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Fortify WebInspect vs Fortify on Demand vs OWASP Zap 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Application Security Tools
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.
Navin N - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective scanning of diverse file extensions with fast reporting and issue resolution
We develop software packages for clients, and these clients are mostly in the BFSI sector. The packages need to be scanned, and we engage Fortify WebInspect for this.  Customers typically perform their own application pen tests, but in some cases, we have engagements where customers want us to scan…
Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplifies vulnerability discovery and has high quality support
There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores. Sometimes, a vulnerability initially categorized as high severity may be reduced to medium or low over time after security patches are applied. This alignment with the present severity score and CVSS score could be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product is top-notch solution and the technology is the best on the market."
"The user interface is good."
"The solution scans our code and provides us with a dashboard of all the vulnerabilities and the criticality of the vulnerabilities. It is very useful that they provide right then and there all the information about the vulnerability, including possible fixes, as well as some additional documentation and links to the authoritative sources of why this is an issue and what's the correct way to deal with it."
"The SAST feature is the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is that it connects with your development platforms, such as Microsoft Information Server and Jira."
"I do not remember any issues with stability."
"The solution saves us a lot of money. We're trying to reduce exposure and costs related to remediation."
"The most valuable feature of Micro Focus Fortify on Demand is the information it can provide. There is quite a lot of information. It can pinpoint right down to where the problem is, allowing you to know where to fix it. Overall the features are easy to use, you don't have to be a coder. You can be a manager, or in IT operations, et cetera, anyone can use it. It is quite a well-rounded functional solution."
"The most valuable feature is the static analysis."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the ability to make our customers more secure."
"Reporting, centralized dashboard, and bird's eye view of all vulnerabilities are the most valuable features."
"I've found the centralized dashboard the most valuable. For the management, it helps a lot to have abilities at the central level."
"The tool provides comprehensive vulnerability assessments which help ensure our deliverables are as free from vulnerabilities as possible. It has also streamlined our web application vulnerability assessments, assisting us in delivering secure applications to our clients."
"Guided Scan option allows us to easily scan and share reports."
"The accuracy of its scans is great."
"The transaction recorder within WebInspect is easy to use, which is valuable for our team."
"It can be used effectively for internal auditing."
"The OWASP's tool is free of cost, which gives it a great advantage, especially for smaller companies to make use of the tool."
"The solution has tightened our security."
"Automatic scanning is a valuable feature and very easy to use."
"The solution is good at reporting the vulnerabilities of the application."
"OWASP is quite matured in identifying the vulnerabilities."
"The scalability of this product is very good."
"Two features are valuable. The first one is that the scan gets completed really quickly, and the second one is that even though it searches in a limited scope, what it does in that limited scope is very good. When you use Zap for testing, you're only using it for specific aspects or you're only looking for certain things. It works very well in that limited scope."
 

Cons

"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand could improve the user interface by making it more user-friendly."
"It would be highly beneficial if Fortify on Demand incorporated runtime analysis, similar to how Contrast Security utilizes agents for proactive application security."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand cannot be run from a Linux Agent. When we are coding the endpoint it will not work, we have to use Windows Agent. This is something they could improve."
"It's still a little bit too complex for regular developers. It takes a little bit more time than usual. I know static code scan is not the main focus of the tool, but the overall time span to scan the code, and even to set up the code scanning, is a bit overwhelming for regular developers."
"The technical support is actually a problem that needs to be addressed. Since the acquisition and merger with Hewlett Packard, it has been really hard to know who the technical or salesperson to talk to."
"We typically do our bulk uploads of our scans with some automation at the end of the development cycle but the scanning can take a lot of time. If you were doing all of it at regular intervals it would still consume a lot of time. This could procedure could improve."
"We want a user-based control and role-based access for developers. We want to give limited access to developers so that it only pertains to the code that they write and scanning of the codes for any vulnerabilities as they're progressing with writing the code. As of now, the interface to give restricted access to the developers is not the best. It gives them more access than what is basically required, but we don't want over-provisioning and over-access."
