Checkmarx has announced the integration of IDE-native support for Kiro through its Checkmarx Developer Assist tool, enhancing real-time, AI-driven application security directly within the developer environment.
This advancement enables developers to detect and resolve security issues as they write code, eliminating the need to rely solely on downstream CI/CD scans or step outside the integrated development environment (IDE).
Integration Enhances Development Workflow
As the pace of development increases, security risks tend to emerge sooner and more frequently. Developer Assist is designed to address this by embedding security analysis directly into the Kiro workflow, ensuring that development speed and security are advanced concurrently. This integration supports additional development workflows, including those that employ command-line interfaces.
Jonathan Rende, Chief Product Officer at Checkmarx, highlighted the importance of speed in AI-driven development environments like Kiro, stating, “With AI-driven development environments like Kiro, security must operate at developer speed. Developer Assist brings agentic, policy-driven security insight directly into the IDE, helping developers understand real risk in real-time while giving AppSec teams centralized visibility and control through Checkmarx One. With the Kiro agent powered by Checkmarx, developers can eliminate up to 90% of security rework before code is committed.”
AI-Assisted Development Validates Security Efforts
Developers can easily activate Developer Assist within Kiro using the official Checkmarx IDE extension
Developers can easily activate Developer Assist within Kiro using the official Checkmarx IDE extension, requiring minimal setup. Once authenticated, the tool automatically analyzes source code and dependencies within the active workspace, applying existing Checkmarx One policies without needing Kiro-specific configurations, proprietary APIs, or experimental integrations.
The security findings are presented within the IDE, providing contextual details that assist developers in addressing issues early in the software lifecycle. Concurrently, these results are synchronized with the Checkmarx One platform, offering application security (AppSec) and engineering leaders a cohesive overview of risk across various projects and teams.
By incorporating IDE-native application security into Kiro, Checkmarx facilitates organizations' adoption of AI-assisted development, embedding security from the initial line of code while preserving enterprise-level governance.
