Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
Evan Gertis - PeerSpot reviewer
Penetration Tester at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 10
The scanning process helps to significantly improve our standards and best practices
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution's ability to help create secure software is very valuable. We're a zero-trust networking company so we want to have the ability to say that we're practicing security seriously. Having something like Veracode allows us to have confidence when we're speaking to people about our product that we can back up what we're doing with a certification, with a reputable platform, and say, "This is what we're using to scan an application. Here's the number of vulnerabilities that are on an application. And here's the risk that we're accepting.""
  • "The JIRA integration automation aspect of it could be improved significantly. We want to have a way to create tickets that are going to allow people to work through those flaws that we're finding. We don't want people to feel like they're missing out on something or that they're not following directions in the right way."

What is our primary use case?

We use software composition analysis and static code analysis. We use a software composition analysis component to identify third-party vulnerabilities in our software. And then we use the static composition analysis to analyze flaws within our application on the front-end and the back-end.

We also use Veracode for static composition and software composition analysis and static code analysis because we need a way to identify vulnerabilities and flaws in the application and relay that information to our developers.

The manual penetration testing is not really used as much.

Having a centralized view is probably one of the most important aspects of the platform. We need to have some way of looking at all the flaws and all the vulnerabilities in one centralized view. 

Having this has improved our visibility into application status. It's very important because it's the way that we communicate flaws to our developers. And without it, we'd be missing out on an opportunity to explain what seems to be fixed and what needs to be managed.

How has it helped my organization?

Veracode helps us to reduce security debt. We're finding that issues like cross-site scripting injection, injection, and those sorts of vulnerabilities are getting addressed more quickly. And we don't really have to worry about where those are, whether that's being fixed or not because we can see them in the platform and we can see the score increase every time those get fixed.

The solution's ability to help create secure software is very valuable. We're a zero-trust networking company so we want to have the ability to say that we're practicing security seriously. Having something like Veracode allows us to have confidence when we're speaking to people about our product that we can back up what we're doing with a certification, with a reputable platform, and say, "This is what we're using to scan an application. Here's the number of vulnerabilities that are on an application. And here's the risk that we're accepting."

Using Veracode SCA helped increase productivity for our security and development teams. Every week we do a vulnerability report and we look at the flaws that were reported by Veracode. Our process essentially goes by meeting with developers, looking at the report, finding out which flaws are the most important ones to fix first. After we've done that, we set up a sprint and we have developers work out two to three of those tickets until they're complete. We've done that now for about six months. We increased our application score from a pretty low level all the way up to Veracode Level Three, so above 90. We don't have any high severity or high vulnerabilities and we don't have any mediums and applications anymore. Following that process is extremely helpful. We also utilize the Veracode dashboards as well. We use the Veracode dashboard to monitor our progress in triaging flaws. Then we want to make sure that things are actually getting fixed. And then we can count those metrics by looking at those dashboards.

It has definitely improved our security posture and communication with developers. I think that now developers are taking our security seriously, whereas before it was something that was always important, but there was no real way of actually tracking what was getting done. Now that we have the tool that we can use to track what's getting done, we're making objectives and setting goals, and working towards this.

What is most valuable?

We use the screening process to help our security professionals and developers fix flaws in the code. It's probably the most utilized security tool that we have at our company.

Scanning with Veracode SCA reduces scan times by a few seconds. It also helps to increase our fixed-rate by 14%.

The scanning process helps to significantly improve our standards and best practices.

The mitigation recommendations provided by the scanning engine of Veracode are important for developers to understand. They need to know how to fix things. So just giving them a blank vulnerability and saying, "this is the issue," doesn't really help. They need something that tells them how to fix the flaw and where to fix the flaw.

Veracode helped us with certification and audit. We're working towards Veracode Level Four right now, we've achieved Veracode Level Three status, and we're looking forward to reaching the next certification level. The goal of that is to eventually have all of our third-party vulnerabilities and mitigate them so that we're in good standing and we don't have anything coming from a third-party library that could possibly compromise our application. Once we get to that fourth certification Veracode Level Four, that would be great.

What needs improvement?

The JIRA integration automation aspect of it could be improved significantly. We want to have a way to create tickets that are going to allow people to work through those flaws that we're finding. We don't want people to feel like they're missing out on something or that they're not following directions in the right way. And we have a process in place where there's a set of tickets and people can work on them. It just seems that people are more focused. They tend to pay attention to what they're doing and there's accountability. So having a more rigorous JIRA integration would be very helpful.

Buyer's Guide
Veracode
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Veracode. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Veracode for over a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a very stable product, and I think that the team at Veracode is constantly putting in more effort into trying to make it into a better platform. They take feedback seriously. They constantly improve the platform. They are working towards adding features that developers are requesting. So it's always changing, there's always something new being added to it, which is very good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Large enterprises are probably following a very different practice from what we're following. I think that smaller organizations are going to have an easier time using something like Veracode because of the flexibility of the different API tools that they have available. An enterprise might have a more complicated time scaling it. The issue with that is that the enterprise is probably going to use a proxy and having to deal with the networking issues, it's going to become very difficult for that to scale. However, in a small company, those situations are mitigated pretty easily by getting two or three people together. So we move through those very fast, we're extremely agile. We're always forward moving. We're always rapidly developing. I think each company has its own specific way of handling scalability, it's always been easy just because we're a very collaborative team. We know how to work with each other and we're always receptive to each other's feedback. I can't really speak for other companies, but I can tell you that we find it pretty scalable. That's really just our culture though.

