IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment vs Snyk comparison

IBM and Snyk are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. IBM is ranked #48 with an average rating of 5.0, while Snyk is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 0.5% mindshare in VM, compared to Snyk’s 3.1% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Snyk users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2025

Snyk and IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment are competing products in the security category. IBM Guardium typically leads with its robust vulnerability assessment capabilities, but Snyk is favored for its cost-effective pricing and strong customer support, appealing to budget-focused clients.

Features: Snyk seamlessly integrates with popular development tools, focusing on open source vulnerabilities with automated fixes and continuous monitoring. It offers a simpler, agile approach for development environments. IBM Guardium offers advanced enterprise-level security features with comprehensive database vulnerability assessments and strong data protection measures, making it ideal for nuanced threat detection.

Room for Improvement: Snyk could enhance its library size and on-premise deployments despite its promising cloud-based setup. Additionally, improving its vulnerability database to compete with larger databases could be beneficial. IBM Guardium may improve with job simplification during deployment and expanded cloud integrations, along with streamlining user interface complexities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Snyk's cloud-based setup enables quick deployment and updates, accompanied by excellent customer support. Its straightforward process suits teams looking for ease. IBM Guardium, with more complex deployments, caters to enterprises with existing infrastructures, supporting on-premise and hybrid setups, requiring detailed integration but offering deep enterprise system compatibility.

Pricing and ROI: Snyk provides a competitive pricing model with scalable options delivering efficient ROI for small teams aiming to reduce costs. Meanwhile, IBM Guardium involves higher initial expenses but offers extensive features and security compliance for long-term value in comprehensive enterprise security. Snyk's affordability appeals to smaller, cost-sensitive teams, whereas IBM's detailed functionalities justify investment for larger enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Vulnerability Management Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Vulnerability Management

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 869,760 peers since 2012

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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snyk is 3.1%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Snyk	3.1%
Zafran Security	1.0%
IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment	0.5%
Other	95.4%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

Read full review

Dr. Sajid Latif

Guardium Administrator at Interactive Group

Improvements sought in database optimization while benefiting from robust security monitoring

We use the analytical functionality of Guardium, but the analytical functionality is not so powerful or flexible because it does not include the application user ID. It only includes the database user ID. To identify risky users, it does not support end users, so IBM must incorporate this feature into the built-in analytical engine of the Guardium. There is only one problem I experienced while using Guardium: the internal database of the collector is MySQL, which is not so powerful or flexible. When you make a query in a MySQL database, it takes too much time to respond. IBM should replace this MySQL database with a more powerful internal database for the logging mechanism so that Guardium can collect logging data flexibly and ensure optimization. My overall experience with Guardium is good. The only problem is that IBM must replace the internal DB, MySQL, with a more powerful enterprise-level database because enterprises use it at an enterprise level, and MySQL does not support optimally.

Read full review

meetharoon

CEO at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Affordable tool boosts code scanning efficiency but faces integration hurdles

I lead a code security practice for our organization. We integrated Snyk into our GitHub, using CLI to automatically scan codebases and identify issues. We are a large organization with three independent entities, consolidating Snyk across all entities. We also provide access through numerous…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"The most valuable feature is that it provides a simple English recommendation on actions that you need to take once a vulnerability is discovered."

"The reporting features are good and there are many built-in reports that can be quickly configured."

"The Vulnerability Assessment feature is quite stable and helps identify numerous vulnerabilities in databases."

"It helped with some of the regulatory requirements. It also helped with some of the security analytics and analysis. It was worthwhile from that perspective."

"The most effective feature in securing project dependencies stems from its ability to highlight security vulnerabilities."

"They evolved their maturity because they could find the vulnerabilities before the pipeline runs."

"Snyk is a developer-friendly product."

"Snyk categorizes the level of vulnerability into high, medium, and low, which helps organizations prioritize which issues to tackle first."

"It has improved our vulnerability rating and reduced our vulnerabilities through the tool during the time that we've had it. It's definitely made us more aware, as we have removed scoping for existing vulnerabilities and platforms since we rolled it out up until now."

"The most valuable features are their GitLab and JIRA integrations. The GitLab integration lets us pull projects in pretty easily, so that it's pretty minimal for developers to get it set up. Using the JIRA integration, it's also pretty easy to get the information that is generated, as a result of that GitLab integration, back to our teams in a non-intrusive way and in a workflow that we are already using."

"Snyk performs software composition analysis (SCA) similar to other expensive tools."

"The advantage of Snyk is that Snyk automatically creates a pull request for all the findings that match or are classified according to the policy that we create. So, once we review the PR within Snyk and we approve the PR, Snyk auto-fixes the issue, which is quite interesting and which isn't there in any other product out there. So, Snyk is a step ahead in this particular area."

More Snyk pros

Cons

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"It was not as easy to use. The user-friendliness of it was somewhat lower than what I was expecting. It was also lacking in terms of the ease of the setup. There should be an automatic agent for deployment."

