Cybersecurity firm Veracode is the Boston tech company you need to know about this month

In a world where a bar fire in Bangkok kills 27 and U.S. warships trade strikes with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, the digital front line feels closer than ever. For Boston’s tech ecosystem, that means one name keeps coming up: Veracode.

The Burlington-based application security firm, founded in 2006, has become a quiet powerhouse in the cybersecurity world. With offices on Wayside Road, Veracode’s software scans code for vulnerabilities before hackers can exploit them, a service that, according to company materials, now covers more than 2,500 organizations globally. Its platform analyzes billions of lines of code each year.

Why now

The timing is no accident. The White House has spent much of this summer warning that state-backed hacking groups are accelerating attacks against critical infrastructure. Earlier this month, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an emergency directive urging federal agencies to patch a vulnerability in a widely used file-transfer tool, a flaw researchers say could give attackers a backdoor into corporate networks.

Veracode’s approach leans on a concept called "shift-left" security: catching bugs early in the software development cycle, rather than after a product ships. The company’s chief product officer, Chris Wysopal, has described the strategy in interviews as akin to fixing a leaky pipe before the basement floods.

A local anchor

Boston’s tech corridor, stretching from Kendall Square to the Route 128 belt, has long been a hub for cybersecurity startups. But Veracode stands out for its scale. Acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo in 2022 for an undisclosed sum, the company now employs roughly 1,200 people, many of them based in the Burlington office just off Middlesex Turnpike.

The firm also runs an annual event, Veracode Security Labs, that draws developers and security engineers from across New England. The most recent gathering, held in May at the Westin Copley Place, included hands-on workshops on how to spot common software flaws such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting.

Veracode faces stiff competition from rivals like Synopsys and Checkmarx. But industry analysts at Gartner have consistently ranked the company as a leader in application security testing, citing its breadth of language support, covering Java, Python, C#, and 20-plus other programming languages, and its low rate of false positives.

What’s next

For Boston businesses, the takeaway is pragmatic, not panic-driven. Experts say most breaches still stem from known, preventable vulnerabilities. Three recommendations recur in guidance from the Massachusetts Cybersecurity Coordination Office: enforce multi-factor authentication, patch software promptly, and run static code analysis on any custom-built applications.

Veracode offers a free tier of its scanning tool for open-source projects. The company also makes a version available to nonprofits through its community program.

No one can predict where the next major breach will hit. But for companies in and around Boston, the tools to prevent one are already here, housed in an unassuming office building off Route 128, where engineers review code for a living, and where the basement, for now, stays dry.