January 5, 2026 • 2 min read • Fateh Mohammed
Measuring Security Program Effectiveness With PR Metrics
Traditional security metrics are lagging indicators. PR-level metrics give you real-time visibility into your security posture.
Most security programs measure effectiveness with lagging indicators: number of incidents, mean time to detect, and vulnerability counts from periodic scans. These metrics tell you what already happened. They do not tell you whether your program is working in real time.
PR-level security metrics
Pull request scanning generates leading indicators that show whether security is improving or degrading on a daily basis.
Finding introduction rate
How many new findings are introduced per PR? A declining rate indicates improving developer awareness and code quality. An increasing rate signals that training or tooling gaps exist.
Time to remediation
How long between when a finding is reported and when it is fixed? For PR-level findings, this should be measured in hours, not days. Findings that are fixed before merge represent the ideal outcome.
Fix rate
What percentage of findings are actually remediated versus suppressed or ignored? A high fix rate indicates trust in the tooling and clear remediation guidance. A low fix rate indicates noise, false positives, or unclear guidance.
Gate pass rate
What percentage of PRs pass the security gate on the first attempt? A very high rate may indicate the gate is too permissive. A very low rate may indicate it is too strict or producing too many false positives.
Finding density by category
Which vulnerability categories appear most frequently? This data informs where to invest in developer education and which detectors need tuning.
Building a dashboard
A useful security metrics dashboard shows:
| Metric | Timeframe | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Finding introduction rate | Weekly | Declining trend |
| Median time to remediation | Weekly | Under 4 hours |
| Fix rate | Monthly | Above 90% |
| Gate pass rate | Weekly | 70-90% |
| False positive rate | Monthly | Below 10% |
Using metrics to drive decisions
Metrics should inform specific actions:
- High finding rate in injection category → schedule injection prevention training.
- Low fix rate → improve remediation guidance in findings.
- High false positive rate → tune detection rules and thresholds.
- Increasing time to remediation → review whether findings are clear and actionable.
The metric that matters most
If you track only one thing, track the fix rate. It is the clearest indicator of whether your security tooling is producing results that developers trust and act on. Everything else is a diagnostic for improving that number.