Checkmarx One vs IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment comparison

Checkmarx and IBM are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Checkmarx is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #46 with an average rating of 5.0. Checkmarx holds a 0.9% mindshare in VM, compared to IBM’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Checkmarx users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Checkmarx One and IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment are competing products in security and vulnerability management. Checkmarx One has an edge in usability and support, whereas IBM Guardium's robust features justify its cost.

Features: Checkmarx One focuses on code scanning, integration capabilities, and prioritizing development environments. IBM Guardium offers comprehensive vulnerability management, policy enforcement, and data protection features.

Room for Improvement: Checkmarx One could enhance its feature set with more in-depth security measures, expanded policy enforcement, and data governance. IBM Guardium may benefit from a more agile approach, streamlined integration processes, and improved usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Checkmarx One provides simplified deployment with strong customer support, facilitating quick integration with existing systems. IBM Guardium's deployment can be complex due to its extensive data governance features but is supported by specialized customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Checkmarx One offers a competitive setup cost and attractive ROI due to ease of integration and maintenance efficiencies. IBM Guardium's higher investment is viewed as worthwhile for its comprehensive feature set and long-term security assurance.

To learn more, read our detailed Checkmarx One vs. IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

September 2025

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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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Checkmarx One is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Zafran Security	1.0%
Checkmarx One	0.9%
IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment	0.5%
Other	97.6%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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Syed Hasan

Specialist Leader at Deloitte

Partner experiences excellent technical support and seamless initial setup

In my opinion, if we are able to extract or show the report, and because everything is going towards agent tech and GenAI, it would be beneficial if it could get integrated with our code base and do the fix automatically. It could suggest how the code base is written and automatically populate the source code with three different solution options to choose from. This would be really helpful.

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Dr. Sajid Latif

Guardium Administrator at Interactive Group

Improvements sought in database optimization while benefiting from robust security monitoring

We use the analytical functionality of Guardium, but the analytical functionality is not so powerful or flexible because it does not include the application user ID. It only includes the database user ID. To identify risky users, it does not support end users, so IBM must incorporate this feature into the built-in analytical engine of the Guardium. There is only one problem I experienced while using Guardium: the internal database of the collector is MySQL, which is not so powerful or flexible. When you make a query in a MySQL database, it takes too much time to respond. IBM should replace this MySQL database with a more powerful internal database for the logging mechanism so that Guardium can collect logging data flexibly and ensure optimization. My overall experience with Guardium is good. The only problem is that IBM must replace the internal DB, MySQL, with a more powerful enterprise-level database because enterprises use it at an enterprise level, and MySQL does not support optimally.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"The main advantage of this solution is its centralized reporting functionality, which lets us track issues, then see and report on the priorities via a web portal."

"The identification of verification-related security vulnerabilities is really important and one of the key things. It also identifies vulnerabilities for any kind of third-party tool coming into the system or any third-party tools that you are using, which is very useful for avoiding random hacking."

"The most valuable feature for me is the Jenkins Plugin."

"The user interface is excellent. It's very user friendly."

"The solution improved the efficiency of our code security reviews. It helps tremendously because it finds hundreds of potential problems sometimes."

"The most valuable features are the easy to understand interface, and it 's very user-friendly."

"The most valuable features of Checkmarx are difficult to pinpoint because of the way the functionalities and the features are intertwined, it's difficult to say which part of them I prefer most. You initiate the scan, you have a scan, you have the review set, and reporting, they all work together as one whole process. It's not like accounting software, where you have the different features, et cetera."

"It allows for SAST scanning of uncompiled code. Further, it natively integrates with all key repos formats (Git, TFS, SVN, Perforce, etc)."

More Checkmarx One pros

"The most valuable feature is that it provides a simple English recommendation on actions that you need to take once a vulnerability is discovered."

"The Vulnerability Assessment feature is quite stable and helps identify numerous vulnerabilities in databases."

"The reporting features are good and there are many built-in reports that can be quickly configured."

"It helped with some of the regulatory requirements. It also helped with some of the security analytics and analysis. It was worthwhile from that perspective."

Cons

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"The tool is currently quite static in terms of finding security vulnerabilities. It would be great if it was more dynamic and we had even more tools at our disposal to keep us safe. It would help if there was more scanning or if the process was more automated."

"I would like to see the DAST solution in the future."

"The solution's user interface could be improved because it seems outdated."

