AppSec Excellence Blog | True Positives

How Right-Sized Economics Transforms AppSec Consulting

Written by About True Positives | Aug 25, 2025 7:58:10 PM

The Reality Facing Security Consultancies Today

You've built a successful security practice on deep expertise and trusted relationships. Your manual testing capabilities are second to none. Your clients value your insights and strategic guidance. But increasingly, you're hearing the same feedback: "We love your work, but your pricing puts you out of reach for most engagements."

This isn't about compromising your expertise or devaluing your services. It's about adapting to a market that has fundamentally changed while preserving everything that makes your consultancy valuable.

The Perfect Storm: Expertise vs. Economics

Your expertise gets you shortlisted because clients recognize the value of human insight in application security. They understand that automated tools miss business logic flaws, can't interpret complex attack scenarios, and fail to provide the contextual analysis that turns vulnerability reports into actionable security strategies.

Your pricing gets you eliminated because traditional consulting models—two consultants, two weeks, six-week lead times—no longer align with modern buying patterns. Budget-conscious organizations facing accelerated development cycles need security validation at velocity and scale that manual-only approaches cannot economically deliver.

The consultancies thriving in this environment have solved a critical equation: How to layer their expert-level insights on top of an automated foundation to achieve competitive economics.

Beyond the False Choice: Automation vs. Expertise

The market has created a false dichotomy between automated efficiency and expert insight. Organizations choose between:

  • Fast and affordable automated scanning (with significant coverage gaps)
  • Thorough and insightful manual testing (at prohibitive costs for regular use)

This binary thinking leaves money on the table and clients inadequately protected. The real opportunity lies in hybrid delivery models that use expert-verified automation as the foundation for your specialized manual testing and strategic services.

The Strategic Partnership Advantage

Leading security consultancies are discovering that strategic partnerships can resolve the expertise-vs.-pricing tension without requiring them to:

  • Abandon their core competencies
  • Invest in expensive automation infrastructure
  • Dilute their client relationships
  • Compromise their service quality

Instead, partnerships enable consultancies to:

Compete on Expertise AND Economics

By leveraging our expert-verified automated testing as your foundation, you can deliver comprehensive security assessments at competitive price points while adding the advanced manual testing and strategic insight that differentiates your practice.

Preserve High-Value Relationships

You continue owning client relationships and strategic direction while a specialized partner handles the operational complexity of hybrid delivery models.

Focus on Strategic Services

With our expert-verified automated foundation handling baseline security validation, your team concentrates on irreplaceable services: advanced penetration testing, secure architecture design, threat modeling, business logic assessment, and strategic security program development.

Scale Without Dilution

Meet increased demand without hiring additional penetration testers or compromising quality. Your advanced manual testing and domain expertise scales through our automated foundation rather than resource expansion.

Meeting Modern Buyer Expectations

Today's security buyers operate within DevOps and DevSecOps environments. They assume automated vulnerability scanning as baseline capability—not differentiated service. They seek partners capable of delivering:

  • Strategic insight that exceeds generic vulnerability reports
  • Contextual analysis that addresses their specific technical environments
  • Integrated coverage that aligns with development velocity
  • Actionable guidance that fits their operational constraints

These buyers don't choose between fast and thorough—they expect both. Partnership models make this possible.

The True Positives Solution

True Positives provides the operational foundation that enables consultancies to win on both expertise and pricing:

Managed Infrastructure

We supply expert-verified automated testing results and operational processes as your economic foundation, enabling you to focus on advanced manual testing and strategic services.

Hybrid Methodology

We provide expert-verified automated testing results as your economic foundation, which you enhance with advanced manual testing and specialized services to deliver comprehensive coverage at scale.

Preserved Independence

You maintain control over client relationships, service delivery, and strategic direction while we provide the expert-verified automated foundation that makes your specialized services economically accessible.

Enhanced Positioning

Rather than competing solely on expertise or price, you can offer integrated solutions where our automated foundation enables your specialized testing and strategic services to be delivered at market-competitive rates.

The Business Model Evolution

This isn't about replacing your current services—it's about evolving your delivery model to meet changed market conditions:

  • Before: Premium pricing for limited engagements with extended lead times
  • After: Competitive pricing for ongoing relationships with immediate availability
  • Before: Project-based revenue with feast-or-famine cycles
  • After: Subscription-based revenue with predictable growth trajectories
  • Before: Competing against automation tools
  • After: Using our expert-verified automated foundation to enable your advanced manual testing at competitive pricing

Implementation Without Disruption

Strategic partnership doesn't require abandoning your existing business model or client relationships. It provides the expert-verified automated foundation that makes your advanced manual testing and specialized services economically accessible while addressing market demands for comprehensive coverage.

The transition preserves everything valuable about your consultancy while positioning you for sustainable growth in an evolving market.

Your Next Step

The application security market rewards firms that deliver comprehensive security value at modern velocity. Your advanced manual testing and domain expertise remains your competitive advantage—our expert-verified automated foundation simply makes that expertise economically accessible to more clients more frequently.

Ready to learn how True Positives' expert-verified automated foundation can enable your advanced manual testing and specialized services to win on both expertise and pricing?

Contact us to discuss how our managed application security services can provide the economic foundation that makes your expertise accessible while preserving your client relationships and service independence.

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