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Black Duck vs Fortify Static Code Analyzer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Black Duck
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (1st)
Fortify Static Code Analyzer
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Static Code Analysis (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Black Duck is designed for Software Composition Analysis (SCA) and holds a mindshare of 20.6%, down 23.0% compared to last year.
Fortify Static Code Analyzer, on the other hand, focuses on Static Code Analysis, holds 11.3% mindshare, up 9.8% since last year.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
Static Code Analysis
 

Featured Reviews

Saravanan_Radhakrishnan - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs
The product enables other applications to be secure. We use it to onboard 400 to 500 applications into the DevOps platform, protect them, and have a secure environment. The tool integrates well with different technologies, application stacks, and databases. The APIs are available. We can read the blogs in the community for open-source compliance and security. The community feeds are important. Black Duck is a leader in Gartner. It is a reliable solution.
Vishal Dhamke - PeerSpot reviewer
An expansive platform that comes with a comprehensive set of security rules and patterns to identify vulnerabilities
Setting up Fortify Static Application Security Testing (SAST) involves several steps to ensure that the tool is correctly configured and integrated into your development workflow say for instance Installation, License Activation, User Access and Permissions, Integration with Development Environment, Project Configuration, Custom Rules and Policies, etc. The initial setup is very easy, have used the enterprise version and a standalone version. The enterprise version definitely takes an ample amount of time to deploy because it needs to have a server along with other logistics in place along with a proper RBAC. The enterprise version would take an ample amount of time, but the standard version is just a few clicks. A team of four to five people is required for the maintenance and frequent updates are required to keep all the signatures up to date. I would rate the setup a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The installation is very easy."
"The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution."
"Policy management is a valuable feature."
"The solution is very good at scanning and evaluating open source software."
"The automated code scanning feature and Black Duck's integration with our development tools have enhanced our software compliance process and overall audit readiness."
"We didn't have a central inventory to quickly identify issues or determine how many products were affected. Now under Black Duck, it's all consolidated. You search for a component and immediately see which products use it."
"The most valuable feature for me in Black Duck is its ability to scan binary files effectively."
"The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the seamless integration to scan our Docker binary files, it provides us all open vulnerabilities, and it ensures a reference point from where it finds the vulnerability is up to date. For example, if there is any new vulnerability found, they are immediately available in the Black Duck. There is no delay in finding the vulnerabilities, they are called out in our code immediately."
"We've found the documentation to be very good."
"The integration Subset core integration, using Jenkins is one of the good features."
"You can really see what's happening after you've developed something."
"It's helped us free up staff time."
"Fortify integrates with various development environments and tools, such as IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) and CI/CD pipelines."
"I like the Fortify taxonomy as it provides us with a list of all of the vulnerabilities found. Fortify release updated rule packs quarterly, with accompanying documentation, that lets us know what new features are being released."
"Automating the Jenkins plugins and the build title is a big plus."
"The Software Security Center, which is often overlooked, stands out as the most effective feature."
 

Cons

"It's still a bit inconsistent. For example, if I scan today, it might not show the same results tomorrow."
"The scanner client is limited by the size of software it can handle."
"It is a cloud-only solution. In many cases, companies like to evaluate the software, but they're very reluctant to give you the software. It would be great if they could offer an on-prem component that could be used to scan the code and then upload the discovery results to the cloud and get all the information from there, but there is no such possibility. You have to upload the code to the Black Duck cloud system. Of course, they have a strong legal department, and they offer some configuration, but it is never enough. You have to give the code, which is a drawback. In modern designs like Snyk or FOSSA, you don't need to give the code. It requires more native integration with Coverity because they go together technically. You need both Coverity and Black Duck Hub. It would be really helpful for companies working in this space to get a combined offer from the same company. They should provide an option to buy Coverity for an additional fee. Coverity combined with Black Duck Hub will provide a one-step analysis to get everything you need and a unified report. It would be really great to be able to connect Black Duck Hub with Coverity unified reports."
"The solution must provide more open APIs."
"I would like to see improvements in Black Duck's reporting capabilities."
"It can be cumbersome to use or invalidate open source software because there is a hold time to check requirements or common regulations to ensure compliance."
"The documentation is quite scattered."
"It needs to be more user-friendly for developers and in general, to ensure compliance."
"It comes with a hefty licensing fee."
"Fortify Static Code Analyzer is a good solution, but sometimes we receive false positives. If they could reduce the number of false positives it would be good."
"The troubleshooting capabilities of this solution could be improved. This would reduce the number of cases that users have to submit."
"Not all languages are supported in Fortify."
"Their licensing is expensive."
"Fortify's software security center needs a design refresh."
"The generation of false positives should be reduced."
"Streamlining the upgrade process and enhancing compatibility would make it easier for us to keep our security tools up-to-date."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product's price one on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"The price is low. It's not an expensive solution."
"Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."
"The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant."
"The pricing is a little high."
"It is expensive."
"The price is quite high because the behavior of the software during the scan is similar to competing products."
"Black Duck is more suitable if you require a lot of licensing compliance. For smaller organizations, WhiteSource is better because its pricing policies are not really suitable for huge organizations."
"The setup costs and pricing for Fortify may vary depending on the organization's needs and requirements."
"Although I am not responsible for the budget, Fortify SAST is expensive."
"The licensing is expensive and is in the 50K range."
"It has a couple of license models. The one that we use most frequently is called their flexible deployment. We use this one because it is flexible and based on the number of code-contributing developers in the organization. It includes almost everything in the Fortify suite for one developer price. It gives access to not just the secure code analyzer (SCA) but also to FSC, the secure code. It gives us accessibility to scan central, which is the decentralized scanning farm. It also gives us access to the software security center, which is the vulnerability management platform."
"From our standpoint, we are significantly better off with Fortify due to the favorable pricing we secured five years ago."
"I rate the pricing of Fortify Static Code Analyzer as a seven out of ten since it is a bit expensive."
"There is a licensing fee, and if you bring them to the company and you want them to do the installation and the implementation in the beginning, there is a separate cost. Similarly, if you want consultation or training, there is a separate cost. I see it as suitable only for enterprises. I do not see it suitable for a small business or individual use."
"The price of Fortify Static Code Analyzer could be reduced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?
We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
What do you like most about Black Duck?
The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Black Duck?
The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant. For the features provided by the product, I would not want to pay a high price. There are many other products in the market that offer better features...
What do you like most about Fortify Static Code Analyzer?
Integrating the Fortify Static Code Analyzer into our software development lifecycle was straightforward. It highlights important information beyond just syntax errors. It identifies issues like pa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortify Static Code Analyzer?
I rate the pricing of Fortify Static Code Analyzer as a seven out of ten since it is a bit expensive.
What needs improvement with Fortify Static Code Analyzer?
False positives need improvement in the future. Fortify's vulnerability remediation guidance helps improve code security, but I think they need to improve the focus of the solution, as it still Con...
 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
Fortify Static Code Analysis SAST
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck, Veracode, Snyk and others in Software Composition Analysis (SCA). Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.