An application security program should rest on four foundational legs: security by default (guardrails, tiered SAST rules, dependency management, threat modeling), reactionary security (deep-dive threat modeling for high-risk projects), secure development practices, and metrics-driven oversight. The approach shifts from triaging individual vulnerabilities to removing entire bug classes at scale, using AI tooling to filter false positives and automate routine checks so small teams can focus on systemic risk.