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FOSSA vs OpenText Static Application Security Testing 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

FOSSA
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (9th)
OpenText Static Application...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Static Code Analysis (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. FOSSA is designed for Software Composition Analysis (SCA) and holds a mindshare of 3.1%, down 3.7% compared to last year.
OpenText Static Application Security Testing, on the other hand, focuses on Static Code Analysis, holds 10.1% mindshare, down 10.4% since last year.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
FOSSA3.1%
Black Duck16.7%
Snyk13.1%
Other67.1%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
Static Code Analysis Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenText Static Application Security Testing10.1%
Veracode22.1%
Checkmarx One14.6%
Other53.199999999999996%
Static Code Analysis
 

Featured Reviews

Hanumanth Ramsetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactively mitigate deployment vulnerabilities with seamless dependency tracking
Before using FOSSA, we could only identify issues after deployment in the Cloud Run. Now, with FOSSA, we identify dependency issues or vulnerabilities during the CI phase itself. This proactive approach has eliminated the need to search the internet for solutions, as FOSSA provides updated recommendations automatically. This has made the process more efficient and mitigated risks before deployment.
Aphiwat Leetavorn. - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides extensive language support and enhances secure coding practices
The deployment of Fortify Static Code Analyzer needs to be simplified. It should be easier to install, perhaps through a container-based approach where everything is combined into one image or pack of containers. This change would facilitate easier installations and ensure all necessary components are connected and ready to use.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Being able to know the licenses of the libraries is most valuable because we sell products, and we need to provide to the customers the licenses that we are using."
"The support team has just been amazing, and it helps us to have a great support team from FOSSA. They are there to triage and answer all our questions which come up by using their product."
"Their CLI tool is very efficient. It does not send your source code over to their servers. It just does fingerprinting. It is also very easy to integrate into software development practices."
"The scalability is excellent."
"FOSSA suggests solutions for dependency mismatches."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to identify all of the components in a build, and then surface the licenses that are associated with it, allowing us to make a decision as to whether or not we allow a team to use the components. That eliminates the risk that comes with running consumer software that contains open source components."
"I am impressed with the tool’s seamless integration and quick results."
"FOSSA is easy to use and set up, provides relatively accurate results, and doesn't require armies of people to get value from its use."
"Its flexibility is most valuable. It is such a flexible tool. It can be implemented in a number of ways. It can do anything you want it to do. It can be fully automated within a DevOps pipeline. It can also be used in an ad hoc, special test case scenario and anywhere in between."
"We write software, and therefore, the most valuable aspect for us is basically the code analysis part."
"Automating the Jenkins plugins and the build title is a big plus."
"It's helped us free up staff time."
"You can really see what's happening after you've developed something."
"I recommend this product due to its good pricing, extensive language support, valuable features, and additional features like Fortify Academy."
"I like the Fortify taxonomy as it provides us with a list of all of the vulnerabilities found. Fortify release updated rule packs quarterly, with accompanying documentation, that lets us know what new features are being released."
"The most valuable features include its ability to detect vulnerabilities accurately and its integration with our CI/CD pipeline."
 

