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Contrast Security Assess vs Seeker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Contrast Security Assess
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (28th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (24th)
Seeker
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (19th), Mobile Threat Defense (14th), API Security (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
It has an excellent API interface to pull APIs.
Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time. Instead of going through the Jenkins process to build an application, they can see right off the bat that if there are errors in the code and fix them before it even goes to build.
San K - PeerSpot reviewer
More effective than dynamic scanners, but is missing useful learning capabilities
One area that Seeker can improve is to make it more customizable. All security scanning tools have a defined set of rules that are based on certain criteria which they will use to detect issues. However, the criteria that you set initially is not something that all applications are going to need. The purposes for which applications are designed may differ in practice in the industry, and because of this, there will always be tools that sometimes report false positives. Thus, there should be some means with which I can customize the way that Seeker learns about our applications, possibly by using some kind of AI / ML capability within the tool that will automatically reduce the number of false positives that we get as we use the tool over time. Obviously, when we first start using the scanning tool there will be false positives, but as it keeps going and as I keep using the tool, there should be a period of time where either the application can learn how to ignore false positives, or I can customize it do so. Adding this type of functionality would definitely prevent future issues when it comes to reporting false positives, and this is a key area that we have already asked the vendor to improve on, in general. On a different note, there is one feature that isn't completely available right now where you can integrate Seeker with an open-source vulnerability scanner or composition analysis tool such as Black Duck. I would very much like this capability to be available to us out-of-the-box, so that we can easily integrate with tools like Black Duck in such a way that any open source components that are used in the front-end are easily identified. I think this would be a huge plus for Seeker. Another feature within Seeker which could benefit from improvement is active verification, which lets you actively verify a vulnerability. This feature currently doesn't work in certain applications, particularly in scenarios where you have requested tokens. When we bought the tool, we didn't realize this and we were not told about it by the vendor, so initially it was a big challenge for us to overcome it and properly begin our deployment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable solution...Contrast Security Assess is one of the first players in this market, so they have experience and customers, especially abroad. Overall, it's a good product."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"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."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"A significant advantage of Seeker is that it is an interactive scanner, and we have found it to be much more effective in reducing the amount of false positives than dynamic scanners such as AppScan, Micro Focus Fortify, etc. Furthermore, with Seeker, we are finding more and more valid (i.e. "true") positives over time compared with the dynamic scanners."
 

Cons

"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"One area that Seeker can improve is to make it more customizable. All security scanning tools have a defined set of rules that are based on certain criteria which they will use to detect issues. However, the criteria that you set initially is not something that all applications are going to need."
 

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."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"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 licensing for Seeker is user-based and for 50 users I believe it costs about $70,000 per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 ...
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Also Known As

Contrast Assess
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
El Al Airlines and Société Française du Radiotelephone
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