The Evolution of Security Design Review 

For over a decade, the Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM) has served as a benchmark for how organizations implement software security practices in real-world environments.

BSIMM16, released in January 2026 and based on observations across 111 organizations, reports that security feature review is now observed in 80.2% of participating firms, making it one of the most widely implemented security activities.

Security design review evaluates system design before implementation begins. Security teams analyze design artifacts, architecture diagrams, product requirements, and implementation plans to identify risks in authentication, authorization, data handling, and trust relationships. These decisions define system security properties before code is written or modified (for changes).

Unlike controls such as dependency scanning or static analysis, security design review cannot operate automatically on implementation. It requires interpreting system intent from design artifacts. 

As development velocity increases, manual security design reviews don’t scale across all features.

Architecture Analysis Is Now a Top-10 Activity

BSIMM16 reports that activity [AA1.1] Perform security feature review is observed in 80.2% of organizations. This places it alongside foundational practices such as incident response (87.6%) and security checkpoints (82.6%).

Security design review operates on decisions that define system behavior before code exists.  If these properties are incorrectly defined, implementation will inherit those flaws. Correcting them later often requires coordinated changes across multiple components and can be very costly to remediate.

The European Cyber Resilience Act (EU CRA) explicitly mandates design-level security assurance, with a 2027 compliance deadline approaching fast. Partly economics: organizations have learned the hard way that vulnerabilities discovered in production cost orders of magnitude more to fix than those caught in design. And partly the rise of AI-assisted code generation, which has made the design phase more critical. 

Development workflows also place system definition upstream of implementation. Product requirements, architecture documentation, and implementation tickets define system behavior before code exists. BSIMM16 notes that implementation generated from these artifacts may satisfy functional requirements without introducing necessary security controls unless those controls are defined explicitly.

The Maturity Spectrum: From Feature Reviews to Engineering-Led Analysis

BSIMM organizes architecture analysis into maturity levels based on how organizations perform security design review and who owns the process.

Level 1: Establishing the Foundation

At the entry point, organizations focus on basic security feature reviews and risk-ranking their application portfolio. Activity [AA1.1] or performing security feature review is where most teams start, verifying that security features like authentication, access control, and encryption are present and correctly specified in designs. Activity [AA1.4] using a risk methodology to rank applications saw a 12% increase in BSIMM16, driven in part by organizations determining which applications should allow LLM-generated code commits.

When design reviews are manual and depend on scarce security architects, teams inevitably limit reviews to their “crown jewels”, reducing coverage. The vast majority of features ship without any design-level security scrutiny at all. If you have three security engineers for every hundred developers, a ratio the BSIMM data considers typical, you simply cannot manually review every design document.

Level 2: Process and Standardization

More mature organizations move toward defined processes and standardized architectural descriptions. At this level, the Software Security Group (SSG) leads design review efforts using repeatable methodologies, and architectural descriptions follow a common format that makes analysis more efficient. This is where secure design reviews transition from ad-hoc expert consultations into a genuine organizational capability. The challenge here is not knowledge but consistency. It is ensuring that every team, across every geography and product line, applies the same rigor.

Level 3: Engineering Ownership and Feedback Loops

In the most advanced organizations, engineering teams themselves lead the architecture analysis process, with the SSG serving as a mentor and resource rather than a gatekeeper. Analysis results feed back into standard design patterns, creating a virtuous cycle where lessons learned from one review improve the security posture of every subsequent design.

This is the model that scales. When developers receive context-specific security requirements before they start coding in the tools they already use, like Jira, Confluence, or Slack, security stops being a gate and becomes a natural part of the design conversation. The BSIMM data shows that organizations reaching this level see security defects decline not because they’re caught later, but because they’re prevented at the source.

AI Coding Is Amplifying the Need and the Solution

BSIMM16 identifies AI as a defining trend for 2026. Organizations are grappling with “vibe coding”and the security implications. Code generated by LLMs passes conventional scrutiny because it looks professional, but it may lack security controls that an experienced developer would include instinctively.

If you cannot fully trust the code being generated, you need stronger assurances at the architectural level. BSIMM16 notes a 10% increase in [AM1.5] Gather and use attack intelligence and a 10% increase in [CR2.6] Use custom rules with automated code review tools, as organizations adapt to the quirks of AI-generated code.

But the same AI capabilities that create the problem can also help solve it. Modern platforms can analyze unstructured design documents, the messy reality of Confluence pages, Google Docs, and Jira tickets that describe what teams are actually building and extract security requirements automatically. What once required a senior security architect spending days per review can now be accomplished in hours, with consistent quality and full coverage across the entire application portfolio.

Compliance Is Driving Design Review Adoption

BSIMM16 shows a clear increase in activities tied to demonstrable security assurance. SBOM creation increased by 30%. Development toolchain integrity protections rose by 12 observations. Infrastructure security verification grew by more than 50%. These increases reflect external pressure from regulations like the EU Cyber Resilience Act and the US Government Self‑Attestation Requirement, which require organizations to prove their software is secure; not just test it after release.

This changes what compliance requires in practice. It’s no longer enough to show scan results or penetration test reports. Organizations need evidence that security was considered when the system was designed: how components interact, where trust boundaries exist, what risks were identified, and what controls were planned.

For AppSec leaders, this forces a shift upstream. Instead of reconstructing compliance evidence after deployment, leading teams generate it during design. When a feature is specified, its architecture is analyzed, threats are identified, and security requirements are mapped directly to standards like PCI DSS, ASVS, or STRIDE. This creates a traceable link between the feature, its risks, and the controls implemented.

This approach eliminates the need for manual compliance reconstruction later. Auditors can see what risks were identified, what requirements were defined, and how they were addressed, all tied to specific features and design decisions.

Compliance stops being a separate effort and becomes a direct output of the design and development process.

What Modern Secure Design Review Looks Like

The organizations leading in BSIMM16’s architecture analysis domain have eliminated the SSG bottleneck by embedding design review directly into developer workflows. Instead of routing designs through a central security team, they analyze design documents, Jira tickets, and feature specs automatically as part of the normal development process.

Routine work is handled by automation: extracting architecture components, identifying trust boundaries, mapping risks, and aligning findings to compliance frameworks. This reduces the volume of manual review and allows security engineers to focus on cases that require judgment, such as novel attack paths or architectural weaknesses.

The output is delivered where developers already work. Security requirements appear in Jira tickets, design docs, or pull request workflows, alongside functional requirements and technical feedback. Developers don’t have to switch tools, file separate requests, or wait for security review cycles.

Security review becomes continuous instead of episodic. Every feature is evaluated as it’s designed, and risks are addressed before implementation begins.

BSIMM16’s data shows this model scales. It removes review backlogs, increases coverage, and reduces the number of vulnerabilities introduced upstream.

This is the model Seezo implements. It continuously analyzes design inputs, generates security requirements, and delivers them directly into developer workflows. The goal is simple: ensure every feature receives a design-level security review without slowing development or requiring additional process overhead.