That 78-point gap? That's the container security crisis nobody's talking about, until now.

Root surveyed 160 cybersecurity decision-makers to answer one question: Is shift-left actually working? The results expose a brutal reality: organizations detect thousands of vulnerabilities monthly but can only fix dozens. Detection scaled with automation. Remediation stayed manual, scaling only with headcount.

The consequences are measurable:

  • 88% of teams show burnout signs, directly degrading security posture
  • 60% experience release delays, yet nearly half ship with known Critical CVEs anyway
  • 63% rank application dependencies as their #1 pain point, yet the industry obsesses over base images

Organizations aren't failing from lack of tools or commitment. They're failing because shift-left optimized for finding problems while ignoring remediation capacity. The model is fundamentally broken.

But there's a path forward. The 4% achieving zero debt didn't hire more developers. They automated remediation out of developer workflows entirely. Our research reveals what works, what's burning out your teams, and why autonomous remediation is the only scalable answer.

Check out the full survey. The data doesn't lie, even if your dashboards do.