I run all of the administration and I direct people in what needs to be done. So, that's about it. In total, about seven people are really using it.

We are using it to its fullest extent. Even the manual penetration testing aspect of the platform is very useful. The manual penetration testing aspect of the platform is something that would be nice to incorporate because the cost is significantly less than other security companies. For example, InfoSec is about $3,000 more than Veracode, for any organization that wants an all-encompassing security platform. But what we get with Veracode is a platform that provides software composition analysis, static code analysis, Docker Container Scanning, manual penetration testing results, and dashboards that show the progress for moving through all of those issues. And that's probably the most important aspect of the platform.

Once they introduced the prebuilt dashboards that really reduced the amount of friction with upper management. Typically, my mentor said that almost all issues in any business organization come down to personal relationships and opinions, so when Veracode introduced those dashboards, it removed the ability for people to give opinions about what was being done and what wasn't being done.

We're driven by facts as people, so we can look at those metrics and say, "This is what's actually getting done." And there's no ambiguity. Then really that just removes all opinion from any sort of conversation.

How are customer service and support?

They monitor all of the conversations in the platform on the Veracode community. My rep is very responsive. He answers community questions. He votes up really important questions and the issues are getting answered quickly. That's the most important part because then the business, if we run into an issue on Monday and we spend two or three days trying to debug the issue, we haven't figured it out. You can go to a place and actually get an answer. Whereas some organizations try to use a tool that's custom made and they're going to run into an issue where it's intractable. It can't be solved. However, with Veracode, customer support has always been able to find some sort of solution. Anytime I've ever had a problem, it's always been resolved 100%. There's never been a time where it's gone unresolved. I can't say that about every tool.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used a combination of things. We use Sonar, Veracode, and JFrog Artifactory just give us a diverse picture of what vulnerabilities are in the application and how we can fix them. Veracode seems to always provide the best feedback. Other platforms really aren't at the same level, they provide reports and those reports are usually very static and they're not very informative. Whereas with Veracode, the platform is very interactive. You can tell that it was designed for users and Sonar is the same way. Sonar is very static. Even in Bitbucket, you can now scan your code with Snyk.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The best way to handle it is to get the Java JAR file for the upload, use the terminal on any given laptop, like a Mac or a Linux, and create a small script that uploads a couple of JAR files up to the platform.

Once that's complete, once you have a proof of concept that works with just a couple of lines, then the next step is to move that into a pipeline. Preferably something like Jenkins. Jenkins allows people to run scripts. You can just run Dash straight in a pipeline. Once you have that setup, you pull all that down into the Jenkins pipeline.

Once that's done, you now have all of the binaries that need to be scanned, and you can set the pipeline to run a scan on a weekly cadence. If you want to take it a step further, you could actually move that into a build pipeline and really follow shift-left practices where you're moving the security aspect of the development cycle further up the pipeline. Flaws are being found before they go into production rather than after they're in production. So that would be my recommended approach for working through that problem.

I went through and I actually added container scanning now, so in Veracode at this point, we're running software composition analysis, static code analysis, and on top of that Docker container scanning. So it's a pretty big product. The thing that would be more helpful is better Jira automation since that aspect keeps track of what's getting done. Then essentially you have a full pipeline setup that automates the generation of tickets, scanning, and just takes care of itself. It's a self-service security tool.

The setup took around a week.

What was our ROI?

We have absolutely seen ROI. We have buy-in from upper management and developers. We have a lot of people who are very excited about what we're doing and we're working towards that.

We've personally seen a major decrease in vulnerabilities and we've seen an increase in awareness for security. So people actually have conversations about security now, and they're taking it seriously. It's no longer an issue that gets swept under the rug. I think a lot of smaller organizations would benefit from having a tool that showed them what is being done, as opposed to someone just saying this is what we're doing if they can see the results that really improve. So, once we added that, we saw a decrease in vulnerabilities, we decreased our third-party vulnerabilities from a pretty significant level and attended the three down to single digits, which is huge for any organization.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The thing that I'll go back to is when one of my mentors said to me "Evan, security is a critical aspect of any organization. People don't always believe in it. And the best way to sell it is to explain what could go wrong." So when we compare what could go wrong, having a third-party vulnerability, like a graph library, such as the one that Equifax used, which led to a $3 million lawsuit, and their reputation was destroyed. When you compare that to paying $8,000 for an application, it's a no-brainer. Once the reputation of an organization has been tarnished, that's it. The whole thing is completely over. Really everyone loses faith and once people lose trust, it's almost impossible to get people to believe in a vision.

