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Contrast Security Assess vs Fortify Software Security Center comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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

Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (24th)
Fortify Software Security C...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortify Software Security Center is 1.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortify Software Security Center1.5%
Contrast Security Assess1.3%
Other97.2%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Eucharia Okafor - PeerSpot reviewer
DevSecOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Continuous in-app security has transformed our development workflow and has reduced manual checks
Contrast Security Assess changes how the team thinks about security. Instead of us waiting for a security audit at the end of any sprint, vulnerabilities surface as developers are writing and testing code. That shift is significant because fixing a bug in development costs more than fixing it later. It captures everything right there and remediates it because it catches vulnerability and remediates immediately while the application is running. It improves our collaboration between development and security teams, as developers get clear actionable findings immediately. We get continuous visibility into our application risk posture. Ultimately, it helps us to shift fast and save money, which is usually a trade-off, but Contrast Security Assess makes both possible. The feature that stands out most to me in Contrast Security Assess is the ability to capture vulnerability while the application is running. Another standout feature is the real-time detection that finds vulnerabilities as code runs. It has fewer false positives and works continuously in the application; you install it and it is there. It captures issues during development quickly and is easily integrated with a CI/CD pipeline, especially if you are using GitLab or GitHub. The real-time detection feature of Contrast Security Assess helps us very well compared to traditional SAST tools. Traditional tools scan from the outside and guess where problems might be. Contrast Security Assess works from the inside because it is embedded into the application. The agent lives inside the running application, allowing it to see exactly what is happening in real-time. This means we are getting accurate alerts instead of a long list of potential issues that require manual investigation. When it comes to the CI/CD pipeline, Contrast Security Assess really shines for our daily work, as it plugs directly into tools like Jenkins, GitHub, or Azure DevOps. When a developer commits code and triggers a build, Contrast Security Assess is already testing it in the background. If there is any vulnerability, the pipeline automatically flags or stops the application before bad code reaches production. This means security becomes everyone's responsibility, not just the security team's, and it gives us real-time, accurate security that fits into how our team already works.
Diego Caicedo Lescano - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Innovation Officer at SAGGA
Enables centralized analysis and improves governance through seamless tool integration
The main use case for Fortify Software Security Center is exceptional because we have governance and control through that console. You can centralize both static analysis and dynamic analysis, and correlate both analyses in one tool to get better results by combining those independent results from each solution. That is outstanding, and there is no tool I have seen on the market that offers these capabilities. I appreciate the interoperability with other solutions from Fortify Software Security Center. Because we are using Kiuwan, you can run Kiuwan analyses and integrate them with Fortify Software Security Center to get those results in a single console. That is a good console for centralizing things in one point. That is one of the best features of the on-premises Fortify.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time."
"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."
"Overall, the product is strong and improving, support is responsive and effective, and supported integrations work for many customers."
"One of the key takeaways is that in order to have a secure application, you cannot rely on just the pentest, vulnerability assessments, and the periodicity of the reviews; you need the real-time feedback on that, and Contrast Assess offers that."
"Fortify Analytics' AI function helps scan and provides more detailed explanations and recommendations about vulnerabilities."
"It's very important because they want to scan their source code every day, so we provide CICD integration to our customers so they can auto build and auto test every day, get reports, and fix issues."
"This is a stable solution at the end of the day."
"The main use case for Fortify Software Security Center is exceptional because we have governance and control through that console."
"Software Security Center is highly customizable and helps me test all vulnerability data against the latest conventions like OWASP Top Ten, CVE Top twenty-five, and several other legal compliances."
"You can easily download the tool's rule packs and update them."
"I like the explanation of issues provided by Fortify Software Security Center."
"The reporting is very useful because you can always view an entire list of the issues that you have."
 

Cons

"Their level of support and troubleshooting for the product is limited because of how they handle troubleshooting. It's done through a log file that's very cumbersome to work with."
"The product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."
"My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."
"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."
"Fortify Software Security Center's setup is really painful."
"The initial setup of this solution is very complex. Specifically, the integration between other parts of the solution is difficult."
"I am not satisfied with the percentage of false positives, which is around eighteen percent."
"This solution is difficult to implement, and it should be made more comfortable for the end-users."
"We are having issues with false positives that need to be resolved."
"Improvements needed for Software Security Center include better aggregation views of datasets."
"The product's overlap feature is restrictive and requires more customization efforts, which can be expensive."
"The support for Fortify on-premises is the same as for the other products. I would say the support is not good and I would rate it a three out of ten."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."
"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."
"The solution is expensive."
"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."
"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."
"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."
"The solution is priced fair."
"As a Fortify partner company providing technical support, I find the product expensive in our country, where local, inexpensive products are available."
"This is a costly solution that could be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, the annual licensing for Contrast Security Assess costs about $20,000 to $100,000 per year, and per application, it costs about $5,000 to $15,000 per y...
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
Contrast Security Assess could improve in the reporting and the dashboard experience. While the data is there, pulling together an executive-level summary requires too much manual work. I would lov...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
The biggest production gain from Contrast Security Assess is the reduced costs and overhead within my company. Security feedback comes to developers instantly with Contrast Security Assess, reducin...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Software Security Center?
In my opinion, there are no areas that could be improved with Fortify Software Security Center. I would say it is a good product and a mature product. However, the SAST has many improvement areas. ...
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Software Security Center?
We have installed Fortify Static Code Analysis, SAST, in Ecuador in two customers. The Fortify ScanCentral includes three components: SAST, Fortify Software Security Center, and the WebInspect.
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Micro Focus Software Security Center, Application Security Center, HPE Application Security Center, WebInspect
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Neosecure, Acxiom, Skandinavisk Data Center A/S, Parkeon
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Fortify Software Security Center and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.