Agentic Development Security Tools Fill Gaps Left by Traditional AppSec

As Forrester notes, “Coding agents don’t generate secure code,” and the responsibility for safeguarding the development environment now falls to application security teams Forrester Blog. Their Q4 2026 Wave assessed 12 providers against 29 criteria, focusing on AI-specific guardrails, toolchain protection, supply-chain security, and autonomous remediation.

Guardrails Beyond Static Validation

The report separates three guardrail functions: issuing security instructions to the agent, inspecting generated code, and blocking risky tool calls. Buyers must verify where enforcement occurs—locally, in the cloud, or in background agents—and demand demonstrations within actual workflows rather than abstract Model Context Protocol (MCP) calls.

Expanding the Threat Surface to the Toolchain

Vendors are expected to provide visibility into models, MCP servers, skills, hooks, extensions, instructions, and tools, and to block unsafe actions before they execute. An inventory alone is insufficient; proactive enforcement is essential.

Distinguishing Generation from Validated Remediation

The evaluation draws a line between AI-generated fixes (e.g., pull requests) and validated remediation that respects organizational policies and context.

Context-Aware Prioritization and Emerging Design Analysis

Effective tools prioritize findings based on reachability, runtime exposure, data sensitivity, and business impact, and they should retain audit trails of automated decisions.

Turning the Evaluation Into a Shortlist

Read the report, then use the accompanying spreadsheet’s “My Scores” worksheet to prioritize the criteria that matter most to your organization. Bring security and development leaders together to test shortlisted tools against the same workflows. The goal is secure agentic development with controls that teams can trust.

If you’re a Forrester client, you can book an inquiry or guidance session with the author for questions about the results.