Forrester: Breaches via software flaws affect two thirds of companies

More than half of companies (57 percent) use outsourcing regularly for business critical applications. Yet only one third of companies require rigorous security testing before accepting and implementing code from outsourcers.

The recession is also impacting security risk, as 64 percent of respondents stated that while application security is important to them, they are struggling to meet the challenge on existing budgets.

"The same economic forces driving enterprises to use third party applications are also increasing the risk of insecure software," said Matt Moynahan, CEO of Veracode. "Given the prolific use of third-parties to build business critical applications, global enterprises need a single flexible and cost-effective solution to seamlessly test the security across their entire application portfolio regardless of whether it was built internally or externally."