Cons

"The solution provides contextualized, actionable, intelligence that alerts us to compliance issues, but there is still a little bit of work to be done on it. One of the issues that I have raised with FOSSA is that when it identifies an issue that is an error, why is it in error? What detail can they give to me? They've improved, but that still needs some work. They could provide more information that helps me to identify the dependencies and then figure out where they originated from."
"FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually."
"We have seen some inaccuracies or incompleteness with the distribution acknowledgments for an application, so there's certainly some room for improvement there. Another big feature that's missing that should be introduced is snippet matching, meaning, not just matching an entire component, but matching a snippet of code that had been for another project and put in different files that one of our developers may have created."
"On the dashboard, there should be an option to increase the column width so that we can see the complete name of the GitHub repository. Currently, on the dashboard, we see the list of projects, but to see the complete name, you have to hover your mouse over an item, which is annoying."
"I wish there was a way that you could have a more global rollout of it, instead of having to do it in each repository individually. It's possible, that's something that is offered now, or maybe if you were using the CI Jenkins, you'd be able to do that. But with Travis, there wasn't an easy way to do that. At least not that I could find. That was probably the biggest issue."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"While running a FOSSA scan, it takes time for the results to reflect in the FOSSA UI portal."
"If you have thousands of applications, organizing them all into teams or tags is challenging."
"Fortify's software security center needs a design refresh."
"I know the areas that they are trying to improve on. They've been getting feedback for several years. There are two main points. The first thing is keeping current with static code languages. I know it is difficult because code languages pop up all the time or there are new variants, but it is something that Fortify needs to put a better focus on. They need to keep current with their language support. The second thing is a philosophical issue, and I don't know if they'll ever change it. They've done a decent job of putting tools in place to mitigate things, but static code analysis is inherently noisy. If you just take a tool out of the box and run a scan, you're going to get a lot of results back, and not all of those results are interesting or important, which is different for every organization. Currently, we get four to five errors on the side of tagging, and it notifies you of every tiny inconsistency. If the tool sees something that it doesn't know, it flags, which becomes work that has to be done afterward. Clients don't typically like it. There has got to be a way of prioritizing. There are a ton of filter options within Fortify, but the problem is that you've got to go through the crazy noisy scan once before you know which filters you need to put in place to get to the interesting stuff. I keep hearing from their product team that they're working on a way to do container or docker scanning. That's a huge market mover. A lot of people are interested in that right now, and it is relevant. That is definitely something that I'd love to see in the next version or two."
"It can be tricky if you want to exclude some files from scanning. For instance, if you do not want to scan and push testing files to Fortify Software Security Center, that is tricky with some IDEs, such as IntelliJ. We found that there is an Exclude feature that is not working. We reported that to them for future fixing. It needs some work on the plugins to make them consistent across IDEs and make them easier."
"Fortify Static Code Analyzer has a bit of a learning curve, and I don't find it particularly helpful in narrowing down the vulnerabilities we should prioritize."
"The troubleshooting capabilities of this solution could be improved. This would reduce the number of cases that users have to submit."
"Fortify Static Code Analyzer is a good solution, but sometimes we receive false positives. If they could reduce the number of false positives it would be good."
"Streamlining the upgrade process and enhancing compatibility would make it easier for us to keep our security tools up-to-date."
"Their licensing is expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FOSSA is a fairly priced product. It is not either cheaper or expensive. The pricing lies somewhere in the middle. The solution is worth the money that we are spending to use it."
"Its price is reasonable as compared to the market. It is competitively priced in comparison to other similar solutions on the market. It is also quite affordable in terms of the value that it delivers as compared to its alternative of hiring a team."
"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."
"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch. It is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario. Regardless of the price, I highly recommend FOSSA."
"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."
"There is a licensing fee, and if you bring them to the company and you want them to do the installation and the implementation in the beginning, there is a separate cost. Similarly, if you want consultation or training, there is a separate cost. I see it as suitable only for enterprises. I do not see it suitable for a small business or individual use."
"I rate the pricing of Fortify Static Code Analyzer as a seven out of ten since it is a bit expensive."
"The licensing is expensive and is in the 50K range."
"Although I am not responsible for the budget, Fortify SAST is expensive."
"The setup costs and pricing for Fortify may vary depending on the organization's needs and requirements."
"The price of Fortify Static Code Analyzer could be reduced."
"From our standpoint, we are significantly better off with Fortify due to the favorable pricing we secured five years ago."
"It has a couple of license models. The one that we use most frequently is called their flexible deployment. We use this one because it is flexible and based on the number of code-contributing developers in the organization. It includes almost everything in the Fortify suite for one developer price. It gives access to not just the secure code analyzer (SCA) but also to FSC, the secure code. It gives us accessibility to scan central, which is the decentralized scanning farm. It also gives us access to the software security center, which is the vulnerability management platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
22%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FOSSA?
The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free. You have to pay for the features you need, which I think is fair. If you want to get value for free...
What needs improvement with FOSSA?
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact lin...
What is your primary use case for FOSSA?
I have worked with FOSSA primarily to manage the dependencies in our projects. For example, if I take a Spring Boot application, FOSSA helps in identifying mismatches or unsupported dependencies th...
What do you like most about Fortify Static Code Analyzer?
Integrating the Fortify Static Code Analyzer into our software development lifecycle was straightforward. It highlights important information beyond just syntax errors. It identifies issues like pa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortify Static Code Analyzer?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been good. We have the scan machines, and we are planning to request more from Micro Focus now. We have calls every month or every oth...
What needs improvement with Fortify Static Code Analyzer?
I think Fortify Static Code Analyzer could be improved by updating the number of rule packs according to the latest vulnerabilities we find each year. We have updated to a version that is one less ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Fortify Static Code Analysis SAST
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AppDyanmic, Uber, Twitter, Zendesk, Confluent
Information Not Available
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