It's definitely worth it considering what could go wrong. The DevOps Mantra is to always be prepared for what could go wrong. Most things are going to go wrong.

Having a static cost gives people confidence. And once people start using it, if the price changes, then that's going to be dependent on how much they're getting out of it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I definitely looked at other security platforms, but Veracode seems to have the most performance.

With Xray, essentially you upload your builds, once you've uploaded your build, you index it. And after you index it, it'll give you a security report. Now, the thing with that is you have to make a policy, you get a report, the report comes out as a PDF and the PDF doesn't really tell you how to fix it. It tells you the fixed version.

The first path of that really was just creating a pipeline that ran a curl request over to Artifactory to generate that PDF. And then on Monday mornings, that was automated. So management can go in, look at that PDF and say, "Oh, okay, these are the things that are happening in our application." Whereas Veracode, is fully automated, it runs the full scan and then creates the tickets. So that's the contrast. 

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be to start with meeting with people from Veracode. Once you meet with the team from Veracode, the best way to handle that is to start asking questions and identifying the things that would be of value so that an organization doesn't start out by paying too much money. Then you're moving away from that being too scared of what the outcome is. I think once they go in and they have a meeting with people and they can actually discuss what they want to do, that's the first step towards planning out how the platform will be used.

I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Walwasa Mulutazah Yahaya - PeerSpot reviewer
Project officer at BRAC Uganda
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Improves productivity and security, but takes a lot of time and is expensive for startups
Pros and Cons
  • "It's helping us with security and making sure that we develop faster. It's able to scan every vulnerability. It's very powerful software that one can use to make sure that you have a very good, secure platform."
  • "It takes a lot of time to scan the applications. They can make them faster and provide an option to scan a specific portion of the app. Such a feature would be very helpful."

What is our primary use case?

I'm a project officer as well as a developer, so I have to make sure that the system I'm using is safe. I use Veracode to scan my code for issues or vulnerabilities and for making sure that the applications I'm developing are very secure. I also use Veracode for static code scans to see if we have any other vulnerability issues. 

How has it helped my organization?

I have seen a lot of benefits of Veracode. It's super easy, and we can do a sandbox scan before we publish something. It helps us to have a secure platform.

Veracode has improved our productivity. It has been good for us. The production or development of an application or software is very fast. It helps us understand which code is outdated and which code can be improved by changing variable names, etc. It has been very helpful. I like the speed at which the developer can scan the code for small to medium size apps, and I like how easy it's to navigate through the site to find the flaws.

There is a lot of visibility into application status that helps to reduce risk exposure for any software. Any findings are very reviewed by developers, and the internal process is very quick. It's very good in terms of compliance and security.

Veracode provides visibility into application status at every phase of development. It works very well and meets my expectations. It's very good to be able to have the code tested upfront for security flaws.

Veracode has been good for fixing flaws. It does a good code scan and helps me to ensure code security. It's super easy to integrate into CI/CD processes. It offers good protection. It makes my work easy and allows me to secure applications.

Veracode has saved us a lot of time. It saves us around four hours a day that we would have spent doing the same work manually.

Veracode has been useful in detecting a number of issues in the code. It has been able to help us create a secure application. It does very good software composition analysis. It works well in production and provides enhanced security and privacy to consumers and clients that choose our applications and services.

What is most valuable?

It's helping us with security and making sure that we develop faster. It's able to scan every vulnerability. It's very powerful software that one can use to make sure that you have a very good, secure platform. The code analysis and reporting feature can give you instructions on how you can fix or how you can mitigate an issue in a good way. You can get the code analysis and make sure that it's very safe.

The Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) feature is very good. Veracode is very unique and very easy to use. You can be sure of the risk assessment and compliance with available policies to make sure that the product you are providing the client or the customer is not only secure enough but also gives good privacy.

It's easy to create a report. It does not require any technical knowledge. The report is good, and it gives out detailed information about the implementation process and integration into the CI/CD pipeline.

What needs improvement?

Its price is too high for a startup. If you want to run the analysis, it'll cost a lot. They need to fix its pricing. 

It takes a lot of time to scan the applications. They can make them faster and provide an option to scan a specific portion of the app. Such a feature would be very helpful.

It lacks regular updates. It isn't frequently updated.

For how long have I used the solution?

This is the second year of using Veracode.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable enough.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable. It's used by the IT security and software development teams. We have four end users using the product remotely. We have the development team, and we have the IT security team. It's mainly used by these two departments, and each department is comprised of two people. 

How are customer service and support?

I'd rate their customer service a three out of ten. The documentation is very poor and not good enough to provide service efficiency. We have never received human support. I had challenges trying to get help with getting developer training labs to function properly, and I couldn't receive support on time. I had a lot of difficulties trying to find out the answers to what it can do, how to integrate it, does it use AI, etc. 

Another thing is that their marketing website uses a lot of catchphrases or business jargon. There is not much technical knowledge when it comes to resolving issues on time. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Negative

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I haven't used any other solution. I have just used Veracode. 

How was the initial setup?

