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Fortify Application Defender vs GitGuardian Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 28, 2025

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
25th
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
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (4th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (6th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (6th), Software Supply Chain Security (4th), DevSecOps (3rd), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify Application Defender is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitGuardian Platform is 0.8%, 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

"Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically feed it rules what it's coupled with the WebInspect dynamic application scanning technology."
"I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy."
"The most valuable feature is that it analyzes data in real-time."
"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."
"The tool's most valuable feature is software composition analysis. This feature works well with my .NET applications, providing a better understanding of library vulnerabilities."
"The solution helped us to improve the code quality of our organization."
"Its ability to find security defects is valuable."
"The newest addition that we appreciate about GitGuardian Platform is the ability to create a custom detector, which we built and worked with the team, and that works very effectively."
"A high number of our exposures are remediated by developers before security needs to step in, as the self-healing playbook process engages them automatically. This results in issues being resolved within minutes, saving significant effort from the security team in tracking down or communicating with developers."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"One thing I really like about it is the fact that we can add search words or specific payloads inside the tool, and GitGuardian will look into GitHub and alert us if any of these words is found in a repository... With this capability in the tool, we have good surveillance over our potential blind spots."
"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."
"When they give you a description of what happened, it's really easy to follow and to retest. And the ability to retest is something that you don't have in other solutions. If a secret was detected, you can retest if it is still there. It will show you if it is in the history."
 

Cons

"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 security checks. Many independent and open-source tools are available, from Apache to various libraries. Using multiple DevOps pipeline tools can slow the turnaround time."
"I encountered many false positives for Python applications."
"The workbench is a little bit complex when you first start using it."
"The licensing can be a little complex."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"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."
"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."
"Fortify Application Defender gives a lot of false positives."
"We have been somewhat confused by the dashboard at times."
"GitGuardian Platform does what it is designed to do, but it still generates many false positives."
"There is room for improvement in GitGuardian on Azure DevOps. The implementation is a bit hard there. This is one of the things we requested help with. I would not say their support is not good, but they need them to improve in helping customers on that side."
"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."
"The analytics in GitGuardian Platform have a significant opportunity to better reflect the value provided to security teams and demonstrate actual activity occurring. While the self-healing capability and proactive developer actions are important features, the analytics do not provide information around this activity."
"I would like to see more fine-grained access controls when tickets are assigned for incidents. I would like the ability to provide more controls to the team leads or the product managers so that they can drive what we, the AppSec team, are doing."
"GitGuardian could have more detailed information on what software engineers can do. It only provides some highly generic feedback when a secret is detected. They should have outside documentation. We send this to our software engineers, who are still doing the commits. It's the wrong way to work, but they are accustomed to doing it this way. When they go into that ticket, they see a few instructions that might be confusing. If I see a leaked secret committed two years ago, it's not enough to undo that commit. I need to go in there, change all my code to utilize GitHub secrets, and go on AWS to validate my key."
"We'd like to request a new GitGuardian feature that automates user onboarding and access control for code repositories."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."
"Fortify Application Defender is very expensive."
"The base licensing costs for the SaaS platform is about $900 USD per application, per year."
"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."
"The price of this solution could be less expensive."
"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."
"I am only aware of the base price. I do not know what happened with our purchasing team in discussions with GitGuardian. I was not privy to the overall contract, but in terms of the base MSRP price, I found it reasonable."
"The pricing for GitGuardian is fair."
"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 fairly priced, as it performs a lot of analysis and is a valuable tool."
"It's not cheap, but it's not crazy expensive either."
"GitGuardian is on the pricier side."
"It's competitively priced compared to others. Overall, the secret detection sector is expensive, but we are very happy with the value we get."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
9%
Government
18%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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, GitGuardian Public Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceMaster, Saltworks, SAP
Widely adopted by developer communities, GitGuardian is used by over 600 thousand developers and leading companies, including Snowflake, Orange, Iress, Mirantis, Maven Wave, ING, BASF, and Bouygues Telecom.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortify Application Defender vs. GitGuardian Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.