Black Duck Software Composition Analysis (SCA) vs. HCL AppScan

If you are using a lot of open-source libraries, which is most likely, this is a must-have to ensure no known vulnerabilities slip into production

Incentivized

In HCL AppScan automation maintain a reasonable pace of review and remediation of flaws for our apps. HCL AppScan is a cloud-based enterprise mobile application security testing solution for Android and iOS applications developed using Java, .Net or Objective-C. So it covers all our area and It consists of three components: AppScan Source Edition for developing and testing apps internally, AppScan Standard Edition for testing internally or externally, and AppScan Enterprise Edition for large enterprises who need to secure their entire mobile application portfolio across the organization with multiple device types.

Incentivized

• Quick inventory scan: Black Duck helps us scan the code repositories in no time. And quickly list the components and I now really know what is in my code.
• Security and License risk management: Black Duck being rich in its knowledge base about the vulnerabilities and license issues of open source components, quickly compares the identified inventory to the Black Duck knowledge base and lists all the vulnerabilities and license issues in the code.
• Integration for automatic scanning: Black Duck is part of devops which provides us automatic scanning. Black Duck is not just for devops but also SecOps.

Incentivized

• AppScan works well in finding application vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting and all of the OWASP top 10.
• Flexible reporting allows us to generate executive reports for application owners as well as separate technical reports for developers and system engineers.
• Technical reports include remediation information and cross reference CVSS scores
• Because it maintains data on all repeated assessments it helps us to do trending and metrics on compliance

Incentivized

• License model based on usage is costly.
• Documentation is extensive, but often confusing.
• Black Duck Hub could use some feature improvements for more robust governance capabilities

Incentivized

• It can have a FAQ session in the Application itself.
• It can recommend the fix for the error that occurred during the scan.
• Like its storing multiple manuals explore, It should have the capability of storing multiple logins.

Incentivized

Support seems very responsive.

Incentivized

Black Duck is an obvious choice, with its versatility, integration, best enterprise support and on top of the list the knowledge base Black Duck has. Vega or Grabber also scans the application and tells about vulnerabilities. But it can never be compared with the feature set of Black Duck. Black Duck can also generate reports.

Incentivized

Both solutions are decent, however, I had team members who had the experience working with HCL AppScan. Also, the product was priced nominally which suited our budget. Further, HCL AppScan's user community was bigger and many learning resources were freely available which helped junior peers learn quickly and eliminate any issues

Incentivized

• It is hard to measure ROI since Black Duck Hub saves us from costly legal battles that have thankfully never had to happen.

Incentivized

• There are countless implementations to accomplish the same thing, and so many configurations are required.
• Even if you test it finished and find no vulnerabilities, there is no point if you just get the error screen.
• Until now, I was worried about vulnerabilities and security in software development, but I think it was good to find the vulnerability problem quickly with HCL AppScan.

Incentivized