What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for Veracode is to secure our software development lifecycle. It's deployed in a couple of countries and connected to multiple applications. It's used by five development teams, each of which has a different focus, such as digital channels, CRM, ERP, backend deployment, and billing. We also have a team that coordinates all of the efforts of the secure development policies. That team sets the guidelines and policies. The entire development team has about 20-30 people.
How has it helped my organization?
Veracode has sped up the development cycle, helping us bring products to the market faster. I work at an IT services company with hundreds of customers who have various needs for different kinds of tools. That doesn't mean we use Veracode for all our customers, but for certain customers, it's critical because the solution reduces the amount of time needed to prevent and detect issues. Bringing secure applications into production is essential.
We can't just rely on our development teams to make, test, and manually review the code. We need powerful tools that provide a strong framework for detecting vulnerabilities and scanning application components. Penetration testing is the most important because hackers break into the application and access the information.
Dynamic analysis is also crucial for web applications, which can be risky. Veracode can dynamically detect vulnerabilities and block traffic. It is sometimes hard to differentiate real users from hackers. Dynamic analysis must be implemented with a user-sensitive perspective.
I work in Latin America, and there are regulations on information security and the use of customer information. The most vital areas are things like health information and finance. You can face penalties for failing to protect customer information, so it's critical for us to secure our code during development. Any vulnerable code or application component can risk disclosing customer information from customers and allowing an outsider to penetrate the systems or databases.
Veracode offers visibility throughout the entire development lifecycle. SecOps is an essential framework inside the organization currently because we need to deliver applications to market faster while improving code quality. It's crucial to be careful when using code generated by community sources. We need to test the final applications and also the components and packages in any code repository we use.
We're deploying complex pipelines and utilizing CI/CD. For example, Veracode is important when connecting management tools, code repositories, and various cloud components. Having that integration and capacity to connect to various tools in the DevOps framework is vital for the DevOps team. Every business must decide its risk tolerance and set a threshold of vulnerability permissions in the application to detect. It's really powerful if you can configure the threshold correctly.
Developer confidence depends on their capacity to understand, and Veracode has to detect vulnerabilities and provide suggestions for correcting them. Sometimes it's an upgrade; sometimes not. It also provides different kinds of information to the developers.
Veracode has had an enormous impact on our ability to detect flaws. It's risky if we don't have the capacity to detect vulnerabilities in the earliest stage of development before the applications go into production. It's also an important time-saving tool. It reduces the time spent manually addressing vulnerabilities by about 20-30 percent.
What is most valuable?
I like Veracode's static analysis. It was one of the core development tools when I worked with a telecommunication company where we were delivering new features for various applications and purposes each week, such as CRM, data channels, compliance, traffic data, etc.
Most of the time, the key thing was to ensure the security of digital channels and reduce the risk of any breach that could cause a security issue. It's critical to maintain the security of sensitive information transferred from our customers to the sales staff. Keeping that data secure is important for the customer relationship and also for compliance and recurring sales.
I rate Veracode 10 out of 10 for its ability to prevent vulnerable code from entering production. It has a lot of useful and intuitive features. In previous settings, static analysis was one of the primary use cases, but dynamic analysis is also helpful. Veracode is highly valuable because one vulnerability could result in service downtime or worse: a leak of customer information.
The investment in the tool is justified because we can detect and prevent vulnerabilities much earlier in the process. Software composition analysis is also vital when we use open-source middleware or backend components for business-critical functions like bringing information from one source to another or connecting one application to another.
What needs improvement?
Veracode can improve the price model and how they bill the final offer to customers. It's based on the amount of traffic. For example, you can buy 1 gigabyte distributed across various applications, and each one can consume part of the whole allotment of traffic data.
You pay for all of the time that the tool is running, not for the number of scans. There are specific rules governing the amount of traffic applications can consume from the allotment you have. I would like the pricing to be more personalized. For example, some companies don't have a large budget for this kind of tool, whereas a large enterprise can acquire this kind of solution and pay for it. However, I'm an IT consultant working with various types of customers in different industries, including finance, insurance, and telecommunications.
For how long have I used the solution?
I started using Veracode at least three years ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Veracode is a highly stable platform. I haven't experienced any service disruption, and the performance is solid.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I've used Veracode in a telecommunication company with a huge environment and more than a hundred applications. I don't have experience with smaller-scale use cases, but I know the cloud is quite scalable.
How are customer service and support?
I rate Veracode support nine out of 10. We get support from the resellers and direct support from Veracode analysts. We call the support team or the architect when there is a serious technical isssue.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I haven't used a commercial tool like Veracode before. It depends on where I'm working, but the most common tool we use is an open-source solution called SonarQube.
How was the initial setup?
Veracode is straightforward to deploy. It's not hard to connect it, and we had support from a local vendor to help us integrate it into our dev lifecycle. It required only one person from my team.
What about the implementation team?
We had assistance from our local reseller, and the experience was great because we had a direct connection from the partner to the brand. We have a local team member who was in charge of the resell process.
What was our ROI?
We calculate the return on investment primarily based on the risk. We calculate the ROI annually, but it's not very detailed. We factor in the risks associated with the loss of customer information loss, penalties for noncompliance, etc. In the worst-case scenario, we estimate that could potentially lose up to $1 million annually.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing model could be more flexible, and Veracode could be more accessible to smaller enterprises. We obtained Veracode through a consultancy. Veracode sets the price through consultation with our reseller, but I have yet to get a direct quotation without any other reseller in the middle. If you are worried about the price, I would say that you could request more information and do a trial, then see if you can negotiate an offer.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We decided to use Veracode without comparing it to any other kind of solution, we had a kind of consultancy from one of the companies, the IT services company that was one of our partners, and they worked close to us, and we selected Barracuda the tool that we needed.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Veracode nine out of 10. It's an excellent solution for securing the development lifecycle. I recommend starting with a trial and getting in touch with the account team to explore all of the different features.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.