CAST Highlight vs Contrast Security Protect comparison

The compared CAST and Contrast Security solutions aren't in the same category. CAST is ranked #19 in SCA , with an average rating of 7.5, and holds a 1.2% mindshare in the category. Contrast Security is ranked #33 in AS , and holds a 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of CAST users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Contrast Security users who would recommend it.

CAST Highlight

Read 8 CAST Highlight reviews

2,419 Views
1,185 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Protect

Read 3 Contrast Security Protect reviews

1,768 Views
1,680 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CAST Highlight

Contrast Security Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CAST Highlight and Contrast Security Protect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Snyk, Veracode, Black Duck and others in Software Composition Analysis (SCA).

To learn more, read our detailed Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Report (Updated: May 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

May 2026

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Helped 902,417 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

CAST Highlight

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (19th)

Contrast Security Protect

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (33rd)

Mindshare comparison

CAST Highlight and Contrast Security Protect aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. CAST Highlight is designed for Software Composition Analysis (SCA) and holds a mindshare of 1.2%, up 0.9% compared to last year.
Contrast Security Protect, on the other hand, focuses on Application Security Tools, holds 1.1% mindshare, up 0.5% since last year.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
CAST Highlight	1.2%
Snyk	11.1%
Black Duck SCA	9.2%
Other	78.5%

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Contrast Security Protect	1.1%
SonarQube	12.7%
Checkmarx One	8.3%
Other	77.9%

Application Security Tools

Featured Reviews

Nishant Chauhan

Senior Data Engineer at LTM

Automated code insights have improved security checks and made review workflows more consistent

If I talk about improvements for CAST Highlight, I would suggest three things. The first is better understanding or niche understanding. Right now, the intent matching is strong for general topics such as ease of use, but for niche B2B terms such as HIPAA compliance or multi-tenant architecture, it sometimes misses context. Improving the domain-specific models would make highlights more accurate for these verticals. The second improvement is more control over the deduplication logic. CAST Highlight's deduplication is great for avoiding spam, but sometimes we want two similar quotes if they are from very different company sizes, such as SMB versus enterprise perspectives on pricing. A slider to adjust deduplication strictness would help. The third suggestion I would like to give is deeper sentiment and outcome tagging. While it has core sentiment capabilities, it does not tag outcomes automatically. For instance, if a quote mentions saved $50,000 per year, tagging that as cost savings $50,000 would let us build ROI charts instantly instead of reading each quote manually. Regarding user experience, integrations, and reporting, I think there is room to enhance those aspects. Regarding user experience, I would suggest improving user actions in terms of bulk actions and keyboard shortcuts. Day-to-day analysts review 50-plus suggested quotes, and currently it is mostly clicking to approve one by one. Adding bulk approve or reject options and keyboard shortcuts would significantly reduce the time taken. A small UX change can lead to a big speed boost. The second point is integrations when pushing to the CMS and Slack alerts. Right now, we export approved highlights manually from CAST Highlight. If CAST Highlight could push directly to our CMS or send Slack alerts for high-strength quotes that hit trending topics, it would close the loop faster, reducing copy-pasting. The third improvement relates to reporting, specifically custom insight dashboards. The tool displays which topics have the most highlights, but we cannot build custom dashboards yet. For example, showing all security quotes from healthcare companies with more than 1,000 employees over the last 90 days would enable better filtering, and exportable dashboards would streamline quarterly reviews.

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ToddMcAlister

Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

It provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks.

I rate Contrast Security Protect eight out of 10. Overall, it's a solid product, but I deduct a couple of points because of the interface and some shortcomings in the reporting. If you have a large enterprise where you're dealing with a lot of servers, then it makes sense not to use the internal MySQL database. You should use something like Oracle or Microsoft SQL, but if you don't have many transactions, the embedded MySQL database works great.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We've been using it for two years and found that it is really profitable to have the product in our arsenal."

"The most valuable features of the CAST Highlight are the interface and there are three notations that are very simple to understand and communicate with."

"In cloud migration, I use CAST highlight to identify blockers, which are the negative road patterns, and also the boosters, which are positive code patterns."

"Overall, the accuracy of CAST Highlight has been strong and reliability is consistent for our use case."

"It offers good performance."

"CAST Highlight is easy to use and has a good dashboard."

"The most valuable features of CAST Highlight are automation and speed."

"CAST Highlight provides a clear overview of the role portfolio and allows users to assess the overall quality of the environment. Users can see where improvements are needed and follow up on trends of the application."

More CAST Highlight pros

"Contrast Security's support is great. They're willing to spend a lot of time on your problem."

"The solution has excellent real-time capabilities."

"The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives."

"Protect provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks."

"The Protect solution allows applications to continue to run, even with known vulnerabilities, but will report or block attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities."

Cons

"There's a bit of a learning curve at the outset."

"Technical support could be better."

"Right now, the intent matching is strong for general topics such as ease of use, but for niche B2B terms such as HIPAA compliance or multi-tenant architecture, it sometimes misses context."

"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution. However, CAST Highlight is less expensive than the CAST AIP, but it remains too expensive and the professional services from CAST are also too expensive."

"There could be potential improvements or additional features added to CAST Highlight to make it better."

"It is a pretty costly tool. A lot of customers are resistant to using it."

"Its price should be better. It is a pretty costly tool. They have two products: CAST Highlight and CAST AIP. I would expect CAST Highlight to have the Help dashboard and the Engineering dashboard. These dashboards are currently a part of CAST AIP, and if these are made available in CAST Highlight, customers won't have to use two different products all the time."

