CAST Highlight vs. VMware AppDefense (discontinued)

I think CAST is a great tool to give insight into your applications. The tool can be met with resistance from team members as the tool is going to expose defects that should be addressed. Out of the box, it may need some tailoring to focus on certain areas so that you are not overwhelmed with defects the first time you scan your code. But ultimately, you will want to eliminate all defects in the code and have all violations turned on.

Incentivized

Being a VMware product, AppDefense has the advantage of compatibility with all of the VMware product feature updates and patches ( ESXi, NSX, vCenter, etc.). Paired with Carbon Black, it's resource overhead is well-tuned compared to traditional antivirus products.

Incentivized

• Identifies common coding vulnerabilities.
• Compares code to industry best practices.
• Assesses the code for data privacy compliance.

Incentivized

• I think that the AppDefense approach is clever and sets it apart from other products. Having a baseline of normal behavior that I can see is something I haven't seen in another product before.
• AppDefense doesn't overload my systems with performance draining agents.
• AppDefense integrates with VMWare products I have or plan to purchase.
• Access to AppDefense support has been better than any other VMWare products.

Incentivized

• Code scans could be faster. A large application may need to be broken down into smaller sub-applications in order to facilitate faster code scans.
• We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to best structure our code base in the application for ultimate performance.

Incentivized

• PowerShell functionality.
• Sorting results in some areas are not applicable.
• Email alerting through AppDefense Manager does not exist, but support has said it is a feature to come.

Incentivized

Tech support and pro services are top-notch.

Incentivized

The product is still quite new, and there seems to be a lack of technical information available for both the E.U. and support staff. That being said, the support staff that I have worked with have always been very knowledgeable and ensure that they see a ticket through to completion.

Incentivized

These other tools only do a part of what CAST does. CAST gives a comprehensive view into the code looking at all aspects, code quality, security, maintainability, vulnerability, privacy, reuse, etc. These other tools only focus on one or two dimensions.

Incentivized

We have several security applications, but none exactly like VMware AppDefense. That is one of the reasons I like it, as it seems to take a different angle on monitoring and protection. The other apps monitor different things, but one thing AppDefense seems to have over them is a streamlined interface and not a lot of false positives.

Incentivized

• I believe once we had the tool working for our code base, we immediately saw positive ROI.
• We spent some time getting to where our code code be scanned efficiently but some of that was trying to do things ourselves instead of fully utilizing Cast Professional Services. I highly recommend to do an engagement with CAST to have them help setup the tool in your environment or to run it in the cloud for you.

Incentivized

• As with everything now, automation is key. AppDefense effectively monitors the activity on all our VMs, freeing administrators to work on more projects
• Makes it much easier to diagnose issues when system are not running as intended

Incentivized