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Contrast Security Assess vs Fortify Software Security Center comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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)
21st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (25th)
Fortify Software Security C...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 Fortify Software Security Center is 1.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortify Software Security Center1.5%
Contrast Security Assess1.3%
Other97.2%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Eucharia Okafor - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops 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.
Diego Caicedo Lescano - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."
"Security feedback comes to developers instantly with Contrast Security Assess, reducing costs by about 50%."
"Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by improving the security features of our application."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It has helped us to improve the overall security posture of the company, we are able to address the findings before they have been reported by a third-party, and it has also helped us to gain our customers' trust."
"You can easily download the tool's rule packs and update them."
"The main use case for Fortify Software Security Center is exceptional because we have governance and control through that console."
"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."
"The overall rating for this tool is ten out of ten."
"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."
"Fortify Analytics' AI function helps scan and provides more detailed explanations and recommendations about vulnerabilities."
"This is a stable solution at the end of the day."
 

Cons

"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."
"Their level of support and troubleshooting for the product is limited because of how they handle troubleshooting. It's done through a log file that's very cumbersome to work with."
"I do find that here and there with Contrast Security Assess there are user interface issues, particularly with how they work with libraries."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We are having issues with false positives that need to be resolved."
"Improvements needed for Software Security Center include better aggregation views of datasets."
"I am not satisfied with the percentage of false positives, which is around eighteen percent."
"The initial setup of this solution is very complex. Specifically, the integration between other parts of the solution is difficult."
"This solution is difficult to implement, and it should be made more comfortable for the end-users."
"The product's overlap feature is restrictive and requires more customization efforts, which can be expensive."
"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."
"Fortify Software Security Center's setup is really painful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"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."
"This is a costly solution that could be cheaper."
"The solution is priced fair."
"As a Fortify partner company providing technical support, I find the product expensive in our country, where local, inexpensive products are available."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, the annual licensing for Contrast Security Assess costs about $20,000 to $100,000 per year, and per application, it costs about $5,000 to $15,000 per y...
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
Contrast Security Assess could improve in the reporting and the dashboard experience. While the data is there, pulling together an executive-level summary requires too much manual work. I would lov...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
The biggest production gain from Contrast Security Assess is the reduced costs and overhead within my company. Security feedback comes to developers instantly with Contrast Security Assess, reducin...
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. ...
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.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Neosecure, Acxiom, Skandinavisk Data Center A/S, Parkeon
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Fortify Software Security Center and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.