Two people deployed it from the sandbox to live production. I and a colleague were able to deploy it. Deploying is easy because what I love so much is they have documentation that makes you do things straight away. So, deployment is not hard. It's straightforward.

It doesn't require any maintenance from our side.

What about the implementation team?

It was done in-house. I didn't hire anyone for deployment.

What was our ROI?

Veracode has helped us to have a good application that is secure and compliant. It has helped to assure our clients that we are very secure and compliant. It helps to make sure that they are transacting with a lot of confidence. It has provided an ROI, and we have been able to notice an increase in business.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

You do get value for the price, but unfortunately, for a small enterprise, it's not a good option. It isn't affordable for small businesses. It's expensive for startups. They need to consider its pricing. Its pricing is not so favorable for small businesses that would love to use it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did look into other options, but Veracode was the best solution for us.

What other advice do I have?

It has been good for me, and it works well. I'd recommend it. It's very useful for any company. Any developer can maintain security and compliance. It supports manual penetration testing, which is very useful to have in addition to flaw identification. However, it takes a long time to scan. To a business that has the budget, I'd recommend it.

Overall, I'd rate Veracode a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Veracode
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Veracode. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Everton Yoshitani - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of Engineering at Resola Inc
Real User
I like the ease of integration and onboarding
Pros and Cons
  • "I like Veracode's ease of integration and onboarding. You can quickly and easily get started with a new project or application. That's one area where Veracode shines relative to other tools we've evaluated. Other tools need more work or an engineer to do the setup. With Veracode, you can do the onboarding in a few steps quickly."
  • "When Veracode updates the pool of tests and security checks, it could be a little more transparent about what it is releasing. It's not clear what it's adding. They do thousands of checks, and when they add more, there aren't many details about what the new tests are doing."

What is our primary use case?

Veracode is a DAST solution that we use for automated security scans of our APIs and front end. We perform daily scans of our applications so we can act on the results quickly instead of routine security audits that we might do yearly or quarterly. It's a complement to the standard penetration test suite.

How has it helped my organization?

Veracode helps us improve our overall security and build trust with our customers. For example, some of our customers have strict security requirements, and they need us to use more products. It helps our business by building confidence in our products' security. Veracode improves our sales and helps us secure contracts because we can demonstrate what we are doing to the clients. 

We can use it in our dev environment to detect issues early before they get into production. It saves time equivalent to one full-time security engineer. We have around 60 people on the team, but we don't need a security engineer. Our regular engineers can fix the issues themselves based on Veracode's report. 

What is most valuable?

I like Veracode's ease of integration and onboarding. You can quickly and easily get started with a new project or application. That's one area where Veracode shines relative to other tools we've evaluated. Other tools need more work or an engineer to do the setup. With Veracode, you can do the onboarding in a few steps quickly. 

Another beneficial feature is Veracode's reporting. The report not only outlines the security issues in detail but also offers some solutions. Even if one of our backend engineers isn't specialized in security, they can still fix the issue solely based on the suggestions in the report. 

What needs improvement?

When Veracode updates the pool of tests and security checks, it could be a little more transparent about what it is releasing. It's not clear what it's adding. They do thousands of checks, and when they add more, there aren't many details about what the new tests are doing. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Veracode for 2 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Veracode 10 out of 10 for stability.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Veracode support 8 out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Veracode is the first tool we purchased specifically for DAST testing. We we use altered secure tools, and we used to do penetration test, but using people. Right? Not not automated.

How was the initial setup?

Deploying Veracode was straightforward. There weren't many steps. We needed to prepare our API specifications and set up our system. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is worth it. You have to consider the cost versus the security Veracode provides. It's also cheaper than the other solutions we considered. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Veracode 9 out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
reviewer2296401 - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberSec professional at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Helps save our developers time, improves our security posture, and increases visibility
Pros and Cons
  • "The integration of static testing with our Azure DevOps CI pipeline was easy."
  • "The security labs integration has room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Veracode to shift development left. Therefore, we want to train our team of third-party vendors and improve our code security.

How has it helped my organization?

Veracode has been effective at preventing vulnerable code from entering production. I can easily enable the support team. Additionally, the reports are free. Although we are at the beginning of our journey, I can see that Veracode is capturing vulnerabilities.

The cooperation between the security team and the development team is improving, and our security team's visibility is increasing. As a result, we are achieving better and better results, and Veracode is helping to improve our security posture.

I am using Veracode's preconfigured policies because I find them useful and complex.

I am satisfied with Veracode's visibility into application status at every phase of development.

We can see that false positives are quite low, around five to ten percent.

We can add notes to any false positives during static analysis testing so that our developers can see the notes and avoid wasting time on them.

Veracode's reporting function and executive summary help us emphasize the security of our business-critical products to our business, which also helps us get sponsorship from our management to fix flaws and move forward.

Veracode helps our developers save 10 percent of their time by identifying security flaws early in the development process. This allows us to fix the flaws before they go into production, which is more efficient and cost-effective.

Veracode has helped us improve our security posture.

