. In both cases, teams make intentional short-term compromises to move fast, betting they can "pay back the principal plus interest" later. The longer that payback is deferred, the steeper the interest rate becomes and the more painful the repayment.

With technical debt, the risk is usually visible — you may skip scalability work today and lose a major customer tomorrow when the system can't handle their load. Security debt follows the same economic logic, but its danger often lurks beneath the surface: Vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, unpatched components, and weak access controls accrue silently until an attacker exploits them.

The outcome can be just as devastating — data breaches, regulatory fines, or reputational harm — yet the path to failure is harder to predict because defenders rarely know exactly how or when an adversary will strike. In citizen developer environments, this hidden interest compounds quickly, making proactive governance and timely "repayments" essential.

For example, citizen developers might deploy externally exposed applications that inadvertently violate security best practices in the rush to market. This could result in misconfigured access controls that allow unauthorized users to view sensitive business or customer data. Left unaddressed, these vulnerabilities increase an organization's exposure — not because the flaws themselves worsen, but because the number of applications grows, the attack surface expands, and the likelihood of exploitation rises over time. As threat actors evolve and new methods of attack emerge, the risk of a breach becomes not just possible, but probable.

How Low-Code/No-Code Security Debt Accumulates

Security debt in low-code/no-code environments tends to grow quietly and rapidly. Many organizations begin using CADPs experimentally — without enforcing consistent governance or security oversight. Over time, as more citizen developers create applications and automations, the attack surface expands beyond what security teams can easily detect or manage. This leads to an environment filled with undocumented apps, inconsistent controls, and vulnerabilities that accumulate like unpaid bills.

Because these platforms are often managed outside traditional software development life cycle (SDLC) or application security (AppSec) programs , security teams face what amounts to "shadow engineering" on an enterprise scale. Vulnerabilities, poor data handling practices, security misconfigurations, and weak access controls become embedded in production environments — often without the knowledge of IT or security.

The result is a backlog of security tasks that must be identified, scoped, and prioritized — ranging from legacy apps with unknown ownership to automation workflows that bypass normal access controls. Managing this debt requires treating it like a project, not just a policy.

Approaching CADP Security Debt as a Project

Managing existing CADP security debt requires more than prevention — it demands a structured, project-based approach to remediation. Here's how organizations can begin addressing the backlog:

Inventory and Classify: The first step is building an inventory of all CADP assets — apps, automations, AI agents — across environments. Classify them by business criticality, data sensitivity, and usage to identify high-risk targets.
Triage and Prioritize: Not all debt needs to be paid back at once. Focus first on apps with external exposure, access to sensitive data, or integration with critical systems. Establish criteria to score and prioritize remediation efforts.
Assign Ownership: Many CADP apps were built outside central IT. Assign application owners or responsible business units to each app to facilitate remediation and establish accountability going forward.
Remediate in Waves: Organize remediation work into phases or sprints. Start with critical misconfigurations and missing access controls. Document known gaps and track progress to avoid regressions.
Implement Guardrails for the Future: While addressing past debt, also implement policy enforcement and security guardrails to prevent recurrence. This might include discovering and monitoring new apps, performing automated vulnerability assessments, and providing remediation guidance to application owners.

This approach helps organizations turn a sprawling, unmanaged CADP footprint into a secure and governable environment, reducing both short-term risk and long-term cost.

About the author:

Amichai Shulman, chief technology officer (CTO) and co-founder of Nokod Security , is an internationally recognized expert and researcher in data and application security. He was previously co-founder, CTO, and chief scientist at Imperva for more than 15 years. Amichai is a frequent conference speaker and industry authority on cybersecurity.