Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Contrast Security Assess vs OpenText Dynamic Application Security Testing 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
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (30th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (27th)
OpenText Dynamic Applicatio...
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (3rd), DevSecOps (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Contrast Security Assess is designed for Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and holds a mindshare of 1.0%, up 0.5% compared to last year.
OpenText Dynamic Application Security Testing, on the other hand, focuses on Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), holds 11.0% mindshare, up 9.5% since last year.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Contrast Security Assess1.0%
SonarQube18.2%
Checkmarx One10.3%
Other70.5%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenText Dynamic Application Security Testing11.0%
Veracode18.2%
Checkmarx One17.0%
Other53.8%
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1605099 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Threat and Vulnerability Management at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We're gathering vulnerability data from multiple environments in real time, fundamentally changing how we identify issues in applications
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 also provides the option of helping developers incorporate security elements while they're writing code. It depends on whether individual developers decide to utilize the information that's provided to them from the solution, but it definitely gives them visibility into more environments. It gives them an opportunity to remediate vulnerabilities well before production deployments.
AP
Cyber Security Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Enhancements in manual testing align with reporting and integration features
WebInspect works efficiently with Java-based or .NET based applications. However, it struggles with Salesforce applications, where it requires approximately 20-24 hours to crawl and audit but produces minimal findings, necessitating manual verification. The solution offers customization features for crawling and vulnerability detection. It includes various security frameworks and allows selection of specific vulnerability types to audit, such as OWASP Top 10 or JavaScript-based vulnerabilities. When working with APIs, we can select OWASP API Top 10. The tool also supports custom audit features by combining different security frameworks. For on-premises deployment, the setup is complex, particularly regarding SQL server configuration. Unlike Burp Suite or OpenText Dynamic Application Security Testing, which have simpler setup processes, WebInspect requires SQL server setup to function.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"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."
"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."
"I'm sorry, but there is no review content provided to extract a quote from."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the ability to make our customers more secure."
"I've found the centralized dashboard the most valuable. For the management, it helps a lot to have abilities at the central level."
"It is scalable and very easy to use."
"Technical support has been good."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Good at scanning and finding vulnerabilities."
"The user interface is ok and it is very simple to use."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"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."
"We have often encountered scanning errors."
"We have had a problem with authentification."
"The main area for improvement in Fortify WebInspect is the price, as it is too high compared to the market rate."
"There are some file extensions, like .SER, that Fortify WebInspect doesn't scan."
"Our biggest complaint about this product is that it freezes up, and literally doesn't work for us."
"The installation could be a bit easier. Usually it's simple to use, but the installation is painful and a bit laborious and complex."
"One thing I would like to see them introduce is a cloud-based platform."
"It requires improvement in terms of scanning. The application scan heavily utilizes the resources of an on-premise server. 32 GB RAM is very high for an enterprise web application."
 

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."
"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 product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"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."
"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 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."
"It’s a fair price for the solution."
"This solution is very expensive."
"Our licensing is such that you can only run one scan at a time, which is inconvenient."
"Its price is almost similar to the price of AppScan. Both of them are very costly. Its price could be reduced because it can be very costly for unlimited IT scans, etc. I'm not sure, but it can go up to $40,000 to $50,000 or more than that."
"The price is okay."
"The pricing is not clear and while it is not high, it is difficult to understand."
"Fortify WebInspect is a very expensive product."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions are best for your needs.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortify WebInspect?
While I am not directly involved with licensing, I can share that our project's license for 1-9 applications costs between $15,000 to $19,000. In comparison, Burp Suite costs approximately $500 to ...
What needs improvement with Fortify WebInspect?
WebInspect works efficiently with Java-based or .NET based applications. However, it struggles with Salesforce applications, where it requires approximately 20-24 hours to crawl and audit but produ...
What is your primary use case for Fortify WebInspect?
I am currently working with several tools. For Fortify, I use SCA and WebInspect. Apart from that, I use Burp Suite from PortSwigger. For API testing, I use Postman with Burp Suite or WebInspect fo...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Micro Focus WebInspect, WebInspect
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Aaron's
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. OpenText Dynamic Application Security Testing and other solutions. Updated: May 2022.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.