What is most valuable?

The admin ID can be downloaded into Visual Studio, for example, and developers can use that directive without having to type code. I think this is the best feature of Veracode.

The integration of static testing with our Azure DevOps CI pipeline was easy.

What needs improvement?

Veracode's support could be better. It is limited and slow.

The security labs integration has room for improvement. Currently, it is not possible to see the security labs training reports on the dashboard. These reports are only available separately in the security labs platform. I think that adding the dashboards for integration would be a good area of improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Veracode for almost six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Veracode is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Veracode is easy to scale.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support needs to improve its response times and the details of its responses.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The deployment was somewhat complex because some of the documentation was outdated, which caused some problems. There was confusion about how to implement the static pipeline scan. It took some time to find the correct articles and speak with the support team to implement Veracode.

The deployment took a couple of hours and required one DevOps and one tech person.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Veracode is fairly priced.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before selecting Veracode, we evaluated SonarQube and Codacy. We chose Veracode because of its comprehensiveness and its ability to provide us with a solution for each phase of the software development life cycle. Veracode offers both dynamic code analysis and static code analysis solutions. With Veracode, we were able to get everything we needed in one place, without having to sign contracts with multiple vendors.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Veracode eight out of ten.

We deployed Veracode in one location and have ten users.

I recommend Veracode based on the script language being used.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Calinescu Tudor - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Project Leader at ATOSS AG
Real User
Top 10
Quality of our code is much better, and we sleep well at night knowing we have closed a possible security leak
Pros and Cons
  • "It has provided what we were looking for in such an application, meaning static application security testing functionality. That was what we were interested in."
  • "False positives are a problem. Sometimes the flow paths are not accurate and don't represent real attack vectors, but this happens with every application that performs static analysis of the code. But it's under control. The number of false positives is not so high that it is unmanageable on our side."

What is our primary use case?

We use Veracode to scan server applications, and we also use it for SCA functionality and to scan pipelines of our other projects.

How has it helped my organization?

The quality of our code is much better now with structured utils meant for improving various topics related to security. Those are being applied consistently to various modules of the application. It enforces a type of structure and code changes to support future transformation.

What needs improvement?

False positives are a problem. Sometimes the flow paths are not accurate and don't represent real attack vectors, but this happens with every application that performs static analysis of the code. But it's under control. The number of false positives is not so high that it is unmanageable on our side. Once they are identified, you can mark them as false positives, and they can be accepted by the security project lead. After that, life goes on, and those will no longer be reported.

The problem is the time that you spend analyzing a flow to be sure that it is a false positive. Every problem that is reported as a security vulnerability has to be treated with maximum care by the developers. It is good, in the end, when it's a false positive instead of having a real vulnerability.

Because we are working on a huge application with lots of dependent sub-projects, there are 9 to 20 data paths. We have to check all of the vectors from all of these paths. If we decide that an attack vector might be susceptible to that attack, we start fixing it. But for the others, the attack vector is not relevant.

There is always room for improvement in any product; it's not something related specifically to Veracode. But in the case of Veracode, maybe they could improve the scanner to reduce the number of false positive events so that they remain only with the valid data paths that represent real attack vectors. We understand that this is quite hard to determine by just scanning the code.

Also, the UI of Veracode could be improved to permit better visualization of the issues and the grouping of the issues, with better filtering.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Veracode for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have seen delays in results on the order of hours, but there haven't been any crashes of their scanner. The solution is quite reliable, and all of the results from the scanning can be easily tracked in terms of time frame. You can see how your scanning has evolved, and there are no deviations due to a bug in the scanner.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

For small and medium-sized projects, it's quite scalable. You can use the sandbox scanner they provide, and it is fine. But for large applications, it is not scalable. We do manual uploads, and this is not scalable.

How are customer service and support?

We haven't called their support because we know how to interpret the results provided by their platform and how to mitigate the vulnerabilities that they have reported.

However, we have exchanged several emails to discuss some technical details of the solution that we applied it to, and everything was straightforward. There are no complaints from my side regarding what they said. Everything went smoothly and quickly.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used certain plugins from Teamscale, which is also a static code analyzer, and it integrates with various plugins in Sonar. We have also used OWASP for static composition analysis, and we are still using the third-party application scanning from OWASP as a Maven plugin. We have also evaluated Black Duck.

Veracode was the first choice for doing static application security testing. It was ranked first a couple of times in the last few years, so it was a natural choice to go with the top product. Also, SAP has a partnership with Veracode for the application that they are selling. It was a win for us, SAP, and for Veracode.

How was the initial setup?

It took us one day to get ready to use the solution. We built the image and copied it during the night to several machines. The following day, we were ready to put it into the container registry in Azure, and then it could be used. We had a huge procedure and scripting. It was not simple.

The team that did it had about six engineers involved.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is an expensive solution, but it's the best solution available on the market. If you want something at the top, you have to pay a bit more than the average.

Regarding extra expenses, it depends on what you want to buy. They have certain bundles that provide support via a hotline system with customer service. They can provide you access to certain security laboratories. You can opt for several licenses to educate more developers to be responsible for the security of your applications. All of these change the initial cost.

