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FOSSA vs Fortify Static Code Analyzer 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 Static Code Analyzer
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Static Code Analysis (3rd)
FOSSA
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Fortify Static Code Analyzer is designed for Static Code Analysis and holds a mindshare of 11.9%, up 9.5% compared to last year.
FOSSA, on the other hand, focuses on Software Composition Analysis (SCA), holds 3.4% mindshare, down 4.3% since last year.
Static Code Analysis
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Aphiwat Leetavorn. - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides extensive language support and enhances secure coding practices
The deployment of Fortify Static Code Analyzer needs to be simplified. It should be easier to install, perhaps through a container-based approach where everything is combined into one image or pack of containers. This change would facilitate easier installations and ensure all necessary components are connected and ready to use.
Hanumanth Ramsetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactively mitigate deployment vulnerabilities with seamless dependency tracking
Before using FOSSA, we could only identify issues after deployment in the Cloud Run. Now, with FOSSA, we identify dependency issues or vulnerabilities during the CI phase itself. This proactive approach has eliminated the need to search the internet for solutions, as FOSSA provides updated recommendations automatically. This has made the process more efficient and mitigated risks before deployment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The reference provided for each issue is extremely helpful."
"Automating the Jenkins plugins and the build title is a big plus."
"We've found the documentation to be very good."
"Integrating the Fortify Static Code Analyzer into our software development lifecycle was straightforward. It highlights important information beyond just syntax errors. It identifies issues like password credentials and access keys embedded in the code."
"The integration Subset core integration, using Jenkins is one of the good features."
"Fortify Static Code Analyzer's most valuable features are its ability to provide best practices for fixing code and its examples and capabilities to address security problems in the code. It effectively identifies security vulnerabilities by analyzing the code and offering insights on improving it."
"I like Fortify Software Security Center or Fortify SSC. This tool is installed on each developer's machine, but Fortify Software Security Center combines everything. We can meet there as security professionals and developers. The developers scan their code and publish the results there. We can then look at them from a security perspective and see whether they fixed the issues. We can agree on whether something is a false positive and make decisions."
"Fortify Static Code Analyzer tells us if there are any security leaks or not. If there are, then it's notifying us and does not allow us to pass the DevOps pipeline. If it is finds everything's perfect, as per our given guidelines, then it is allowing us to go ahead and start it, and we are able to deploy it."
"FOSSA is easy to use and set up, provides relatively accurate results, and doesn't require armies of people to get value from its use."
"Policies and identification of open-source licensing issues are the most valuable features. It reduces the time needed to identify open-source software licensing issues."
"The scalability is excellent."
"FOSSA suggests solutions for dependency mismatches."
"What I really need from FOSSA, and it does a really good job of this, is to flag me when there are particular open source licenses that cause me or our legal department concern. It points out where a particular issue is, where it comes from, and the chain that brought it in, which is the most important part to me."
"I found FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine to be accurate and that it was tuned appropriately to the settings that we were looking for. The policy engine is pretty straightforward... I find it to be very straightforward to make small modifications to, but it's very rare that we have to make modifications to it. It's easy to use. It's a four-category system that handles most cases pretty well."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to identify all of the components in a build, and then surface the licenses that are associated with it, allowing us to make a decision as to whether or not we allow a team to use the components. That eliminates the risk that comes with running consumer software that contains open source components."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the ease and speed of integrating into build pipelines, like a Jenkins pipeline or something along those lines. The ease of a new development team coming on board and integrating FOSSA with a new project, or even an existing project, can be done so quickly that it's invaluable and it's easy to ask the developers to use a tool like this. Those developers greatly value the very quick feedback they get on any licensing or security vulnerability issues."
 

Cons

"Fortify Static Code Analyzer has a bit of a learning curve, and I don't find it particularly helpful in narrowing down the vulnerabilities we should prioritize."
"The troubleshooting capabilities of this solution could be improved. This would reduce the number of cases that users have to submit."
"Streamlining the upgrade process and enhancing compatibility would make it easier for us to keep our security tools up-to-date."
"It can be tricky if you want to exclude some files from scanning. For instance, if you do not want to scan and push testing files to Fortify Software Security Center, that is tricky with some IDEs, such as IntelliJ. We found that there is an Exclude feature that is not working. We reported that to them for future fixing. It needs some work on the plugins to make them consistent across IDEs and make them easier."
