Contrast Security Assess vs Fortify Software Security Center comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Contrast Security and OpenText are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Contrast Security is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.8, while OpenText is ranked #18 with an average rating of 9.0. Contrast Security holds a 1.5% mindshare in SAST, compared to OpenText’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Contrast Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

Contrast Security Assess

Read 15 Contrast Security Assess reviews

5,680 Views
3,124 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Fortify Software Security C...

Read 8 Fortify Software Security Center reviews

5,209 Views
5,001 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

Fortify Software Security C...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Fortify Software Security Center and Contrast Security Assess compete in the Application Security Testing category. While Fortify is noted for its strong support and competitive pricing, Contrast Security stands out with advanced features, making it a favored choice for many.

Features: Fortify offers robust static application security testing, code scanning, and reliable performance tailored for traditional environments. Contrast Security provides innovative real-time assessment, continuous monitoring, and adaptability for modern agile environments.

Room for Improvement: Fortify could improve integration with CI/CD pipelines, enhance performance speed, and offer better adaptability. Contrast Security could enhance integration with legacy systems, provide more detailed customization options, and focus on easing transitions for users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fortify Software Security Center users experience a smooth deployment process but face delays in customer service responsiveness. Contrast Security Assess allows for quicker deployment and offers more proactive customer support, which increases user satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: Fortify is recognized for competitive pricing; however, some users feel operational costs impact ROI. Contrast Security Assess has a higher cost, but users find the ROI justified by its cutting-edge features and improved application security performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Contrast Security Assess vs. Fortify Software Security Center Report (Updated: November 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Fortify Software Security Center

November 2026

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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)

22nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (23rd)

Fortify Software Security C...

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortify Software Security Center is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Fortify Software Security Center	1.5%
Contrast Security Assess	1.5%
Other	97.0%

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Featured Reviews

Ryan Flake

Threat & Vulnerability Management Senior Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Real-time assessments have improved remediation speed and reduced time spent on authentication issues

I do find that here and there with Contrast Security Assess there are user interface issues, particularly with how they work with libraries. The way that it works is people have access to library data for all applications, not just the applications that they should have access to. However, they are trying to fix that. The way the libraries are handled with Contrast Security Assess could use some work. I know that there is an additional service tier that allows for more in-depth library data. These are small things. Contrast support has been great in fixing any issues or getting back to us with questions. They seem to really be dedicated to the product.

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Diego Caicedo Lescano

Chief Innovation Officer at SAGGA

Enables centralized analysis and improves governance through seamless tool integration

The main use case for Fortify Software Security Center is exceptional because we have governance and control through that console. You can centralize both static analysis and dynamic analysis, and correlate both analyses in one tool to get better results by combining those independent results from each solution. That is outstanding, and there is no tool I have seen on the market that offers these capabilities. I appreciate the interoperability with other solutions from Fortify Software Security Center. Because we are using Kiuwan, you can run Kiuwan analyses and integrate them with Fortify Software Security Center to get those results in a single console. That is a good console for centralizing things in one point. That is one of the best features of the on-premises Fortify.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."

"From a percentage perspective, somewhere around 90 percent of the time we used to spend has been given back to our team, because the false positive rate with Contrast is less than 5 percent."

"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."

"One of the key takeaways is that in order to have a secure application, you cannot rely on just the pentest, vulnerability assessments, and the periodicity of the reviews; you need the real-time feedback on that, and Contrast Assess offers that."

"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."

"Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by providing a good way to find issues faster than regular static scanning, which after a while was unable to really find anything, giving us more visibility on the real code that is used in production along with the active DLLs that were loaded by our application in the backend, which helped us identify where the risk could be."

"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."

"Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by improving the security features of our application."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"I like the explanation of issues provided by Fortify Software Security Center."

"The reporting is very useful because you can always view an entire list of the issues that you have."

"The overall rating for this tool is ten out of ten."

"Fortify Analytics' AI function helps scan and provides more detailed explanations and recommendations about vulnerabilities."

"The main use case for Fortify Software Security Center is exceptional because we have governance and control through that console."

"This is a stable solution at the end of the day."

"You can easily download the tool's rule packs and update them."

"It's very important because they want to scan their source code every day, so we provide CICD integration to our customers so they can auto build and auto test every day, get reports, and fix issues."

More Fortify Software Security Center pros

Cons

"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."

"Regarding Contrast Security Assess's AI capabilities, I think they are missing a huge opportunity because they could lead the way in automatic testing and AI security testing, but currently, they do not offer this functionality, which is a shame."

"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."

"I would rate Contrast Security Assess a seven out of ten because I think it's a good product, better than average, but I'm sure it has a lot of room for growth."

"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 product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."

"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 Contrast can also integrate with some AI tools and provide chat features if possible, so in case we have any more questions, we can chat with that chatbot and get remediations, which I believe would be a better enhancement to Contrast."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"The product's overlap feature is restrictive and requires more customization efforts, which can be expensive."

"Fortify Software Security Center's setup is really painful."

"We are having issues with false positives that need to be resolved."

"The initial setup of this solution is very complex. Specifically, the integration between other parts of the solution is difficult."

"Improvements needed for Software Security Center include better aggregation views of datasets."

"This solution is difficult to implement, and it should be made more comfortable for the end-users."

"I am not satisfied with the percentage of false positives, which is around eighteen percent."

"The support for Fortify on-premises is the same as for the other products. I would say the support is not good and I would rate it a three out of ten."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

"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."

