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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
32nd
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
7th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (5th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (6th), Software Supply Chain Security (4th), DevSecOps (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify Application Defender is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitGuardian Platform is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

HisaoOgata - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time and warns about the vulnerabilities in the software, but the false positive rate should be lower
We use the solution to prevent cyberattacks Based on the alerts created by the solution during development, we modify the software we are developing. The product finds mistakes automatically. It warns us about the vulnerabilities in the software. The product saves us cost and time. The product…
Joan Ging - PeerSpot reviewer
It dramatically improved our ability to detect secrets, saved us time, and reduced our mean time to remediation
While they do offer some basic reporting, more comprehensive reporting would be beneficial in the long run. This would allow me to demonstrate the value of the product over time to continue to effectively budget for this subscription, especially as they add features that may come at an additional cost. I appreciate the improvements made to reporting over the past year, but continued development in this area will be appreciated. We have encountered occasional difficulties with the Single Sign-On process. There is room for improvement in its current implementation. It works, but was not quite as smooth as the rest of the GitGuardian experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Fortify Application Defender are the code packages that are default."
"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."
"Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications."
"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 most valuable feature is the ability to automatically feed it rules what it's coupled with the WebInspect dynamic application scanning technology."
"The product saves us cost and time."
"The information from Fortify Application Defender on how to fix and solve issues is very good compared to other solutions."
"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."
"The entire GitGuardian solution is valuable. The product is doing its job and showing us many things. We get many false positives, but the ability to automatically display potential leaks when developers commit is valuable. The dashboards show you recent and historical commits, and we have a full scan that shows historical leaked secrets."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to automate both downloading the repository and generating a Software Bill of Materials directly from it."
"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."
"There is quite a lot to like. Its user interface is fantastic, and being able to sort the incidents by whether they are valid or for a certain repository or a certain user has been very beneficial in helping investigate what has been found."
"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 is the general incident reporting system."
"The secrets detection and alerting is the most important feature. We get alerted almost immediately after someone commits a secret. It has been very accurate, allowing us to jump on it right away, then figure out if we have something substantial that has been leaked or whether it is something that we don't have to worry about. This general main feature of the app is great."
 

Cons

"Fortify Application Defender could improve by supporting more code languages, such as GRAAS and Groovy."
"Fortify Application Defender gives a lot of false positives."
"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."
"I encountered many false positives for Python applications."
"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."
"The false positive rate should be lower."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"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."
"Right now, we are waiting for improvement in the RBAC support for GitGuardian."
"They could give a developer access to a dashboard for their team's repositories that just shows their repository secrets. I think more could be exposed to developers."
"The main thing for me is the customization for some of the healthcare-specific identifiers that we want to validate. There should be some ability, which is coming in the near future, to have custom identifiers. Being in healthcare, we have pretty specific patterns that we need to match for PHI or PII. Having that would add a little bit extra to it."
"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'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."
"There is room for improvement in its integration for bug-tracking. It should be more direct. They have invested a lot in user management, but they need to invest in integrations. That is a real lack."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."
"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 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."
"We don't have a huge number of users, but its yearly rate was quite reasonable when compared to other per-seat solutions that we looked at... Having a free plan for a small number of users was really great. If you're a small team, I don't see why you wouldn't want to get started with it."
"It's not cheap, but it's not crazy expensive either."
"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."
"The internal side is cheap per user. It is annual pricing based on the number of users."
"With GitGuardian, we didn't need any middlemen."
"The pricing and licensing are fair. It isn't very expensive and it's good value."
"I compared the solution to a couple of other solutions, and I think it is very competitively priced."
"It's a little bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
22%
Government
13%
Media Company
9%
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 needs improvement with GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
We'd like to request a new GitGuardian feature that automates user onboarding and access control for code repositories. Ideally, when a user contributes to a repository, they would be automatically...
 

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: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.