Application assessment is a foundational cybersecurity process designed to evaluate the security posture of an application throughout its entire lifecycle, from design through deployment and maintenance. This systematic examination identifies, analyzes, and prioritizes vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and potential threats that could compromise an application's integrity, confidentiality, or availability. The process investigates multiple layers including source code, architectural design, configurations, and runtime environments using techniques such as static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), interactive application security testing (IAST), manual penetration testing, code review, and threat modeling.

The primary objective of application assessment is to proactively uncover security risks stemming from coding errors, misconfigurations, logical flaws, and third-party dependencies. By systematically identifying these deficiencies, organizations gain actionable insights to remediate vulnerabilities, strengthen defensive mechanisms, ensure compliance with industry standards and regulatory frameworks, and reduce their overall attack surface. This iterative process is essential for maintaining software resilience against evolving threats and safeguarding sensitive data.