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Contrast Security Assess vs FortiDevSec comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
26th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (31st)
FortiDevSec
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
23rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (48th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FortiDevSec is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FortiDevSec0.7%
Contrast Security Assess1.3%
Other98.0%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Eucharia Okafor - PeerSpot reviewer
DevSecOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Continuous in-app security has transformed our development workflow and has reduced manual checks
Contrast Security Assess changes how the team thinks about security. Instead of us waiting for a security audit at the end of any sprint, vulnerabilities surface as developers are writing and testing code. That shift is significant because fixing a bug in development costs more than fixing it later. It captures everything right there and remediates it because it catches vulnerability and remediates immediately while the application is running. It improves our collaboration between development and security teams, as developers get clear actionable findings immediately. We get continuous visibility into our application risk posture. Ultimately, it helps us to shift fast and save money, which is usually a trade-off, but Contrast Security Assess makes both possible. The feature that stands out most to me in Contrast Security Assess is the ability to capture vulnerability while the application is running. Another standout feature is the real-time detection that finds vulnerabilities as code runs. It has fewer false positives and works continuously in the application; you install it and it is there. It captures issues during development quickly and is easily integrated with a CI/CD pipeline, especially if you are using GitLab or GitHub. The real-time detection feature of Contrast Security Assess helps us very well compared to traditional SAST tools. Traditional tools scan from the outside and guess where problems might be. Contrast Security Assess works from the inside because it is embedded into the application. The agent lives inside the running application, allowing it to see exactly what is happening in real-time. This means we are getting accurate alerts instead of a long list of potential issues that require manual investigation. When it comes to the CI/CD pipeline, Contrast Security Assess really shines for our daily work, as it plugs directly into tools like Jenkins, GitHub, or Azure DevOps. When a developer commits code and triggers a build, Contrast Security Assess is already testing it in the background. If there is any vulnerability, the pipeline automatically flags or stops the application before bad code reaches production. This means security becomes everyone's responsibility, not just the security team's, and it gives us real-time, accurate security that fits into how our team already works.
MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Cipheroot
Scans codes in CI/CD pipelines and identifies vulnerabilities
In a customer environment, developers integrate their code with CI/CD pipelines. Most developers use cloud platforms like AWS or Azure and project management tools. FortiDevSec integrates with these CI/CD pipelines using agents such as YAML files. Once integrated, FortiDevSec scans the source code using our product or within the IDE. The most valuable feature is the ability to identify known vulnerabilities in applications by generating reports easily. This development gamification is very useful for developers. Compared to TechSmart and Fortify, FortiDevSec has similar features, but it is much easier to use because of its simple setup. SysTrack, for example, is not very simple. For the CI/CD pipeline, we only need to integrate a YAML file into the security process. Compared to other products, the tool requires fewer steps. We must integrate one file with the CI/CD pipeline, automatically pulling the code report to the repository. Using our API and username, it is easy to scan the environment. The tool's integration is also easy.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time."
"The time it saves us is on the order of one US-based FTE, a security person at an average pay level, and at a bare minimum Contrast helps us like that resource; it's like having a CISSP guy, in the US, on our payroll."
"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."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"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."
"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."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"Contrast was a very complete solution; it met all of our technical requirements and it was really the only IAST product that felt like a real product."
"In a customer environment, developers integrate their code with CI/CD pipelines. Most developers use cloud platforms like AWS or Azure and project management tools. FortiDevSec integrates with these CI/CD pipelines using agents such as YAML files. Once integrated, FortiDevSec scans the source code using our product or within the IDE."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"The only drawback I see with FortiDevSec is the lack of extensions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."
"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."
"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."
"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."
"The solution is expensive."
"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
26%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with FortiDevSec?
The only drawback I see with FortiDevSec is the lack of extensions.
What advice do you have for others considering FortiDevSec?
We have implemented FortiDevSec for one customer for a year. It has been implemented successfully, and we haven't received any complaints from them. Since it's been used by only one customer, if we...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
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