By ByteBot
CISA’s January 1, 2026 deadline for memory safety roadmaps has transformed Rust from a developer curiosity into a security mandate. Microsoft, Google, and Meta aren’t migrating critical systems from C/C++ to Rust because it’s trendy. They’re doing it because 70% of their security vulnerabilities stem from memory errors—a liability that’s become untenable.
The Security Crisis Behind The Great Migration
The numbers tell a brutal story. Seventy percent of vulnerabilities at both Microsoft and Google trace back to memory errors in C and C++ code. For Android specifically, memory safety issues accounted for 76% of all vulnerabilities in 2019 and 86% of critical severity bugs. These aren’t abstract statistics—they represent constant patching cycles, incident response overhead, and attack surfaces that criminals exploit daily.
CISA’s Secure by Design initiative codifies what enterprises already know: memory safety vulnerabilities “significantly elevate risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety.” The January 2026 deadline for publishing memory safety roadmaps isn’t a suggestion. It’s recognition that the cost of vulnerabilities now exceeds the cost of migration.
Major Companies Prove Rust Delivers
Microsoft distinguished engineer Galen Hunt set an ambitious target: eliminate all C and C++ code from Microsoft by 2030. While clarified as a research goal rather than an immediate Windows rewrite, the company’s actions speak louder. The Windows 11 kernel has incorporated Rust code since April 2023. Project Mu, Microsoft’s UEFI firmware, runs entirely in Rust across Surface laptops and Azure data centers. Most tellingly, Azure now mandates that all new system-level code be written exclusively in Rust.
Google’s Android team achieved what seemed impossible: a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density compared to their C and C++ codebase. Memory vulnerabilities plummeted from 76% of total bugs in 2019 to below 20% in 2025—the first time Android has crossed that threshold. The Android Open Source Project now contains approximately 1.5 million lines of Rust code, representing 21% of all new native development. The most remarkable statistic: zero memory safety vulnerabilities have been discovered in Android’s Rust code to date.
Meta is rewriting its mobile messaging infrastructure—code that touches billions of users across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and VR platforms. Engineers described the legacy C codebase as “spaghetti,” plagued by manual memory management and production incidents that were difficult to debug. The Rust migration delivered not just safety but developer velocity, with teams reporting faster feedback cycles, better tooling integration, and increased confidence in their changes.
2026: From Optional to Existential
Commercial Rust adoption exploded by 68.75% between 2021 and 2024, but 2026 marks a fundamental shift. The industry conversation has evolved from “how to use Rust” to “how fast can we migrate.” Azure’s mandate that all new system code use Rust exclusively signals where this is headed. Legacy C and C++ code is transitioning from asset to liability.
The CISA deadline accelerates what was already inevitable. Enterprises clinging to unsafe languages aren’t making a technical choice—they’re accepting vulnerabilities as a known cost. When Android demonstrates that zero memory safety bugs in Rust code is achievable, continuing to ship C and C++ becomes a deliberate security decision.
The Developer Opportunity
Rust job demand grew 67% in 2025, outpacing all other programming languages. Job postings have doubled in the past two years. Mid-career Rust developers command average salaries of $130,000, with senior positions reaching $235,000. The salary premium over comparable languages ranges from 15-20%—an extra $10,000 to $35,000 annually.
The talent shortage is severe. While 2.3 million developers have used Rust, only 709,000 use it as their primary language. Companies like AWS, Google, and Microsoft are hiring developers willing to learn Rust rather than waiting for experienced candidates who don’t exist in sufficient numbers. The market heavily favors developers who invest in Rust skills now.
What Rust Actually Solves
Rust’s ownership and borrow checker enforce memory safety at compile time, eliminating use-after-free bugs, out-of-bounds access, and data races before code ships. Unlike C and C++, which require manual memory management prone to human error, Rust catches entire categories of bugs during compilation rather than in production. It achieves this without a runtime or garbage collector, maintaining the performance characteristics that made C and C++ dominant for systems programming.
Android’s 1000x reduction in vulnerability density isn’t marketing—it’s the measurable impact of compile-time memory safety guarantees. When Google reports zero vulnerabilities in 1.5 million lines of Rust code while their C and C++ components historically show more than one vulnerability per thousand lines, the architectural advantage becomes undeniable.
The Migration is Now
The question facing enterprises in 2026 isn’t whether to adopt memory-safe languages. CISA has answered that. The question is execution speed. Microsoft’s north star of “1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code” may be aspirational, but it reflects the scale of transformation required. Meta’s gradual canary rollout strategy and Google’s component-by-component migration demonstrate that billion-user systems can transition successfully.
For developers, the calculus is simpler. The three largest tech companies have validated Rust’s ability to eliminate vulnerability classes entirely. The job market rewards Rust skills with premium compensation. And the 2026 CISA deadline ensures enterprise demand will only accelerate. The Great Migration isn’t coming—it’s already here.