"The biggest deficiency is the integration with bug tracker systems. It might be better if the configuration screen presented for accessing the bug tracking systems could provide some flexibility."
"It took us between eight and ten hours to scan an entire site, which is somewhat slow and something that I think can be improved."
"The solution needs better integration with Microsoft's Azure Cloud or an extension of Azure DevOps. In fact, it should better integrate with any cloud provider. Right now, it's quite difficult to integrate with that solution, from the cloud perspective."
"Our biggest complaint about this product is that it freezes up, and literally doesn't work for us."
"It requires improvement in terms of scanning. The application scan heavily utilizes the resources of an on-premise server. 32 GB RAM is very high for an enterprise web application."
"I would like WebInspect's scanning capability to be quicker."
"The scanner could be better."
"The installation could be a bit easier. Usually it's simple to use, but the installation is painful and a bit laborious and complex."
"Fortify WebInspect's shortcoming stems from the fact that it is a very expensive product in Korea, which makes it difficult for its potential customers to introduce the product in their IT environment."
"The technical support team must be proactive."
"The product should allow users to customize the report based on their needs."
"The product reporting could be improved."
"The port scanner is a little too slow.​"
"The work that it does in the limited scope is good, but the scope is very limited in terms of the scanning features. The number of things it tests or finds is limited. They need to make it a more of a mainstream tool that people can use, and they can even think about having it on a proprietary basis. They need to increase the coverage of the scan and the results that it finds. That has always been Zap's limitation. Zap is a very good tool for a beginner, but once you start moving up the ladder where you want further details and you want your scan to show more in-depth results, Zap falls short because its coverage falls short. It does not have the capacity to do more."
"As security evolves, we would like DevOps built into it. As of now, Zap does not provide this."
"The reporting feature could be more descriptive."
"Reporting format has no output, is cluttered and very long."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model it's based on how many applications you wish to scan."
"Fortify on Demand is affordable, and its licensing comes with a year of support."
"Their subscriptions could use a little bit of a reworking, but I am very happy with what they're able to provide."
"Fortify on Demand is moderately priced, but its pricing could be more flexible."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"We are still using the trial version at this point but I can already see from the trial version alone that it is a good product. For others, I would say that Fortify on Demand might look expensive at the beginning, but it is very powerful and so you shouldn't be put off by the price."
"I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"It's a yearly contract, but I don't remember the dollar amount."
"The price is okay."
"Fortify WebInspect is a very expensive product."
"The pricing is not clear and while it is not high, it is difficult to understand."
"This solution is very expensive."
"Its price is almost similar to the price of AppScan. Both of them are very costly. Its price could be reduced because it can be very costly for unlimited IT scans, etc. I'm not sure, but it can go up to $40,000 to $50,000 or more than that."
"It’s a fair price for the solution."
"Our licensing is such that you can only run one scan at a time, which is inconvenient."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"The tool is open source."
"It is open source, and we can scan freely."
"The tool is open-source."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the ...
What do you like most about Fortify WebInspect?
The solution's technical support was very helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortify WebInspect?
The price of Fortify WebInspect is high, with the cost depending on the number of virtual users. It is approximately ...
What needs improvement with Fortify WebInspect?
The main area for improvement in Fortify WebInspect is the price, as it is too high compared to the market rate. The ...
Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?
OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available...
What do you like most about OWASP Zap?
The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan web...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OWASP Zap?
OWASP might be cost-effective, however, people prefer to use the free edition available as open source.
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
Micro Focus WebInspect, WebInspect
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Aaron's
1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Amazon 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Adobe 10. PayPal 11. Salesforce 12. Cisco 13. Oracle 14. Intel 15. HP 16. Dell 17. VMware 18. Symantec 19. McAfee 20. Citrix 21. Red Hat 22. Juniper Networks 23. SAP 24. Accenture 25. Deloitte 26. Ernst & Young 27. PwC 28. KPMG 29. Capgemini 30. Infosys 31. Wipro 32. TCS
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