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Defensics Protocol Fuzzing vs HCL AppScan comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Defensics Protocol Fuzzing
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Fuzz Testing Tools (4th)
HCL AppScan
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (19th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (16th), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. Defensics Protocol Fuzzing is designed for Fuzz Testing Tools and holds a mindshare of 16.0%, down 25.3% compared to last year.
HCL AppScan, on the other hand, focuses on Application Security Tools, holds 2.4% mindshare, down 2.6% since last year.
Fuzz Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Defensics Protocol Fuzzing16.0%
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional33.6%
GitLab29.2%
Other21.200000000000003%
Fuzz Testing Tools
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HCL AppScan2.4%
SonarQube13.6%
Checkmarx One8.8%
Other75.2%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Senior Technical Lead at HCL Technologies
Product security tests for switches and router sections
Codenomicon Defensics should be more advanced for the testing sector. It should be somewhat easy and flexible to install. What I see in the documentation isn't that. Even if something doesn't malfunction, sometimes it is hard to install and execute. The product needs video documentation. This would help a lot more.
Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder Director at Techsa Services
Has improved identification of encryption and authentication issues across cloud and on-prem applications
During the learning curve of onboarding HCL AppScan, we learned that HCL has altered the portfolio and now offers HCL AppScan 360, which has a much better look and feel with an improved user interface. However, there is one feature called SCA, which stands for Software Composition Analysis, that could be improved. When I'm doing an application scan, HCL AppScan has the ability to generate information about what components are in use. For example, if I'm scanning a web application, it shows me the various components being used. It tells me whether I have Java libraries, .NET frameworks, or other log management libraries such as Log4j, and what versions of those specific components are present. I would like to see more detailed reports from the tool. Currently, you can find out the components belonging to a specific software, but if detailed reporting became available, you would be in a better position to identify vulnerabilities. For instance, I could identify that I had the Log4j vulnerability and know that I need to fix my application accordingly. If they add the features I'm describing, I would consider giving them a higher rating. However, I've only been experienced with the product for three months.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Whatever the test suit they give, it is intelligent. It will understand the protocol and it will generate the test cases based on the protocol: protocol, message sequence, protocol, message structure... Because of that, we can eliminate a lot of unwanted test cases, so we can execute the tests and complete them very quickly."
"The product is related to US usage with TLS contact fees, i.e. how more data center connections will help lower networking costs."
"Simple and straightforward GUI."
"We have found multiple issues in our embedded system network protocols, related to buffer overflow. We have reduced some of these issues."
"The stability of this product is great; we tested it under multiple constraints and even on cloud services it is absolutely stable."
"Whatever the test suit they give, it is intelligent; it will understand the protocol and it will generate the test cases based on the protocol: protocol, message sequence, protocol, message structure, and because of that, we can eliminate a lot of unwanted test cases so we can execute the tests and complete them very quickly."
"ROI was 100%. Since there are no product suites available that provide the level of testing available with Codenomicon, the development, quality and security assurance departments know that the investment was correct."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It has certainly improved our organization in terms of quality of solutions that are developed."
"We are now deploying less defects to production."
"It identifies all the URLs and domains on its own and then performs tests and provides the results."
"It highlights, with several grades of severity, the types of vulnerabilities, so we can focus on the most severe security vulnerabilities in the code."
"The security and the dashboard are the most valuable features."
"It's generally a very user-friendly tool. Anyone can easily learn how to scan"
"Compared to other tools only AppScan supports special language."
 

Cons

"Codenomicon Defensics should be more advanced for the testing sector. It should be somewhat easy and flexible to install."
"It requires understanding the Defensics protocol."
"It does not support the complete protocol stack. There are some IoT protocols that are not supported and new protocols that are not supported."
"Codenomicon Defensics should be more advanced for the testing sector. It should be somewhat easy and flexible to install."
"Sometimes, when we are testing embedded devices, when we trigger the test cases, the target will crash immediately. It is very difficult for us to identify the root cause of the crash because they do not provide sophisticated tools on the target side. They cover only the client-side application... They do not have diagnostic tools for the target side. Rather, they have them but they are very minimal and not very helpful."
"You can't implement proprietary ciphering algorithms, nor can you modify protocol models if you need to test customized public protocols."
"Sometimes, when we are testing embedded devices, when we trigger the test cases, the target will crash immediately. It is very difficult for us to identify the root cause of the crash because they do not provide sophisticated tools on the target side."
"The performance could be better. Sometimes it doesn't work so well."
"We would like to see a check in the specific vulnerabilities in mobile applications or rooted devices, such as jailbreaking devices."
"We have experienced challenges when trying to integrate this solution with other products; when you compare it with the other SecOps products, the quality of the output is too low and it is very outdated."
"There is one feature called SCA, which stands for Software Composition Analysis, that could be improved."
"The depth was low, but the part that the user could miss was also diagnosed."
"Visibility is an issue for us. Our partners do not know we have integrations with some of IBM products."
"In future releases, I would like to see more aggressive reports. I would also like to see less false positives."
"We would like to be able to integrate to some of the other tools that we are using."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is a bit expensive."
"The price is very expensive."
"Pricing was the main reason that we went ahead with this solution as they were the lowest in the market."
"The solution is cheap."
"The price of HCL AppScan is okay, in my opinion. You just buy HCL AppScan and don't pay anything anymore, meaning it is just a one-time purchase."
"The tool was expensive."
"AppScan is a little bit expensive. IBM needs to work a little bit on the pricing model, decreasing the license cost."
"I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. HCL AppScan is an expensive tool."
"I would rate the product's pricing a nine out of ten. The product's pricing is expensive compared to the features that they offer."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about HCL AppScan?
The most valuable feature of HCL AppScan is its integration with the SDLC, particularly during the coding phase.
What needs improvement with HCL AppScan?
During the learning curve of onboarding HCL AppScan, we learned that HCL has altered the portfolio and now offers HCL AppScan 360, which has a much better look and feel with an improved user interf...
What is your primary use case for HCL AppScan?
I'm currently working with BigFix and HCL AppScan. At least three people in my company are using HCL AppScan. Since we are a reseller, we run it in both lab environments and live production applica...
 

Also Known As

Codenomicon Defensics
IBM Security AppScan, Rational AppScan, AppScan
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Coriant, CERT-FI, Next Generation Networks
Essex Technology Group Inc., Cisco, West Virginia University, APIS IT
Find out what your peers are saying about Defensics Protocol Fuzzing vs. PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.