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Fortify on Demand vs Synopsys Defensics 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

Fortify on Demand
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (15th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (12th)
Synopsys Defensics
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Fuzz Testing Tools (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. Fortify on Demand is designed for Application Security Tools and holds a mindshare of 4.5%, down 4.8% compared to last year.
Synopsys Defensics, on the other hand, focuses on Fuzz Testing Tools, holds 23.1% mindshare, up 12.1% since last year.
Application Security Tools
Fuzz Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.
it_user508521 - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps us complete testing more quickly by eliminating many unwanted test cases
Sometimes, when we are testing embedded devices, when we trigger the test cases, the target will crash immediately. It is very difficult for us to identify the root cause of the crash because they do not provide sophisticated tools on the target side. They cover only the client-side application, and from that we can generate automated test cases, but what happens on the target device, what is the reason for the crash, for that we have to do manual debugging. They do not have diagnostic tools for the target side. Rather, they have them but they are very minimal and not very helpful. They can improve a lot on that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The static code analyzers are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable features of Micro Focus Fortify on Demand have been SAT analysis and application security."
"I do not remember any issues with stability."
"We identified a lot of security vulnerability much earlier in the development and could fix this well before the product was rolled out to a huge number of clients."
"We have the option to test applications with or without credentials."
"Fortify on Demand can be scaled very easily."
"The solution is very fast."
"Provides good depth of scanning and we get good results."
"We have found multiple issues in our embedded system network protocols, related to buffer overflow. We have reduced some of these issues."
"The product is related to US usage with TLS contact fees, i.e. how more data center connections will help lower networking costs."
"Whatever the test suit they give, it is intelligent. It will understand the protocol and it will generate the test cases based on the protocol: protocol, message sequence, protocol, message structure... Because of that, we can eliminate a lot of unwanted test cases, so we can execute the tests and complete them very quickly."
 

Cons

"I would like to see improvement in CI integration and integration with GitLab or Jenkins. It needs to be more simple."
"The product has a lot of false positives."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand can improve by having more graphs. For example, to show the improvement of the level of security."
"It natively supports only a few languages. They can include support for more native languages. The response time from the support team can also be improved. They can maybe include video tutorials explaining the remediation process. The remediation process is sometimes not that clear. It would be helpful to have videos. Sometimes, the solution that the tool gives in the GUI is not straightforward to understand for the developer. At present, for any such issues, you have to create a ticket for the support team and request help from the support team."
"In terms of what could be improved, we need more strategic analysis reports, not just for one specific application, but for the whole enterprise. In the next release, we need more reports and more analytic views for all the applications. There is no enterprise view in Fortify. I would like enterprise views and reports."
"It could have a little bit more streamlined installation procedure. Based on the things that I've done, it could also be a bit more automated. It is kind of taking a bunch of different scanners, and SSC is just kind of managing the results. The scanning doesn't really seem to be fully integrated into the SSC platform. More automation and any kind of integration in the SSC platform would definitely be good. There could be a way to initiate scans from SSC and more functionality on the server-side to initiate desk scans if it is not already available."
"They have very good support, but there is always room for improvement."
"There were some regulated compliances, which were not there."
"It does not support the complete protocol stack. There are some IoT protocols that are not supported and new protocols that are not supported."
"Sometimes, when we are testing embedded devices, when we trigger the test cases, the target will crash immediately. It is very difficult for us to identify the root cause of the crash because they do not provide sophisticated tools on the target side. They cover only the client-side application... They do not have diagnostic tools for the target side. Rather, they have them but they are very minimal and not very helpful."
"Codenomicon Defensics should be more advanced for the testing sector. It should be somewhat easy and flexible to install."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortify on Demand is moderately priced, but its pricing could be more flexible."
"It is quite expensive. Pricing and the licensing model could be improved."
"The pricing can be improved because it is complex when compared to the competition."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"I believe the rental license is not too expensive, but it provides a lot of information about the vulnerabilities."
"Fortify on Demand is affordable, and its licensing comes with a year of support."
"The product's cost depends on the type of license."
"The solution is expensive and the price could be reduced."
"Licensing is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing is competitive. The licenses for Fortify On Demand are generally bought in unit...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the next day, without any code changes, it will report vulnerabilities such as passw...
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Also Known As

Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
Defensics, Codenomicon Defensics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Coriant, CERT-FI, Next Generation Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: April 2025.
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