Gain visibility into every AI builder. Protect their devices and AI interactions. And extend security controls to unmanaged codebases.
Development is no longer limited to engineers.
A product manager can turn a feature request into a prototype with a prompt. A finance professional can build an application that analyzes vendor contracts to reduce costs. A marketer can launch an application that personalizes campaigns to increase conversions. None of them write code. All of them ship software.
That’s a massive unlock for innovation. It’s also a massive new attack surface. Everyone can now build applications, connect to services, install packages, call APIs, handle secrets, and deploy software. And most of them have no idea what they’re doing from a security perspective.
Now, Cycode extends security to citizen developers. The same platform that covers your software supply chain and agentic development lifecycle now protects and secures the explosion of AI builders across your organization.
The rise and risks of citizen developers
Building software used to require that people knew how to write code. Not anymore.
Today, anyone can describe what they want to build in plain language, and an agent generates the code, installs dependencies, connects to data sources, and deploys the application.
The upside is real. The people closest to a business problem now build the solution themselves. No ticket to engineering. No six-month backlog. Just results. But every one of those applications is software, with all of software’s risks, built by people who were never trained to manage them.
The result is risk that nobody manages:
- Malicious packages land on unprotected devices. An agent pulls a malicious dependency that runs an install script on a laptop full of company credentials.
- Secrets and sensitive data are exposed to agents. API keys get pasted into prompts. Agents read contracts, customer records, and HR files across the drive.
- Vulnerable and misconfigured apps are publicly deployed. Code with security weaknesses, vulnerable dependencies, and hardcoded passwords are deployed and publicly exposed.
- All of it happens outside security’s view. No repo. No pipeline. No pull request. No review. Traditional application security never sees it, and the builder never knows to ask.
Established security tools and strategies weren’t built for this. CI/CD security checks never run. Training can’t keep up. And remediation breaks down: you can’t send a marketer a Jira ticket for a CWE-89 flaw and expect them to fix it.
Meanwhile, attackers are using frontier models and targeting AI dependencies to exploit vulnerabilities and gaps across people, devices, and code.
See everyone. Secure everything.
Cycode doesn’t ask citizen developers to learn security. It brings security to them: on the workstation, at the prompt, and in every app they ship. Three capabilities work together to discover every AI builder, protect every device and session, and secure every application. Citizen developers don’t need to understand code to create software. With Cycode, they don’t need to understand security to manage risk or build with resilience.
1. Discover every AI builder and unmanaged codebase
You can’t secure builders you can’t see. Cycode builds a living inventory of every citizen developer and every unmanaged codebase in your organization, along with the coding agents, MCP servers, and AI tools they use. No surveys. No self-reporting. The Context Intelligence Graph turns that inventory into priorities. It connects each builder to their team, device, data, and exposure, so you know which app touches customer records, which runs on an unmanaged laptop, and who owns it.
2. Protect every device and session
The workstation is the key place security can influence citizen development. It’s where prompts, packages, files, and secrets meet. Cycode Workstation Protection blocks malicious packages before they install. AI Guardrails keep secrets and sensitive data out of prompts, agent file reads, and MCP calls. Policy controls which AI tools and MCP servers agents can use. Everything runs inside the tools people already use.
3. Secure every application and agent output
Cycode scans what agents produce, from code and dependencies to secrets and cloud configuration, before it reaches production. It also feeds security context to the agents, so they build more securely from the first prompt. Every app gets an owner and a policy, the same as anything engineering ships.
Fix risk without blocking the builder
Security cannot treat citizen developers the same as engineers. When security identifies a risk, they can’t expect citizen developers to know how to fix the issue or avoid it in the future. That’s why Cycode closes the loop, delivering the remediation and control to address the risk without blocking innovation.
For example, when a package install is blocked by a cooldown policy, Cycode doesn’t just leave the user or agent stuck searching for a workaround. Cycode stops the risky install and selects a safe alternative, so the build keeps going.
Likewise, when an agent generates vulnerable code or pulls in a vulnerable dependency, Cycode agentic workflows triage the issue and generate the fix. No human triaging. No ticket. No burden on the AI builder. And no reliance on the same agent that generated the vulnerability to find and fix it. Remediation runs automatically, governed by the policy your security team sets.
Agents generate code at machine speed. Security keeps up.
Let everyone develop. Securely.
Picture one platform that sees every employee in your organization. What they’re building on their machines. What applications they’re creating. What secrets they hold. What packages they’ve installed. Which external services and AI tools they connect to. What code they’re generating. And what risks they’re introducing.
Not just visibility. Governance, security, and control across every person, device, and application, whether it’s built by a citizen developer or engineer.
That’s the platform Cycode delivers. Your engineers, your coding agents, and every employee who builds with AI, secured by one platform with a unified view of risk.
Explore Citizen Developer Security or book a demo.
Cycode Citizen Developer Security is currently in private preview.