"They should make it more container-friendly and optimized for the CI pipeline. They should make it a little less heavy. Right now, it requires a SQL database, and the way the tool works is that it has an engine and then it has an analysis database in which it stores the information. So, it is pretty heavy from that perspective because you have to have a full SQL Server. They're working on something called Checkmarx Light, which is a slim-down version. They haven't released it yet, but that's what we need. There should be something a little more slimmed down that can just run the analysis and output the results in a format that's readable as opposed to having a full, really big, and thick deployment with a full database server."

"We can run only one project at a time."

"In terms of dashboarding, the solution could provide a little more flexibility in terms of creating more dashboards. It has some of its own dashboards that come out of the box. However, if I have to implement my own dashboards that are aligned to my organization's requirements, that dashboarding feature has limited capability right now."

"We would like to be able to run scans from our local system, rather than having to always connect to the product server, which is a longer process."

"Checkmarx is not good because it has too many false positive issues."

More Checkmarx One cons

"The interface could be improved by having sub-groups of tests, ultimately making the process of collecting tests faster."

"There is only one problem I experienced while using Guardium: the internal database of the collector is MySQL, which is not so powerful or flexible."

"It was not as easy to use. The user-friendliness of it was somewhat lower than what I was expecting. It was also lacking in terms of the ease of the setup. There should be an automatic agent for deployment."

"Building policies is not that easy. There are some things that are turned off by default, for example, displaying values."

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The pricing is competitive and provides a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) for achieving application security."

"It's relatively expensive."

"Be cautious of the one-year subscription date. Once it expires, your price will go up."

"I believe pricing is better compared to other commercial tools."

"For around 250 users or committers, the cost is approximately $500,000."

"Most of my customers opted for a perpetual license. They prefer to pay the highest amount up front for the perpetual license and then pay for additional support annually."

"Before implementing the product I would evaluate if it is really necessary to scan so many different languages and frameworks. If not, I think there must be a cheaper solution for scanning Java-only applications (which are 90% of our applications)."

"This solution is expensive. The customized package allows you to buy additional users at any time."

More Checkmarx One pricing and cost advice

"One thing not advantageous for it was that it was a little bit more expensive. I would rate it one out of five in terms of pricing."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

37%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	30
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	38

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...

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What alternatives are there for Fortify WebInspect and Fortify SCA?

I would like to recommend Checkmarx. With Checkmarx, you are able to have an all in one solution for SAST and SCA as ...

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What do you like most about Checkmarx?

Compared to the solutions we used previously, Checkmarx has reduced our workload by almost 75%.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx?

The pricing is relatively expensive due to the product's quality and performance, but it is worth it.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment?

We use the analytical functionality of Guardium, but the analytical functionality is not so powerful or flexible beca...

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What is your primary use case for IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment?

We are still using IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment. We only use IBM Guardium Data Protection and monitoring, da...

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What advice do you have for others considering IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment?

We do not use IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment for data encryption or any other tool for analytics, or identity ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 37% of the time

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Nucleus vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

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SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs Checkmarx One

Compared 42% of the time

Veracode vs Checkmarx One

Compared 8% of the time

Checkmarx SAST vs Checkmarx One

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Checkmarx One

Compared 5% of the time

OWASP Zap vs Checkmarx One

Compared 4% of the time

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Qualys VMDR vs IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

Compared 28% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

Compared 27% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

Compared 25% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

Compared 21% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

August 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One

September 2025

Download Checkmarx One product report

Buyer's Guide

Vulnerability Management

August 2025

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment report

Download IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment product report

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Checkmarx One is an enterprise cloud-native application security platform focused on providing cross-tool, correlated results to help AppSec and developer teams prioritize where to focus time and resources.

Checkmarx One offers comprehensive application scanning across the SDLC:

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
API security
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Container security
IaC security
Correlation, prioritization, and risk management
Codebashing secure code training
AI security
Tech partnerships extending AppSec into runtime analysis
Developer tool integrations including: CI/CD tools, development frameworks, feedback tools, IDEs, programming languages and SCMs

Checkmarx One provides everything you need to secure application development from the first line of code through deployment and runtime in the cloud. With an ever-evolving set of AppSec engines, correlation and prioritization features, and AI capabilities, Checkmarx One helps consolidate expanding lists of AppSec tools and make better sense of results. Its capabilities are designed to provide an improved developer experience to build trust with development teams and ensure the success of your AppSec program investment.

Checkmarx

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment scans data infrastructures (databases, data warehouses and big data environments) to detect vulnerabilities, and suggests remedial actions. The solution identifies exposures such as missing patches, weak passwords, unauthorized changes and misconfigured privileges.

IBM

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

September 2025

Free Report: Checkmarx One vs. IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

Find out what your peers are saying about Checkmarx One vs. IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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