We performed a comparison between Contrast Security Assess and HCL AppScan based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Security Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."
"It is a stable solution...Contrast Security Assess is one of the first players in this market, so they have experience and customers, especially abroad. Overall, it's a good product."
"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."
"The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of."
"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."
"This solution saves us time due to the low number of false positives detected."
"The security and the dashboard are the most valuable features."
"There's extensive functionality with custom rules and a custom knowledge base."
"IBM AppScan has made our work easy, as we can do four to five scans of websites at a time, which saves time when it comes to vulnerability."
"We leverage it as a quality check against code."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the scanning or security part."
"The product is useful, particularly in its sensitivity and scanning capabilities."
"The solution is easy to install. I would rate the product's setup between six to seven out of ten. The deployment time depends on the applications that need to be scanned. We have a development and operations team to take care of the product's maintenance."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."
"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"There are so many lines of code with so many different categories that I am likely to get lost. "
"There is not a central management for static and dynamic."
"One thing which I think can be improved is the CI/CD Integration"
"AppScan is too complicated and should be made more user-friendly."
"We would like to see a check in the specific vulnerabilities in mobile applications or rooted devices, such as jailbreaking devices."
"The penetration testing feature should be included."
"Sometimes it doesn't work so well."
"We would like to integrate with some of the other reporting tools that we're planning to use in the future."
Contrast Security Assess is ranked 31st in Application Security Tools with 11 reviews while HCL AppScan is ranked 15th in Application Security Tools with 40 reviews. Contrast Security Assess is rated 8.8, while HCL AppScan is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Contrast Security Assess writes "We're gathering vulnerability data from multiple environments in real time, fundamentally changing how we identify issues in applications". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HCL AppScan writes " A stable and scalable product useful for application security scanning". Contrast Security Assess is most compared with Veracode, Seeker, Fortify WebInspect, Checkmarx One and SonarQube, whereas HCL AppScan is most compared with SonarQube, Veracode, Acunetix, OWASP Zap and Sonatype Lifecycle. See our Contrast Security Assess vs. HCL AppScan report.
See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors and best Static Application Security Testing (SAST) vendors.
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