AppScan (formerly Rational AppScan) is an application security testing solution acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018. Appscan supports both dynamic (DAST) and static (SAST) application security testing.
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Invicti
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Invicti enables organizations in every industry to continuously scan and secure all of their web applications and APIs. Invicti provides a comprehensive view of an organization’s entire web application portfolio, and automation and integrations enable customers to achieve broad coverage of thousands of applications. Invicti is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and serves more than 3,500 organizations of all sizes all over the world.
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.
Netsparker is very thorough but can take a very long time to scan a web application. It can also take a long time to learn and configure. Its thoroughness is a very good part of the product but if the application does [not] need this thoroughness it is probably a waste of time to run Netsparker on the website.
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
NetSparker has excellent customer service. When our team had to learn to use it for the first time, we had to communicate directly with NetSparker consultants.
NetSparker is very user-friendly. It's UI is organized and keeps all the different scans we have set-up in a very clean visual.
Netsparker has a selection of workflows and integration tools that make it useful for keeping all of my teammates on the same page.
Netsparker Cloud is expensive and restricts the number of website URLs that you are allowed to scan. This restricts us from scanning all of the websites that we create and only allows us to scan a small subset of number of the website we produce.
Netsparker is difficult to configure and I often need to open a ticket with support to figure out how to use the product. I have been vulnerability testing websites for over 10 years and I still don't think I really know how to use Netsparker.
Netsparker can take a very long time to complete a scan due to the number of items it can scan for. Be certain to reduce the technologies that your scan will be looking at. Also, expect a large website to possibly take over two days to complete. Not something you really want to have happen on a developer checking on some source code.
NetSparker support is amazing. When first introducing this software to the team, there was a lot of communication going on between Netsparker consultants and our team. They have answered our questions very efficiently and have had consultants come to our department for training. They are open to suggestions for improvements and enhancements as well.
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
I currently use OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite Professional and Veracode Dynamic Scan. ZAP is very easy to use and the web developers use it regularly. Burp Suite is very customizable as is Netsparker but usually take much less time to scan a website. Both of these tools are programmable and allow me to add special items to a scan when I need it. They are also much better documented. Veracode also has a static code analysis tool that we use much more often then the dynamic analysis tool but we do use both parts of Veracode.
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.