Of course, if you add more things, you can benefit from a better price. It depends on your negotiation skills and the number of licenses you want to buy.

The price can vary from year to year, and prices usually go up. Maintenance for the servers that do the scanning takes money, as do CPU, power, and memory. And there are the reports that are kept in the history for checking and for ISO certification. Those costs build up during a year.

For example, we have to manually upload the application that we are scanning because it's quite big, and it takes one day to be scanned. That means their scanner runs for a day on this application, and then we get the results back. That means our application is heavily consuming resources of that cloud server. Those resources are no longer paid for directly by us. We delegate this job to Veracode to do it for us, and we pay for it. But we free up our servers locally and can do other jobs with them.

We aren't trying to reduce our costs. We are trying to improve the security and quality to be sure that we and our customers don't have security issues. At the end of the day, security is the most important part. With every new release and with every new year, we allocate more and more to these operations, to improve our overall security.

What other advice do I have?

Not every such application is able to prevent everything from going to production, but several issues can be spotted via the scanning of the code and resolved, and they are valid. There are many others that can be detected with additional tooling from OWASP, Sonar, et cetera.

We are not using the SBOM functionality from Veracode. We use another tool to create the software bill of materials. That solution is also able to scan Docker images, and it also provides details about what is inside the layers of the Docker image file.

In terms of visibility into application status at every phase of development, it depends on how able you are to scan your application. For large applications, you have to do manual uploads, which is the case for us. We don't do manual uploads on every build, but we trigger it at certain times when we want to create releases for customers. That helps with our accuracy, but it doesn't represent the exact moment when there is a problem in the application. We still have to analyze the commits and history, track things, and match them with the new flaws that have been found in the latest report.

Veracode doesn't save us time. We have to spend a lot of time fixing security issues, especially those that impact lots of dependencies, dependent code, and sub-projects. But in the end, we can sleep well at night knowing that we have closed a possible security leak within the code, which is better for everybody. Even if there is no real problem at that moment and you don't see any probability of that vulnerability appearing in production, it is better to take some time to fix it, and then you feel better.

It has provided what we were looking for in such an application, meaning static application security testing functionality. That was what we were interested in.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Dipjyoti Roy - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Devops Engineer at Thosmon Reuters
Real User
Easy to integrate and provides good visibility, but the reporting can be more detailed
Pros and Cons
  • "The capability to identify vulnerable code is the most valuable feature of Veracode."
  • "There are times when certain modules cannot be scanned automatically, requiring us to manually select these modules and initiate the scanning process on our side."

What is our primary use case?

We use Veracode to test for errors in the code in the applications we are building within our service pipelines.

How has it helped my organization?

Veracode assists in preventing vulnerable code from entering production. It is essential to ensure that our applications entering production are free from errors.

It has assisted our organization by providing a report that we can share with our developers, identifying vulnerabilities in their code. This enables them to address the issues before the code is put into production.

Ever since the implementation of Veracode, I have noticed that the processes for rectifying the issues in our pipelines have become much easier.

Veracode helps our developers save time. The solution has simplified the coding process for our developers.

I would rate Veracode's impact on our organization's overall security posture as nine out of ten. The solution has been beneficial to us daily, and we haven't encountered any issues with their solution so far.

What is most valuable?

The capability to identify vulnerable code is the most valuable feature of Veracode.

What needs improvement?

There are times when certain modules cannot be scanned automatically, requiring us to manually select these modules and initiate the scanning process on our side.

The vulnerability report has potential for improvement and should encompass more detailed information about the vulnerability, rather than solely identifying it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Veracode for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Veracode is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I believe Veracode is scalable, but I am not certain.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Veracode a seven out of ten.

I recommend Veracode. The solution only requires a one-time configuration into the pipeline and the testing is done automatically. 

Integrating Veracode with our pipelines is an easy process. We simply use VML files and the integration is done automatically for us.

We currently have approximately 55 microservices, composed of various teams. Altogether, there are about 170 people utilizing Veracode.

I recommend becoming as familiar as possible with Veracode before using it. Even watch online tutorials to ensure that the deployment goes as smoothly as possible.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Vladimir Shilov - PeerSpot reviewer
DevSecOps at Ciklum ApS
MSP
Top 5Leaderboard
With extensive reporting capabilities and a user-friendly interface, the tool is also highly scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of the solution are its extensive reporting capabilities and user-friendly interface."
  • "There are certain shortcomings in Veracode's static analysis engine. I would improve Veracode's static analysis engine to make it capable of identifying vulnerabilities with low false positives."

What is our primary use case?

I have helped other companies implement Veracode Static Analysis in their IT environment. In our company, we need to scan many .NET applications using Veracode, and we could scan our software since it is a SaaS solution, after which we process the reports to improve the product.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of the solution are its extensive reporting capabilities and user-friendly interface.

What needs improvement?

