Revolutionizing SCA with Agentic AI: How Checkmarx Developer Assist Transforms Open-Source Security within the IDE
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) has become an essential pillar of modern application security, helping organizations identify vulnerabilities, malicious components, and licensing issues within open-source dependencies.
Traditional SCA solutions scan codebases to detect risky packages, providing security teams with critical visibility into their open-source attack surface. However, the typical SCA workflow—scanning code at specific stages in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and then cycling back to remediate issues—creates friction, delays releases, and frustrates developers who must context-switch away from active development to address security findings.
SCA, Shifted All-the-Way Left
The true value of SCA emerges when it is embedded directly into the developer’s workflow, providing real-time feedback within the integrated development environment (IDE) where the code is written. By shifting security left into the IDE, developers receive immediate alerts about vulnerable or malicious dependencies as they work, rather than discovering problems days or weeks later during code commit or CI/CD pipeline scans.
This real-time approach prevents security debt from accumulating, reduces the cost and effort of remediation, and empowers developers to make secure choices as they create their code. When SCA becomes an integrated, continuous process rather than a disruptive checkpoint, security transforms from a bottleneck into an enabler of faster, safer development.
Introducing Agentic AI for SCA
Checkmarx is already a leading SCA provider through its Checkmarx One platform, but the recent introduction of the agentic-AI Developer Assist takes this functionality to an entirely new level. Developer Assist’s agentic AI core changes the SCA dynamic, because it is constantly on the lookout for problems and is always ready to act on behalf of the developer, all within the IDE.
Developer Assist fundamentally transforms the traditional SCA experience by introducing agentic AI capabilities that continuously and actively monitor, analyze, and remediate OSS dangers without breaking developer flow – instead of forcing developers to reopen closed code bases later.
At its core, Developer Assist provides ongoing background SCA scanning of open-source package dependencies during all code writing activities, whether the code is written by humans or provided by generative AI tools.
This continuous monitoring extends to whenever manifest files are modified. Supported manifest file types currently include:
- .NET (csproj, directory.packages.props, packages.config)
- Maven (pom.xml)
- npm (package.json)
- PyPI (requirements.txt)
- Go (go.mod)
This breadth of coverage ensures that regardless of their technology stack, developers receive consistent and accurate real-time security feedback.
The Safe Refactor Revolution
The most far-reaching innovation of Developer Assist lies in its ability to not just identify open-source dependency problems but to autonomously resolve them with intelligent, context-aware remediation.
When a vulnerable or malicious package is detected, the developer can launch agentic-AI Safe Refactor capabilities that automatically generate code changes directly within the IDE, complete with step-by-step explanations that developers can review and approve before implementation.
Safe Refactor first attempts to replace a dangerous package with a safe version of the same package. In cases where no safer version exists, Safe Refactor leverages the developer’s generative AI tools (e.g., Cursor or GitHub Copilot) to suggest alternative packages with similar functionality, ensuring developers aren’t blocked, without a path forward.
Beyond simple package swaps, Safe Refactor demonstrates sophisticated understanding of dependency ecosystems by detecting when other related open-source packages also need replacement to ensure compatibility with newly introduced packages. This holistic approach prevents the cascade of compatibility issues that often plague manual security remediation efforts, where fixing one dependency breaks another. But there is even more…
The crown jewel of Developer Assist is how Safe Refactor autonomously handles the complex code-level changes that package updates often require, saving developers vast amounts of time and effort: Safe Refactor automatically detects breaking changes introduced by replaced packages and makes the necessary code modifications so that calls to updated packages’ methods and functions continue to operate as expected.
Developers can interactively chat with the AI agent to ask questions and refine remediation suggestions, maintaining control over the process while benefiting from cutting-edge AI assistance.
After developers approve suggestions, Safe Refactor runs tests to ensure that the modified application code compiles and functions correctly, even creating new tests when relevant existing tests aren’t found in the project.
Watch a demo showing Developer Assist’s Safe Refactor in action.
Developer Assist for SCA Saves Time and Improves Security
The time savings delivered by Developer Assist are substantial for both development teams and application security professionals. Tasks that previously consumed hours – researching package alternatives, rewriting function calls, ensuring compatibility, and running post-remediation tests – are now almost completely automated.
In fact, very conservative Checkmarx benchmarks indicate that upgrading dependencies is up to 70% faster with assisted code refactoring, saving approximately $420 per upgrade in developer time.
This efficiency enables developers to maintain their productivity, creative flow, and innovation instead of being pulled into time-consuming security firefighting. Meanwhile, AppSec teams can better focus on strategic security initiatives rather than being mired in triaging SCA findings and tracking support tickets.
The benefits of Developer Assist for SCA extend far beyond mere convenience. From a security perspective, continuous background SCA scanning means that vulnerable and malicious packages are caught immediately, rather than lingering undetected until the next scheduled scan. More vulnerable and malicious packages get remediated because the friction of remediation has been dramatically reduced; developers are far more likely to address issues when an AI agent can handle the heavy lifting.
Developer Assist leverages Checkmarx’s industry-leading open-source vulnerability intelligence database.
Unlike many SCA tools that simply aggregate and republish public data, Checkmarx’s CVE database is vetted by in-house expert security analysts who validate and contextualize each CVE entry, reducing false positives and highlighting real threats.
Going even further, Developer Assist identifies malicious and suspicious packages (which are not included in CVE databases), by automatically querying Checkmarx’s proprietary database of malicious packages, which is the largest available anywhere (currently containing over 410,000 entries). If a package in a project is classified as malicious or suspicious, the developer is alerted in the IDE so that rapid remediation can occur.
In brief, Developer Assist represents a pure shift-left methodology, bringing early security resolution into the IDE in real-time, rather than forcing the costly cycle of commit or CI/CD scan failures followed by code fixes and re-scans. By resolving issues before code ever leaves the developer’s machine, organizations reduce pipeline delays, accelerate release velocity, and build security into their culture rather than bolting it on afterward.
Join the AI-Driven SCA Paradigm Shift
The evolution from traditional scan-and-alert SCA to continuous AI-driven security monitoring and remediation automation represents a paradigm shift in how organizations can protect their software supply chain without sacrificing developer speed or experience. Developer Assist doesn’t just make SCA more convenient, it fundamentally reimagines what’s possible when intelligent automation meets security expertise.
Ready to transform your SCA approach and empower your developers with agentic AI security assistance? Learn more about Developer Assist or request a personalized demo of Checkmarx One Assist and see how Checkmarx is revolutionizing security within enterprise development workflows.
