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Contrast Security Assess vs Fortify WebInspect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Contrast Security Assess
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (29th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (24th)
Fortify WebInspect
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (2nd), DevSecOps (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Contrast Security Assess is designed for Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and holds a mindshare of 0.4%, down 0.5% compared to last year.
Fortify WebInspect, on the other hand, focuses on Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), holds 31.2% mindshare, down 33.7% since last year.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Mustufa Bhavnagarwala - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 27, 2023
A stable solution that provides lots of details on web-based vulnerabilities and source code reviews
Contrast Security Assess has a really good UI and gives the details in more depth. It gives more information about web application vulnerabilities. If third-party libraries, JS files, and JAR files have any CVEs in them, the solution reports that and gives a grade from A to E. It gives good…
Navin N - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 16, 2024
Effective scanning of diverse file extensions with fast reporting and issue resolution
We develop software packages for clients, and these clients are mostly in the BFSI sector. The packages need to be scanned, and we engage Fortify WebInspect for this.  Customers typically perform their own application pen tests, but in some cases, we have engagements where customers want us to scan…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."
"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."
"It is scalable and very easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the ability to make our customers more secure."
"Good at scanning and finding vulnerabilities."
"Reporting, centralized dashboard, and bird's eye view of all vulnerabilities are the most valuable features."
"When we are integrating it with SSC, we're able to scan and trace and see all of the vulnerabilities. Comparison is easy in SSC."
"The user interface is ok and it is very simple to use."
"The solution's technical support was very helpful."
"The feature that has been most influential in identifying vulnerabilities is its ability to crawl the website, understand the structure, and analyze the network packets sent and received."
 

Cons

"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."
"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"One thing I would like to see them introduce is a cloud-based platform."
"A localized version, for example, in Korean would be a big improvement to this solution."
"Not sufficiently compatible with some of our systems."
"The installation could be a bit easier. Usually it's simple to use, but the installation is painful and a bit laborious and complex."
"We have often encountered scanning errors."
"The scanner could be better."
"I would like WebInspect's scanning capability to be quicker."
"The initial setup was complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."
"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."
"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."
"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."
"Fortify WebInspect is a very expensive product."
"Its price is almost similar to the price of AppScan. Both of them are very costly. Its price could be reduced because it can be very costly for unlimited IT scans, etc. I'm not sure, but it can go up to $40,000 to $50,000 or more than that."
"It’s a fair price for the solution."
"The pricing is not clear and while it is not high, it is difficult to understand."
"Our licensing is such that you can only run one scan at a time, which is inconvenient."
"The price is okay."
"This solution is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Contrast Security Assess?
When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?
The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten.
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
Technical support for the solution should be faster. We have to further analyze what kind of CVEs are in the reported libraries and what part of the code is affected. That analysis can be added to ...
What do you like most about Fortify WebInspect?
The solution's technical support was very helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortify WebInspect?
Pricing depends on the deal and can vary. Smaller clients might find it challenging to afford Fortify WebInspect, while it is more suitable for medium to large enterprises. The OEMs tend to price s...
What needs improvement with Fortify WebInspect?
There are some file extensions, like .SER, that Fortify WebInspect doesn't scan. For these, we have to depend on other tools like GitHub scanners.
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Micro Focus WebInspect, WebInspect
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Aaron's
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Fortify WebInspect and other solutions. Updated: May 2022.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.