"This is a costly solution that could be cheaper."

"As a Fortify partner company providing technical support, I find the product expensive in our country, where local, inexpensive products are available."

"The solution is priced fair."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?

I was not involved in the negotiation of pricing for Contrast Security Assess, but I am somewhat familiar with setup cost and licensing. Licensing costs are fairly high compared to other DAST and S...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?

I don't use Contrast Security Assess anymore, so I cannot comment on how it can be improved; I stopped using it four years ago, but at the time, I think the UI could be improved to be more friendly...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?

I don't remember specific metrics regarding the outcomes we saw, but I can tell that the false positive rate was a third compared to a static analysis scanner; we used to have automation testing ex...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Software Security Center?

The pricing for the on-premises Fortify is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Micro Focus Software Security Center?

In my opinion, there are no areas that could be improved with Fortify Software Security Center. I would say it is a good product and a mature product. However, the SAST has many improvement areas. ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Software Security Center?

We have installed Fortify Static Code Analysis, SAST, in Ecuador in two customers. The Fortify ScanCentral includes three components: SAST, Fortify Software Security Center, and the WebInspect.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Mend.io vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

Quotium Seeker vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

Oligo vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

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Checkmarx One vs Fortify Software Security Center

Compared 19% of the time

Checkmarx IaC Security / KICS vs Fortify Software Security Center

Compared 11% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Fortify Software Security Center

Compared 7% of the time

SonarQube vs Fortify Software Security Center

Compared 7% of the time

Appvance AIQ Platform vs Fortify Software Security Center

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

October 2026

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

October 2026

Download Fortify Software Security Center product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

Micro Focus Software Security Center, Application Security Center, HPE Application Security Center, WebInspect

Overview

Contrast Security Assess is an IAST platform known for accurate vulnerability detection. It integrates into development workflows, offering real-time insights into security issues with minimal false positives, supporting legacy applications and enhancing code security visibility.

Designed to integrate seamlessly into DevOps workflows, Contrast Security Assess automates real-time vulnerability detection and reduces false positives through its powerful IAST features. By continuously monitoring vulnerabilities, it provides a robust option for securing legacy applications and identifying vulnerabilities without lengthy scans. This cloud-hosted platform supports numerous programming languages, making it versatile for security testing across enterprise environments. Users benefit from detailed reports that pinpoint exact code locations requiring remediation, enhancing speed and efficiency in addressing security concerns.

What are the key features of Contrast Security Assess?

IAST Technology: Delivers accurate vulnerability detection with reduced false positives.
Seamless Integration: Integrates into development processes, supporting real-time vulnerability detection.
Open Source Security: Analyzes third-party libraries for vulnerabilities.
Continuous Monitoring: Provides valuable insights with real-time security feedback for developers.
API Interface: Enhances operational efficiency and streamlining with minimal false positives.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Enhanced Security Visibility: Offers comprehensive insights across application environments.
Speed and Efficiency: Quick identification and remediation of vulnerabilities accelerate development.
Operational Streamlining: Seamless integration into DevOps workflows improves productivity.
Legacy Application Support: Effective for securing existing applications with ongoing monitoring.

Companies in industries requiring high levels of application security, such as finance and healthcare, implement Contrast Security Assess for its ability to enhance visibility and detect vulnerabilities early in the development lifecycle. Its seamless integration with DevOps processes makes it ideal for environments that prioritize agility while maintaining stringent security standards.

Contrast Security

Fortify Software Security Center offers comprehensive application security through a centralized console that integrates static and dynamic analysis, making it essential for organizations focused on robust security operations.

Fortify Software Security Center delivers extensive capabilities that facilitate application security testing, code audits, and bug fixes. Its centralized console enhances governance and control, while its interoperability with tools like Kiuwan and Azure strengthens its functionality. The dashboard's intuitive data customization, along with the ability to store and report data on-premises, further complements its integration capabilities. Although improvements in dataset aggregation, integration with tools like Jira, and resolution of false positives are required, its ability to scan and analyze source code to identify security violations is acknowledged.

What are the key features of Fortify Software Security Center?

Centralized Console: Streamlines governance and control through combined static and dynamic analysis.
Interoperability: Enhances functionality with tools like Kiuwan for comprehensive testing.
Customizability: Tailors vulnerability testing to standards such as OWASP Top Ten.
Macro Recording: Facilitates multi-factor authentication processes.
CI/CD Integration: Ensures seamless integration with development workflows.
Collaboration Module: Supports teamwork with clarification on issues.
Daily Scanning: Elevates code quality through regular evaluations.

Why should users consider Fortify Software Security Center for ROI?

Code Quality Enhancement: Improves coding practices through continuous deployment and daily scanning.
Seamless Deployment: Enhances implementation success and mitigates security threats effectively.
Customization Flexibility: Offers tailored solutions for overlapping features despite increased costs.
Collaboration Efficiency: Boosts teamwork through detailed issue explanations and analysis.

Fortify Software Security Center is adopted in software-driven industries for its robust application security capabilities. Users in technology sectors rely on its static code analysis for auditing and security testing. Its on-premises deployment model and integration with platforms like Azure make it ideal for storing and reporting data, providing customization that aligns with industry standards.

OpenText

Sample Customers

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

Neosecure, Acxiom, Skandinavisk Data Center A/S, Parkeon

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Fortify Software Security Center

November 2026

Free Report: Contrast Security Assess vs. Fortify Software Security Center

Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Fortify Software Security Center and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.

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