"The reports that describe the issues of concern are rather abstract and the issues should be more clearly described to the user."

More CAST Highlight cons

"Protect's reporting GUI is very basic. To get all statuses from the APIs, we needed to write our own KPI dashboard to provide reports."

"We're not using it much anymore because we had some performance issues."

"There's room for improvement in the initial setup."

"Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution. However, CAST Highlight is less expensive than the CAST AIP, but it remains too expensive and the professional services from CAST are also too expensive. The high price is part of the problem with the CAST solutions."

"Basic support is included with the standard licensing feed but it can be upgraded for an additional cost."

"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution."

"It is a pretty costly tool. A lot of customers are resistant to using it."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Outsourcing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	6

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CAST Highlight?

The pricing of CAST Highlight was not considered expensive or cheap, and no specific comment was made about the setup cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CAST Highlight?

The solution provides agnostic blockers for platforms as well as for containerization. Within that containerization, it offers generic blockers. However, my project might require it to provide Wind...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CAST Highlight?

For CAST, I use it in cloud migration roadmap and in open source safety issues. These are my two main use cases.

See all answers

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Comparisons

Snyk vs CAST Highlight

Compared 14% of the time

Veracode vs CAST Highlight

Compared 14% of the time

SonarQube vs CAST Highlight

Compared 9% of the time

Black Duck SCA vs CAST Highlight

Compared 9% of the time

Sonatype Lifecycle vs CAST Highlight

Compared 6% of the time

More CAST Highlight Competitors

SonarQube vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 9% of the time

Checkmarx One vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 8% of the time

Sqreen vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 8% of the time

Veracode vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 6% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 5% of the time

More Contrast Security Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CAST Highlight

June 2026

Download CAST Highlight product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Security Tools

June 2026

Download Contrast Security Protect product report

Also Known As

No data available

Contrast Protect

Overview

CAST Highlight is a comprehensive platform that integrates with Azure DevOps, offering remote functionalities without direct codebase access. It quickly identifies cloud migration blockers and supports most programming languages with an easy setup.

CAST Highlight stands out with its user-friendly interface and dashboard, enabling efficient scanning for environment quality. Its automation and speed are particularly valued, making it distinct in the software analysis domain. While users encounter challenges with language-specific insights and expensive licensing, they benefit from its capability to assess code base states during mergers, acquisitions, and cloud migration planning. Technical support poses issues, and some users face hurdles with configuration customization and issue reporting clarity. Despite these challenges, CAST Highlight demonstrates effectiveness in identifying application service quality and ensuring legal, security, and IP compliance.

What features define CAST Highlight?

Seamless Integration: Works with Azure DevOps for enhanced functionality.
Remote Functionality: Operates without direct codebase access, offering flexibility.
Cloud Migration Assistance: Identifies blockers and boosters for cloud strategies.
Programming Language Support: Compatible with a wide range of languages.
Easy Setup: Simplifies the process for quick implementation.

What are the benefits of using CAST Highlight?

Speed and Automation: Delivers quick scans and automated processes for efficiency.
Application Quality Insights: Provides detailed assessments for application portfolios.
Enhanced Communication: Simple notations improve team communication.
Legal and Security Compliance: Ensures compliance insights are accessible.

CAST Highlight is adopted across industries for tasks such as assessing code during mergers, managing application portfolios, and planning cloud migrations. It facilitates open source safety checks and replatforming architectures, serving roles in firewall and storage management. Users rely on it for service quality verification and distinguishing applications from competitors.

CAST

Contrast Security Protect is an innovative security solution designed to provide continuous protection for applications through real-time analysis and automatic detection of vulnerabilities, ensuring robust safeguard measures during development and deployment phases.

Designed for advanced application security, Contrast Security Protect integrates seamlessly into DevOps workflows, offering continuous monitoring and protection against potential threats. Its intelligent architecture delivers in-depth insights and real-time analytics, enabling faster intervention to prevent breaches and maintain operational integrity. Facilitation of risk management is enhanced by in-app guidance and prompt alerts, supporting developers in addressing vulnerabilities efficiently.

What are the key features of Contrast Security Protect?

Real-Time Monitoring: Constantly checks applications for security breaches and vulnerabilities as they run.
Automated Threat Detection: Identifies and neutralizes threats without manual intervention.
Developer-Focused Insights: Provides actionable insights for developers to improve application security promptly.
Seamless DevOps Integration: Ensures smooth incorporation into existing DevOps practices.
In-App Guidance: Offers guidance within the application for resolving vulnerabilities.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Enhanced Security Posture: Offers continuous protection, reducing the risk of data breaches.
Increased Efficiency: Minimizes manual effort for identifying and correcting vulnerabilities.
Operational Integrity: Maintains uninterrupted business operations by mitigating threats swiftly.
Cost Savings: Reduces potential expenses related to data breaches and compliance penalties.

Contrast Security Protect is particularly beneficial in industries with stringent compliance requirements such as finance and healthcare, where application security is critical. By implementing these solutions, organizations in these sectors can effectively manage risk while ensuring compliance, enhancing overall security infrastructure.

Contrast Security

Sample Customers

Wells Fargo, Bank of NY Mellon, Northern Trust, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, BMW, AT&T, US Army, US Air Force, US Navy, John Hancock, Marsh & McLennan, Ernst & Young, PwC, Volkswagen, Boston Consulting Group, London Stock Exchange, Telefonica, Saur France, Total Energies France, SNCF

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.

Buyer's Guide

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

May 2026

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