There are certain shortcomings in Veracode's static analysis engine. I would improve Veracode's static analysis engine to make it capable of identifying vulnerabilities with low false positives.

The product is good, and if improvements are required, then such improvements should not be significant enough. There may be a slight scope to improve the product's integration capabilities. The product can also consider improving its support of different .NET versions and other programming languages, like Java.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Veracode Static Analysis for three or four months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Our company faced some issues with the tool, but the support team solved these issues quite quickly. The stability of the tool is high. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution. We can implement the tool in different DevOps environments and projects, because of which we can create groups of applications and apply different policies to application groups, making it an enterprise-level tool. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

The solution's technical support helped us solve different problems related to Veracode, including some of its use cases. Veracode's support helped our company get around a problem and how to set up the scan rules correctly when we had some unexpected errors during the scanning process. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have experience with Snyk. I used Snyk a year ago. Snyk doesn't support the version of the .NET applications we use in our company, so we decided to move to Veracode.

What about the implementation team?

The initial setup was easy since it is a SaaS solution and a well-documented product at the same time. In our company, we don't need to spin up a server to install something since we simply use the web interface and integrate the web interface with the DevOps environment.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is a hard setup and ten is an easy setup, I rate the initial setup phase an eight or nine.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. In our company, we use Microsoft Azure DevOps for our environment, but I don't know the environment in which Veracode gets used in our company. Veracode offers a web interface and API, so I don't know their cloud solutions.

The deployment is quite fast, but its overall quickness in terms of deployment depends on the number of applications you want to scan. If you want to scan one application, the deployment can be quickly done since we need to integrate Veracode into our DevOps environment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing of the product depends upon the number of codes or the number of applications.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend those planning to use the solution check the system requirements and choose a solution that supports programming languages and .NET Framework versions that record scans.

I am not sure if it is one of the best solutions because I am not an expert in other solutions available in the market. Somehow, I personally feel it is one of the best tools in the market.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
PeerSpot user
Mahammad Azeem - PeerSpot reviewer
Application Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Consultant
Top 5
Provides visibility into the status of applications and seamless automation via the pipeline, but the false positives have room for improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the seamless automation of Veracode via the pipeline, in comparison to other solutions like Fortify SSC, which are complex to integrate through the pipeline."
  • "Veracode's false positives have room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

When we develop an application with source code built on Java, JavaScript, and mobile technologies such as Android and iOS, we ensure that the source code is free from security vulnerabilities before sending it to production. To achieve this, we package our source code and scan it using Veracode. This scanning process is our primary use case.

We set up pipelines for this purpose, and the warehouse operates on a cloud provider. To make the Veracode API calls for support, we utilize Veracode API libraries which use the URL that is hosted on the cloud. We then initiate a scan on our source code, which goes through different stages, including scan, upload, rescan, validation, and finally, we obtain the results.

How has it helped my organization?

Veracode provides visibility into the status of applications at every phase of development to a certain extent. Veracode scan reports present a comprehensive view of planned releases that are scheduled to go live in the coming days. To keep the team informed, we run a scheduled deployment, sending email notifications twice a week for each application. This alerts the team to any issues that may need fixing. However, it's worth noting that the system is not fully integrated into the pipeline and notifications. Nevertheless, Veracode offers an API. This interface allows us to obtain the XML result file, and subsequently, I can extract and analyze the values from the XML. Once the scan is complete, Veracode API will fetch the XML report and store it in my workspace within the pipeline. From there, I can execute an XML parser function to obtain the application status results.

Veracode has been helpful in reducing our developers' time by around fifty percent. For an application to meet internet safety standards, the code must achieve the VL4 level in Veracode. According to Veracode reports, our developers can focus more on resolving the issues rather than trying to identify them.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the seamless automation of Veracode via the pipeline, in comparison to other solutions like Fortify SSC, which are complex to integrate through the pipeline. Although there is a lot of coding involved in writing each end, Veracode breaks the process down into multiple steps. We first package our source code and upload it, after which a pre-scan is conducted. If the pre-scan identifies any files that don't conform to the Veracode format, it will display a warning or prompt us to correct the issues before proceeding. This allows us to have programmable control; in fact, we can program Veracode so that after the upload is completed, it automatically scans the files to check if they are all in Veracode format.

For example, my ZIP file contains a hundred files. Out of these, ninety files meet Veracode's criteria, while ten files are incorrect. I can instruct Veracode, through pipeline automation, not to wait for manual action and continue with the scan or upload the scan results. Veracode can automatically proceed with the selected files in this scenario. All of this can be controlled programmatically. Furthermore, once the scan report is generated, it becomes available in the workspace, and we can send an email with this report as an attachment. This type of report is referred to as a detailed Veracode report and can be customized. Typically, we prefer the customized report, while some developers may also opt for XML reports. The ability to manage this sequence of steps in the Veracode scan is programmable and can be handled accordingly.

What needs improvement?