"False positives need improvement in the future. Fortify's vulnerability remediation guidance helps improve code security, but I think they need to improve the focus of the solution, as it still contains many bugs and needs a thorough review."
"Their licensing is expensive."
"The generation of false positives should be reduced."
"Not all languages are supported in Fortify."
"I would like the FOSSA API to be broader. I would like not to have to interact with the GUI at all, to do the work that I want to do. I would like them to do API-first development, rather than a focus on the GUI."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"For open-source management, FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine is easy to use, but the list of licenses is not as complete as we would like it to be. They should add more open-source licenses to the selection."
"I want the product to include binary scanning which is missing at the moment. Binary scanning includes code and component matching through dependency management. It also includes the actual scanning and reverse engineering of the boundaries and finding out what is inside."
"While running a FOSSA scan, it takes time for the results to reflect in the FOSSA UI portal."
"I wish there was a way that you could have a more global rollout of it, instead of having to do it in each repository individually. It's possible, that's something that is offered now, or maybe if you were using the CI Jenkins, you'd be able to do that. But with Travis, there wasn't an easy way to do that. At least not that I could find. That was probably the biggest issue."
"I would like more customized categories because our company is so big. This is doable for them. They are still in the stages of trying to figure this out since we are one of their biggest companies that they support."
"The solution provides contextualized, actionable, intelligence that alerts us to compliance issues, but there is still a little bit of work to be done on it. One of the issues that I have raised with FOSSA is that when it identifies an issue that is an error, why is it in error? What detail can they give to me? They've improved, but that still needs some work. They could provide more information that helps me to identify the dependencies and then figure out where they originated from."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The setup costs and pricing for Fortify may vary depending on the organization's needs and requirements."
"Although I am not responsible for the budget, Fortify SAST is expensive."
"There is a licensing fee, and if you bring them to the company and you want them to do the installation and the implementation in the beginning, there is a separate cost. Similarly, if you want consultation or training, there is a separate cost. I see it as suitable only for enterprises. I do not see it suitable for a small business or individual use."
"The licensing is expensive and is in the 50K range."
"It has a couple of license models. The one that we use most frequently is called their flexible deployment. We use this one because it is flexible and based on the number of code-contributing developers in the organization. It includes almost everything in the Fortify suite for one developer price. It gives access to not just the secure code analyzer (SCA) but also to FSC, the secure code. It gives us accessibility to scan central, which is the decentralized scanning farm. It also gives us access to the software security center, which is the vulnerability management platform."
"From our standpoint, we are significantly better off with Fortify due to the favorable pricing we secured five years ago."
"I rate the pricing of Fortify Static Code Analyzer as a seven out of ten since it is a bit expensive."
"The price of Fortify Static Code Analyzer could be reduced."
"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch. It is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario. Regardless of the price, I highly recommend FOSSA."
"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."
"Its price is reasonable as compared to the market. It is competitively priced in comparison to other similar solutions on the market. It is also quite affordable in terms of the value that it delivers as compared to its alternative of hiring a team."
"FOSSA is a fairly priced product. It is not either cheaper or expensive. The pricing lies somewhere in the middle. The solution is worth the money that we are spending to use it."
"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortify Static Code Analyzer?
Integrating the Fortify Static Code Analyzer into our software development lifecycle was straightforward. It highlights important information beyond just syntax errors. It identifies issues like pa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortify Static Code Analyzer?
The pricing of Fortify Static Code Analyzer is good, with a flexible model that allows customers to choose a setup that suits their needs. There are some features that require additional purchases,...
What needs improvement with Fortify Static Code Analyzer?
The deployment of Fortify Static Code Analyzer needs to be simplified. It should be easier to install, perhaps through a container-based approach where everything is combined into one image or pack...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FOSSA?
The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free. You have to pay for the features you need, which I think is fair. If you want to get value for free...
What needs improvement with FOSSA?
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact lin...
What is your primary use case for FOSSA?
I have worked with FOSSA primarily to manage the dependencies in our projects. For example, if I take a Spring Boot application, FOSSA helps in identifying mismatches or unsupported dependencies th...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Fortify Static Code Analysis SAST
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
AppDyanmic, Uber, Twitter, Zendesk, Confluent
Find out what your peers are saying about Veracode, Checkmarx, OpenText and others in Static Code Analysis. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.