On-Prem vs. Cloud SAST: What Security Leaders Need to Know Before They Migrate

The debate over on prem vs cloud security solutions is no longer just theoretical. For many AppSec leaders, it’s now a matter of strategic urgency. According to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, up to 76% of organizations use cloud-native development and deployment in production environments. As cloud-native development becomes the default, the traditional strengths of on prem security are being re-evaluated against newer demands. 

Whether you’re actively planning a migration or defending your current setup, it’s essential to understand the real tradeoffs in cloud vs on prem SAST models, including how each impacts long-term agility, control, and integration across performance, compliance, scalability, and control.

Let’s break down what matters most when comparing on prem vs cloud SAST environments.

Why AppSec Teams Can’t Afford to Ignore the On Prem vs Cloud Question

Security leaders are under pressure to keep up with increasingly agile development practices and modern deployment cadences. According to the GitLab Global DevSecOps Report 2023, the average enterprise now deploys code hundreds or even thousands of times per month. Security checks that once ran overnight must now run continuously and deliver actionable results in near real-time.

Traditional on prem SAST deployments were built for a different era. While they offer control, they often lag in scalability, accessibility for distributed teams, and seamless CI/CD integration. That friction becomes a liability when your dev teams are deploying to production multiple times a day.

Meanwhile, cloud-native adoption is booming. IDC projects that 65% of application development will be cloud-native by 2026. These shifts demand equally modern AppSec tooling that can match the speed and flexibility of today’s development ecosystems.

The on prem vs cloud question is no longer just about infrastructure preferences. As the balance between cloud security vs on prem security shifts, teams must consider which model better supports their velocity, compliance posture, and developer experience.. It’s about aligning your security architecture with how your teams actually work. That makes this decision one of the most strategic choices facing AppSec leaders today.

Core Considerations in the On Prem vs Cloud SAST Debate

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but if you’re responsible for securing code at scale, it’s your job to weigh the risks, performance tradeoffs, and developer experience behind each option. Understanding how these factors map to your team’s goals and constraints is critical before committing to a direction or defending the status quo.

Here are the key factors to evaluate:

1. Scalability and Performance

• Cloud: Designed to scale on demand. Ideal for organizations with fluctuating or growing development needs. You can spin up scans in parallel, globally, without waiting on local infrastructure.
• On Prem: Limited by your own compute resources and internal provisioning timelines. High-volume scanning may require manual load balancing and more frequent hardware upgrades.

Generally, the ability to toggle between quick, incremental scans and deeper, more exhaustive scans allows security leaders to adapt their approach based on development stage and risk level. Fast scans integrate easily into CI/CD pipelines to catch routine issues early, while deeper scans can be reserved for pre-release or high-value targets. Checkmarx, for example, supports both fast and in-depth scanning modes in its cloud-based platform, helping teams cover every application with minimal overhead and faster feedback loops.

When evaluating tools, consider how scan depth options align with your SDLC, how easily you can automate scan scheduling, and whether the results provide clear, actionable insights. These are key to scaling secure development without sacrificing agility or coverage.

2. Compliance and Data Residency

• On Prem: Gives you complete control over data location and handling, which can be critical for organizations with strict regulatory requirements. This remains a strong argument for on prem security in highly regulated sectors.
• Cloud: Modern platforms often offer regional hosting options and detailed compliance attestation. However, some regions or contracts may still mandate local data processing.

In general, organizations should ensure their SAST solution supports key compliance standards like OWASP Top 10, NIST 800-53, PCI DSS, and GDPR. Look for tools that allow you to generate audit-ready reports, enforce security policies in the pipeline, and map scan results to specific regulatory requirements. These capabilities help reduce audit risk and demonstrate proactive governance. 

For more on aligning SAST with compliance needs, see The Role of SAST in Achieving Compliance.

3. Developer Experience and Velocity

• Cloud: Integrates more seamlessly into modern CI/CD pipelines and cloud-native development workflows. Developers can run scans, receive results, and remediate issues without leaving their tools.
• On Prem: May require more manual configuration to integrate with evolving toolchains. Latency and access constraints can slow feedback loops and frustrate developers.

That’s why many teams are modernizing their AppSec by shifting from on prem SAST to cloud-native platforms. Before making the move, teams should assess their current CI/CD maturity, data sensitivity, and compliance obligations.

Mapping out how a cloud-native platform will integrate into your development workflow can smooth the transition and avoid costly surprises down the road.

4. Control and Customization

• On Prem: Offers localized control over updates and infrastructure, which can be advantageous for teams with unique testing needs. However, integrations and configurations often require more manual effort and time to maintain, especially as toolchains evolve. Custom policy enforcement is possible, but typically demands more in-house expertise and administrative overhead compared to streamlined cloud-native options.
• Cloud: Modern SAST platforms, like Checkmarx, provide robust customization in the cloud, too. Users can tailor scans using customizable presets, manage their own query libraries, and even use AI to build or refine rules. However, customization in cloud environments isn’t always plug-and-play. Integrating cloud-based SAST with existing CI/CD tools, enforcing granular policies, and aligning scans with unique workflows may still require upfront configuration and continuous tuning. 