Veracode's false positives have room for improvement. For example, if there is an applicant named ABC in Veracode. I have uploaded my Java file, which contains a hundred lines of code. I suspect that the ninetieth line includes a hard-coded password. Thus, during the scan, it will identify the presence of a hard-coded password on the ninetieth line and suggest how to mitigate and resolve this issue. In the next scan, I added fifty more lines of support and fixed the password-related problem. However, the line containing the password is no longer at the ninetieth position; it has moved to the hundredth line. Despite these changes, the next scan still detects the password flaw. Even though I encrypted the password and added the required string, the issue continues to be flagged. This constant flagging of the issue, even after resolving it, is one of the major drawbacks. To overcome this problem, we decided to create another application. This action was taken to prevent the recurrence of such issues. In the future, when I have a release in the coming months, I cannot keep encountering this problem repeatedly, as it still flags the issue as long as the code is in a different line. We have spoken to the vendor several times about this issue and scheduled a work order consultation call, but we did not receive a response.

In order to achieve software consolidation and analysis reports for Android applications, we need to utilize a third-party utility called SourceClear along with Veracode scanning. This complicates the market and has room for improvement. 

When scanning a file that is over one gigabyte in size, there is a high chance that Veracode will continue scanning. When we initially encountered this issue and investigated it, we raised a ticket. As a result, a Database Lock occurred, causing Veracode to become stuck.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Veracode for almost four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability at seven out of ten, considering the false positive issues we are experiencing.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Veracode is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

I am not entirely satisfied with the technical support because I believe we have been waiting to send our code to production and waiting for an update from the vendor to resolve the issue. When we raise a support case, there is no response, and even after it happens two or three times, I don't know if they read the details of the issue when a ticket is raised. If someone has already attended to the same call, they will not attend again; instead, a new person handles it. Consequently, we have to explain everything all over again to the new person. We are aware that they know they don't have a solution for this problem. However, by the time we explain it to the new person, they ask the same questions again. Each consultation lasts 40 to 45 minutes, and we are billed for them, but we spend most of the time repeating what the issue is.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. Even the pipeline setup is easy because there is an API, so we don't need instructions. Veracode is hosted in the cloud, so we need to set up a firewall to connect to it via proxy. The deployment took a few weeks because we had to figure out how to perform the scanning from the pipeline, enable the scan, and upload the scans for each Veracode API. Additionally, we had to seek assistance from HR to implement all the steps, which took some time.

What other advice do I have?

I give Veracode a six out of ten.

We cannot simply create one policy and claim it is compliant unless all my issues are thoroughly flagged based on that compliance and the complaint. As technology improves and we move forward, bugs and certain issues may arise, and we may not always know the solutions or the severity level of their impact. Considering this perspective, Veracode is acceptable. I will illustrate this with another tool, Fortify SSC. Suppose there are newly added licenses or rules for software compliance in their security scanning tool. In Veracode, if I wish to update the new compliance tools or checks that the algorithms run against it, I must obtain approval from the architect. This approach has its advantages. However, in the case of the tool I am currently working on, Fortify SSC, there is something called a 'rule pack' for each language. I have the option to keep the existing version of the rules or upgrade to the latest rule pack. This feature works as a toggle option in Veracode.

Tuning policies is essentially the application of specific policies. When we deploy a policy, it affects all our scans and issues. The new policies applied are divided by Veracode and, when implemented, impact all the applications. Therefore, most of the time, when we apply a new policy, there is a chance that if there are three flaws, we can assume there are thirteen million flaws in my current scan. If a policy is applied, there are definitely ten to fifteen additional issues in the new scan after implementing the updated policy. Thus, there is always an increase in the number of flaws when there is a new policy update.

There are certain flaws. For example, I am releasing a package into production, and I conducted a Veracode scan against the source code, which is stored in the bin bucket. So, even if I fix the issue on my own, the same issue will be flagged again due to the change in client number. This is a significant problem because we cannot explain to the higher management that the report contains the password, and we have already taken measures to mitigate the issue. We cannot claim that this issue has already been fixed, as it continues to resurface. It is a Veracode issue, not one originating from us, but it becomes complicated when higher management sees a report indicating the same issue from the previous month. We don't know what to do. One of the ways we addressed the issue was by reducing the number of times the same issue occurs. For instance, in my previous work at a bank, we had applications specific to each country, like one for Singapore, one for Malaysia, and so on for most Southeast Asian countries. Although our master bank application was the main source, we created individual applications for each country in Veracode. As a result, the number of false positives or issues that were previously mitigated or closed and kept reappearing from month to month was reduced, but they were not completely eliminated. By switching to a different application for each country the false positives were reduced by around seventy percent.

Our organization was approached to adopt Snyk; however, it is a startup solution, and the bank prefers something that is well-established. Currently, we are using Fortify SSC. 

We have a five-person IT team that is responsible for all the DevOps tasks, including Veracode.

Compared to Fortify SSC, which has a complicated setup requiring three installations, Veracode is easier because the app is hosted in the cloud. All we need is a support license, and they will create a project for us. We can create a firewall proxy, and the API pipeline is already in place. To create a scan for another application, we simply copy and paste the code and change the application's name. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Veracode Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Veracode Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.