The security analyst should recommend replacing the strcpy function with a safer alternative. The strcpy function is a C library function that copies a string from one buffer to another. However, this function does not check the size of the destination buffer, which can lead to buffer overflow vulnerabilities if the source string is longer than the destination buffer. Buffer overflow vulnerabilities can allow attackers to execute arbitrary code or crash the program. A safer alternative to strcpy is strncpy, which limits the number of characters copied to the size of the destination buffer.