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Fortify Application Defender vs GitGuardian Platform 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

Fortify Application Defender
Ranking in Application Security Tools
28th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitGuardian Platform
Ranking in Application Security Tools
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (4th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (6th), Software Supply Chain Security (4th), DevSecOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify Application Defender is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitGuardian Platform is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Saroj-Patnaik - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable solution with excellent machine learning algorithms but expensive and lacking support
I primarily use Fortify Application Defender to assess whether our products can defend against applications Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications. Fortify Application Defender gives…
Ney Roman - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates efficient secret management and improves development processes
Regarding the exceptions in GitGuardian Platform, we know that within the platform we have a way to accept a path or a directory from a repository, but it is not that visible at the very beginning. You have to figure out where to search for it, and once you have it, it is really good, but it is not that visible at the beginning. This should be made more exposed. The documentation could be better because it was not that comprehensively documented. When we started working with GitGuardian Platform, it was difficult to find some specific use cases, and we were not aware of that. It might have improved now, but at that time, it was not something we would recommend.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The information from Fortify Application Defender on how to fix and solve issues is very good compared to other solutions."
"The most valuable features of Fortify Application Defender are the code packages that are default."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically feed it rules what it's coupled with the WebInspect dynamic application scanning technology."
"Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications."
"Its ability to find security defects is valuable."
"The product saves us cost and time."
"The solution helped us to improve the code quality of our organization."
"We are able to provide out customers with a secure application after development. They are no longer left wondering if they are vulnerable to different threats within the market following deployment."
"I like GitGuardian's instant response. When you have an incident, it's reported immediately. The interface gives you a great overview of your current leaked secrets."
"My impression of the GitGuardian Platform's capability to detect secrets in real time has been really amazing, because it lets us protect or block the pipelines in which we deploy new applications so we can acknowledge when a secret is hardcoded in a repository, or when we have already hardcoded secrets within templates in our repos."
"The breadth of the solution detection capabilities is pretty good. They have good categories and a lot of different types of secrets... it gives us a great range when it comes to types of secrets, and that's good for us."
"The most valuable feature is the alerts when secrets are leaked and we can look at particular repositories to see if there are any outstanding problems. In addition, the solution's detection capabilities seem very broad. We have no concerns there."
"The most valuable feature of GitGuardian is that it finds tokens and passwords. That's why we need this tool. It minimizes the possibility of security violations that we cannot find on our own."
"What is particularly helpful is that having GitGuardian show that the code failed a check enables us to automatically pass the resolution to the author. We don't have to rely on the reviewer to assign it back to him or her. Letting the authors solve their own problems before they get to the reviewer has significantly improved visibility and reduced the remediation time from multiple days to minutes or hours. Given how time-consuming code reviews can be, it saves some of our more scarce resources."
"GitGuardian has pretty broad detection capabilities. It covers all of the types of secrets that we've been interested in... [Yet] The "detector" concept, which identifies particular categories or types of secrets, allows an organization to tweak and tailor the configuration for things that are specific to its environment. This is highly useful if you're particularly worried about a certain type of secret and it can help focus attention, as part of early remediation efforts."
"GitGuardian public leak detection significantly enhances our organization's data security by continuously monitoring public repositories."
 

Cons

"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."
"Fortify Application Defender gives a lot of false positives."
"The workbench is a little bit complex when you first start using it."
"The solution could improve the time it takes to scan. When comparing it to SonarQube it does it in minutes while in Fortify Application Defender it can take hours."
"Fortify Application Defender could improve by supporting more code languages, such as GRAAS and Groovy."
"I encountered many false positives for Python applications."
"The false positive rate should be lower."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"For some repositories, there are a lot of incidents. For example, one repository says 255 occurrences, so I assume these are 255 alerts and nobody is doing anything about them. These could be false positives. However, I cannot assess it correctly, because I haven't been closing these false positives myself. From the dashboard, I can see that for some of the repositories, there have been a lot of closing of these occurrences, so I would assume there are a lot of false positives. A ballpark estimate would be 60% being false positives. One of the arguments from the developers against this tool is the number of false positives."
"The documentation could be improved because when we started working with GitGuardian, it was difficult to find specific use cases."
"We have been somewhat confused by the dashboard at times."
"The analytics in GitGuardian Platform have a significant opportunity to better reflect the value provided to security teams and demonstrate actual activity occurring."
"We'd like to request a new GitGuardian feature that automates user onboarding and access control for code repositories."
"It could be easier. They have a CLI tool that engineers can run on their laptops, but getting engineers to install the tool is a manual process. I would like to see them have it integrated into one of those developer tools, e.g., VS Code or JetBrains, so developers don't have to think about it."
"GitGuardian encompasses many secrets that companies might have, but we are a Microsoft-only organization, so there are some limitations there in terms of their honey tokens. I'd like for it to not be limited to Amazon-based tokens. It would be nice to see a broader set of providers that you could pick from."
"GitGuardian's hook and dashboard scanners are the two entities. They should work together as one. We've seen several discrepancies where the hook is not being flagged on the dashboard. I still think they need to do some fine-tuning around that. We don't want to waste time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The base licensing costs for the SaaS platform is about $900 USD per application, per year."
"The price of this solution could be less expensive."
"The licensing is very complex, it's project based and can range from $10,000 to $200,000+ depending on the project type and size."
"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten. It comes as an annual cloud subscription. The tool's pricing is around 50 lakhs."
"Fortify Application Defender is very expensive."
"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."
"The pricing and licensing are fair. It isn't very expensive and it's good value."
"You get what you pay for. It's one of the more expensive solutions, but it is very good, and the low false positive rate is a really appealing factor."
"It's competitively priced compared to others. Overall, the secret detection sector is expensive, but we are very happy with the value we get."
"It's a little bit expensive."
"It's not cheap, but it's not crazy expensive either."
"It's fairly priced, as it performs a lot of analysis and is a valuable tool."
"GitGuardian is on the pricier side."
"With GitGuardian, we didn't need any middlemen."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
22%
Government
16%
Media Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortify Application Defender?
I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy.
What needs improvement with Fortify Application Defender?
The product should integrate industry-standard code review tools internally with its system. This would streamline the coding process, as developers wouldn't need multiple tools for code review and...
What is your primary use case for Fortify Application Defender?
We use the solution for fast code review. It is integrated into our DevOps pipeline.
What do you like most about GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
It's also worth mentioning that GitGuardian is unique because they have a free tier that we've been using for the first twelve months. It provides full functionality for smaller teams. We're a smal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
It's competitively priced compared to others. Overall, the secret detection sector is expensive, but we are happy with the value we get.
What needs improvement with GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
GitGuardian Platform does what it is designed to do, but it still generates many false positives. We utilize the automated playbooks from GitGuardian Platform, and we are enhancing them. We will pr...
 

Also Known As

HPE Fortify Application Defender, Micro Focus Fortify Application Defender
GitGuardian Internal Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceMaster, Saltworks, SAP
Automox, 66degrees (ex Cloudbakers), Iress, Now:Pensions, Payfit, Orange, BouyguesTelecom, Seequent, Stedi, Talend, Snowflake... 
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortify Application Defender vs. GitGuardian Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.