What is our primary use case?
Our company has more than 300 employees and we have regional offices in Japan and Malaysia. We are in the FinTech industry. We do banking solutions, mobile, branch-based, and agent banking. We are also into government projects.
We have two lines of application testing. One is for internal application deployments. Before all these deployments, we conduct testing with Acunetix and, based on the report generated, we do remediation. Once the remediation is done we will do more testing. Only once all the vulnerabilities have been fixed is it allowed to be deployed in the organization's environment.
The second use case is that we do application development for banks. Whenever we develop backend applications or web applications, they are all tested for vulnerability. In addition, the mobile application code is tested using Acunetix.
We didn't have much in the way of exposure to this kind of information when I joined the organization. I introduced this system to test all the applications that were going to be released to customers, as well as for our internal vulnerability assessment and penetration testing purposes.
How has it helped my organization?
The number of "high" and "medium" vulnerabilities found using this solution will depend on the development process. But when we started using Acunetix, and other testing tools as well, we had a lot of vulnerabilities. We had to invest a lot of time in fixing vulnerabilities in those days, about two years back. Now, we don't get that many vulnerabilities because the developers and the application testers have improved a lot. They code in a way that results in fewer vulnerabilities.
Most of the vulnerability standards we've used give a fair number of false positives. But with the latest version of Acunetix, we have seen a good standard of false positive rates. Sometimes, customers actually want to have a list of false positives, but the number of false positives we now get is much less than earlier.
What is most valuable?
It's very user-friendly for the testing teams. It's very easy for them to understand things and to fix vulnerabilities. For anyone who does development, Acunetix is going to be a very powerful tool, and very easy to use. It gives all the required information for fixing your vulnerabilities.
What needs improvement?
The jargon used makes it difficult for project managers to understand the issues, and the technical explanations used make it difficult for developers to understand issues. These things should be simplified much more. That would be very helpful for us when explaining to them what needs to be fixed. The report output needs to be simplified.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner for the last three years and we don't have a reason to change to a different solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven't come across unexpected downtime or unexpected issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We don't scan more than 35 solutions, but we are always working on improving them and, whenever an improvement comes up, we scan it.
We initially decided that it was going to be deployed on a central server and we didn't look into the scalability. We set up the environment and we have been using it for some time. We haven't come across the need for scalability.
We have five usernames for Acunetix, but most of the time only two of them are being used. Generally, in a week, we may conduct five or six tests. We don't have much load on it. We do intend to expand the number of users in another six months' time with an additional three or four users, as we are expecting more application testing in that time.
How are customer service and technical support?
We had to contact technical support some ago but not since then. Sometimes the blog provides support very well, and we have also attended certain webinars.
We would really appreciate it if they would provide training on advanced usage or technical knowhow. That would help us to attend to things and sort them out.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The company had been using InMap and was using manual vulnerability assessment practices, using Kali Linux and some open source applications. But once I joined the company, we changed to a different level because we are an ISO 27000 certified company as well as being PCI DSS application certified with a PCI DSS certified data center. We host payment applications on behalf of Sri Lankan and Malaysian banks. Because of that we introduced these automation systems. We use Acunetix and we use PortSwigger and some other tools.
We used Nessus and we have experience with QualysGuard as well, but Acunetix gives us code-level identification of vulnerabilities and a good understanding of the code-level vulnerability fixes. It is much more helpful for us because we can understand how to fix the vulnerabilities at the code level. The vulnerability identification is much more powerful in Acunetix than in any other tool.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very simple.
We use this application for testing in different environments, such as production and DR, and implementing of scanning in those environments can sometimes be a little bit tough. But that is not due to the complexity of the application but more because of the complexity of the environments that we maintain, to keep our compliance level high.
The way we set it up is that once development is over, we push it to a single location. For that, it's not a very complex environment, it's a single PC. We do the scanning on that PC so that development is actually on a single server. The setup for that didn't take much time. Within two to three days, the complete setup was finished and the initial testing was run.
What was our ROI?
We have seen ROI with Acunetix. That's the most convincing point I have to prove to my management when it comes to the next budgeting cycle. The ROI is seen in the fact that, at the time of application releases, we hold off the risk. When we do the assessment, we see that the distributed cost of Acunetix, across all our releases reduces our risk. It's a very convincing point.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
When compared with other products, the pricing is a little bit high. But it gives value for the price. It serves the purpose and is worthwhile for the price we pay. Other than the licensing, we haven't come across any other costs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are very comfortable with the granularity of tests. Sometimes, for certain specific areas, we use different tools, but we feel that Acunetix is much more helpful for all the development teams in understanding the output of the system. In certain cases, the scope of the application and the exposure of the application is varied and then, for additional security measures, we use different tools to evaluate these applications. That makes us much more comfortable in explaining to our customers that we don't only rely on a single tool, that we use multiple tools to identify things in complex environments. Customers want to have different views, not only a single view, of application testing.
Acunetix provides the primary vulnerability assessment. Once we believe we can rely on Acunetix, we will be able to save money on other licenses. The most interesting part is that the application security vulnerability reports of Acunetix are much more explainable in simple terms, for developers.
Also, the jargon that some of the applications that I have looked at—certain open source applications—use and the setup required are highly technical. You have to do a lot of maintenance to keep the environment up and running. Acunetix is a lot more comfortable. Newly recruited people and project managers can easily understand it. This is one of the winning points of Acunetix.
In our tests of Acunetix, we didn't find much difference, performance-wise, when comparing it with other applications. It's lightweight but it doesn't matter if it is a little bit heavy, since it provides a much broader spectrum of vulnerabilities. Acunetix is much more customizable for granular levels of testing.
In terms of the amount of time it takes to complete a scan using Acunetix, a web application, for example, with two or three endpoints takes between half an hour and 40 minutes. If I use the Kali Linux, it will take more time, and then you have to do much more customization which requires heavy technical knowledge. Other solutions take time to scan and may give a much more broader spectrum, but they do not identify vulnerabilities for the purpose of fixing them. They identify them to explore them. Acunetix scans for most commonly identified issues. The problem with other solutions is that, while we may be able to see a lot of vulnerabilities, if the solution has not been identified we end up with questions as to whether we are able to release it or not. We don't come up against that issue with Acunetix.
What other advice do I have?
I would definitely recommend Acunetix to anyone who wants to do one vulnerability assessment from an application development perspective.
The amount of time it takes to remediate something will depend on the developer's knowledge and ability to fix vulnerabilities. That doesn't depend on the solution, on Acunetix, but rather on the technical knowhow of the people who engage in that.
But that particular jargon and the technical explanations we have for fixing vulnerabilities need to be improved, so that managers who don't have technical knowhow, can easily understand what needs to be done to fix the vulnerabilities.
Overall, I would rate the solution as a seven out of 10. While we use this tool for application testing, we need another tool to test application traffic interception. Acunetix doesn't have that ability. If it did, I would definitely rate it as nine or 9.5. After using Acunetix for application and code-level testing, the same application will be tested again for application traffic interception. With the results of the traffic interception, we again go back to the code level and then identify where the issues are. If Acunetix had that capability, I would be able to raise it as a nine or 9.5.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.