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Contrast Security Assess vs Rapid7 InsightAppSec 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)
Rapid7 InsightAppSec
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance 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.
Rapid7 InsightAppSec, on the other hand, focuses on Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), holds 12.8% mindshare, down 13.2% 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…
Vikas Dusa - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 4, 2024
Helps to check multiple websites, particularly dynamic and e-commerce websites, for vulnerabilities within the code
In Rapid7 InsightAppSec, a distinctive feature is the provision of a CDM for integrating web servers and web applications. To establish the connection between these applications, you only need to paste the provided CDN into your metadata. Once connected, every piece of information, including vulnerabilities, can be accessed. It also offers demo sessions. If there is any malicious network traffic targeting a specific web application, it is designed to detect and showcase the entire scenario. It provides insights into potential vulnerabilities, including issues related to process scripting or content security policy vulnerabilities. Setting up and configuring scans within the tool is easy, and I would rate it a nine out of ten. It provides videos on YouTube, along with documentation that breaks down the process into step-by-step instructions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."
"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."
"The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of."
"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."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"The solution is stable."
"We have seen measurable decrease in the mean time to respond to threats by 20 percent."
"You have various attack modules, and you also have the Attack Replay feature for the attack sequence. You can reproduce an attack and see it. That is a very good feature I noticed in this solution. It helps developers as well."
"It is very convenient to get reports from the tool, which offers high-level environmental statistics."
"It uses a signature-based method to check for problems with your code and will provide an alert if anything is found."
"The templates feature is very easy. You just choose the kind of attack you want on your web application, and you run it against that template and receive a report. It's great."
"It is a very robust solution."
"Dynamic application security scanning provides predefined templates and supports customization. The ability to scan external and internal applications, including on-premises ones, is precious. Additionally, it is a cloud platform, so we don't need to deploy servers or resources. This makes it time-efficient and cost-effective."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"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 product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"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 should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"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."
"The product’s pricing could be flexible."
"We get a lot of false positives during the tests."
"The reporting is definitely an aspect of the solution that's in need of some work. We found that we'd try to use widgets, but often getting them to work for us wasn't very clear. They need to be more user friendly or offer better instructions."
"The number of web applications we can scan is limited."
"They should add more features. I would like to see them do a little more on static analysis and also interactivity analysis. Currently, it does very basic static analysis. It could do a little more static analysis, which is something that would help. A lot more interactivity analysis should also be there. It should basically look at security during interactivity."
"When you add new projects for the same product, it either duplicates or replaces the scan configuration. If I run a scan for the same product with a different scan configuration, it should keep the previous scan configuration and not replace it with the new scan configuration. It should just add the new scan configuration. That would be helpful. They do keep the results as it is, but the scan configuration keeps changing. For example, I have set a scan configuration to a full scan, and next week, I want to run a new scan for the same product with some changes or new functionalities. I want to run a partial scan. Currently, if I change the scan configuration to partial, it changes the old one also to partial. That should be improved."
"I would like more details of what the product can do."
"The interface should be a little bit easier to manage. Sometimes, the logic that they use is kind of strange. They need to work a little bit more on their interface to make it more understandable. The interface is the only problem. I'm using Rapid7, which is very intuitive. There are other applications available in the market with a better interface. They can include more techniques or options to test different types of security because the templates are limited. It would be great to see them follow the MITRE ATT&CK framework or what is there in tools like Veracode and Synopsys."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Its price is competitive. It is not expensive."
"I'm not sure how much it costs exactly, but I know it's expensive."
"The price of this product is very cheap."
"They offer a good price, but I don't remember its cost. It is fair as compared to the competition. We have opted for project-based licensing, not user-based. We can add any number of users. That doesn't matter. It is worth the money."
"I rate Rapid7 InsightAppSec’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"Rapid7 InsightAppSec is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

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 Rapid7 InsightAppSec?
In Rapid7 InsightAppSec, a distinctive feature is the provision of a CDM for integrating web servers and web applications. To establish the connection between these applications, you only need to p...
What needs improvement with Rapid7 InsightAppSec?
The dynamic scanning feature has simplified and improved the security testing process. I suggest adding a SaaS feature to the solution to support scanning SaaS applications, making it more comprehe...
What is your primary use case for Rapid7 InsightAppSec?
We use Rapid7 InsightAppSec for dynamic application security scanning. We scan our web applications to identify vulnerabilities and then address the issues based on the report. It is a task solutio...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
InsightAppSec
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
CenterPoint Energy, CPA Australia, Hypertherm, First American Financial Corporation, Rackspace
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Rapid7 InsightAppSec and other solutions. Updated: May 2022.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.