Teams should assess how easily a given cloud solution allows policy management, role-based access control, and environment-specific configurations to match their operational model. Cloud-based SAST provides greater flexibility that supports more accurate results and a closer alignment between AppSec policies and developer workflows.

5. Accuracy and Trust

• False positives are the enemy of developer adoption. Regardless of where SAST runs, accuracy determines whether your security program gains or loses credibility.

The 2025 Tolly Group Report recognized Checkmarx SAST for 100% true positives and 25% fewer false positives than competitors, underscoring the importance of accuracy in building developer trust.

More broadly, any SAST platform you evaluate should provide transparency into how its detection engine works, offer empirical validation of accuracy, and give teams the ability to tune findings. This builds confidence in security results and improves adoption across development teams.

Common Triggers for Cloud Migration

Technical decision-makers should continuously evaluate whether their current SAST architecture can keep up with shifting business requirements and development practices. If left unaddressed, factors like scan duration, infrastructure provisioning time, support for distributed teams, and maintenance overhead can all contribute to technical debt.

Proactively benchmarking current performance against key DevSecOps metrics. like scan-to-feedback time, false positive rates, and developer adoption, can help identify when it’s time to reassess your deployment model.

While some teams are born in the cloud, others reach a tipping point that forces the conversation:

• CI/CD bottlenecks: On prem SAST tools that can’t keep up with rapid iteration cycles
• Resource limits: Infrastructure can’t scale to meet scanning needs without major investment
• Global dev teams: Distributed developers struggling with access and performance delays
• Modernization mandates: Leadership pushes for consolidation, cost reduction, or cloud-first IT

Even so, some organizations remain on prem for valid reasons—compliance requirements, air-gapped environments, or internal policies that haven’t caught up with technical reality.

If you’re still on the fence, explore our glossary entry on on-premises vs. cloud-native AppSec to see how the models stack up.

Lessons from Hybrid AppSec Teams

Many security leaders find themselves supporting both on prem and cloud SAST tools during a transition period. This hybrid reality comes with its own challenges:

From a technical standpoint, hybrid environments can create inconsistent workflows, duplicated infrastructure costs, and version control issues across rule sets and policies. Managing updates, permissions, and access control across platforms adds complexity, especially when trying to enforce consistent security policies organization-wide. To reduce friction, AppSec leaders should establish a shared governance model, align rule sets across both environments, and automate reporting wherever possible to ensure visibility and accountability.

• Inconsistent coverage: Different rule sets and scanning behaviors between environments
• Redundant overhead: Managing, maintaining, and securing two parallel systems
• Fragmented reporting: No unified view of vulnerabilities or risk posture

What’s clear is that successful hybrid teams optimize by consolidating policy enforcement and centralizing reporting as quickly as possible.

Modern on-premises platforms, such as Checkmarx SAST, help bridge this gap with integration into source control, CI/CD, and ticketing tools, plus AI-powered capabilities like:

• Best-fix location guidance
• Natural language vulnerability explanations
• Code snippets for remediation

These features reduce friction for developers regardless of where scans run. To further streamline developer adoption, teams should prioritize tools that integrate directly into IDEs, support Git-based workflows, and allow developers to triage and fix vulnerabilities without switching contexts. Providing context-aware remediation guidance and enabling self-service scanning can also accelerate secure coding practices and reduce security bottlenecks in fast-paced environments.

What to Look for in a Cloud SAST Provider

If you’re moving to the cloud, make sure your next platform doesn’t just lift-and-shift old pain points. Look for capabilities that reflect today’s development and security priorities:

• Customization: Ability to tailor scans and reduce noise
• Accuracy: Proven low false positive rates backed by third-party validation
• Integration: IDE plugins, CI/CD support, SCM integration
• Speed: Fast feedback for developers and scalable scan infrastructure
• Remediation support: AI auto-remediation, fix location guidance
• Compliance alignment: Support for region-specific and industry-specific mandates

Prioritize solutions that enable automation, provide visibility into scan coverage and risk posture, and align with the tools your developers already use. Look for robust documentation, API accessibility, and flexible policy enforcement so your team can adapt quickly as requirements evolve. Comparing cloud vs on prem tradeoffs across these dimensions helps clarify which model best supports your organization’s growth and risk posture.

Checkmarx ticks all of these boxes. Our fully-integrated platform delivers high-accuracy SAST across both deployment models with industry-leading customization and developer-centric features.

It’s Not Just Where You Run SAST. It’s How.

Ultimately, the on prem vs cloud security debate isn’t about choosing sides. It’s about choosing a strategy that aligns with your team’s speed, structure, and security goals. The best cloud vs on prem decisions aren’t just technical—they’re operational, cultural, and future-focused. That’s why more AppSec leaders are reassessing their approach to on prem vs cloud security solutions as part of broader digital transformation strategies.

What matters most is whether your SAST platform can:

• Adapt to your risk and compliance profile
• Scale with your development lifecycle
• Integrate into your DevSecOps toolchain
• Deliver accurate, actionable results developers trust

Checkmarx’s support for customizable SAST presets and queries lets you reduce false positives and align scans with your coding standards and threat models. More broadly, look for tools that allow you to configure query sets based on language, framework, or threat model, and make it easy to manage and update rules as your codebase evolves.