"The interface could be improved by having sub-groups of tests, ultimately making the process of collecting tests faster."

"Building policies is not that easy. There are some things that are turned off by default, for example, displaying values."

"There is only one problem I experienced while using Guardium: the internal database of the collector is MySQL, which is not so powerful or flexible."

"We had some issues integrating into our pipeline, however, they were resolved."

"All such tools should definitely improve the signatures in their database. Snyk is pretty new to the industry. They have a pretty good knowledge base, but Veracode is on top because Veracode has been in this business for a pretty long time. They do have a pretty large database of all the findings, and the way that the correlation engine works is superb. Snyk is also pretty good, but it is not as good as Veracode in terms of maintaining a large space of all the historical data of vulnerabilities."

"Snyk's API and UI features could work better in terms of speed."

"We have seen cases where tools didn't find or recognize certain dependencies. These are known issues, to some extent, due to the complexity in the language or stack that you using. There are some certain circumstances where the tool isn't actually finding what it's supposed to be finding, then it could be misleading."

"The way Snyk notifies if we have an issue, there are a few options: High vulnerability or medium vulnerability. The problem with that is high vulnerabilities are too broad, because there are too many. If you enable notifications, you get a lot of notifications, When you get many notifications, they become irrelevant because they're not specific. I would prefer to have control over the notifications and somehow decide if I want to get only exploitable vulnerabilities or get a specific score for a vulnerability. Right now, we receive too many high vulnerabilities. If we enable notifications, then we just get a lot of spam message. Therefore, we would like some type of filtering system to be built-in for the system to be more precise."

"The feature for automatic fixing of security breaches could be improved."

"It lists projects. So, if you have a number of microservices in an enterprise, then you could have pages of findings. Developers will then spend zero time going through the pages of reports to figure out, "Is there something I need to fix?" While it may make sense to list all the projects and issues in these very long lists for completeness, Snyk could do a better job of bubbling up and grouping items, e.g., a higher level dashboard that draws attention to things that are new, the highest priority things, or things trending in the wrong direction. That would make it a lot easier. They don't quite have that yet in container security."

"For the areas that they're new in, it's very early stages for them. For example, their expertise is in looking at third-party components and packages, which is their bread-and-butter and what they've been doing for ages, but for newer features such as static analysis I don't think they've got compatibility for all the languages and frameworks yet."

More Snyk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"One thing not advantageous for it was that it was a little bit more expensive. I would rate it one out of five in terms of pricing."

"The pricing is acceptable, especially for enterprises. I don't think it's too much of a concern for our customers. Something like $99 per user is reasonable when the stakes are high."

"The product's price is okay."

"For what Snyk offers, it has the best cost-benefit I have ever seen because you're buying the license per user."

"I didn't think the price was that great, but it wasn't that bad, either. I'd rate their pricing as average in the market."

"It is pretty expensive. It is not a cheap product."

"The price is good. Snyk had a good price compared to the competition, who had higher pricing than them. Also, their licensing and billing are clear."

"We do have some missing licenses issues, especially with non-SPDX compliant one, but we expect this to be fixed soon"

"It's inexpensive and easy to license. It comes in standard package sizing, which is straightforward. This information is publicly found on their website."

More Snyk pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

37%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	21

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment?

We use the analytical functionality of Guardium, but the analytical functionality is not so powerful or flexible beca...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment?

We are still using IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment. We only use IBM Guardium Data Protection and monitoring, da...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment?

We do not use IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment for data encryption or any other tool for analytics, or identity ...

See all answers

How does Snyk compare with SonarQube?

Snyk does a great job identifying and reducing vulnerabilities. This solution is fully automated and monitors 24/7 to...

See all answers

What do you like most about Snyk?

The most effective feature in securing project dependencies stems from its ability to highlight security vulnerabilit...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Snyk?

There are a lot of false positives that need to be identified and separated. The inclusion of AI to remove false posi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Compared 34% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 14% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

Nucleus vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

Tenable Nessus vs IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

Compared 30% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

Compared 27% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

Compared 25% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment

Compared 18% of the time

More IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment Competitors

GitHub Advanced Security vs Snyk

Compared 8% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs Snyk

Compared 8% of the time

Trivy vs Snyk

Compared 8% of the time

SonarQube Cloud (formerly SonarCloud) vs Snyk

Compared 6% of the time

Wiz vs Snyk

Compared 5% of the time

More Snyk Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

September 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Vulnerability Management

September 2025

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment report

Download IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment product report

Buyer's Guide

Snyk

September 2025

Download Snyk product report

Also Known As

No data available

Fugue, Snyk AppRisk

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment scans data infrastructures (databases, data warehouses and big data environments) to detect vulnerabilities, and suggests remedial actions. The solution identifies exposures such as missing patches, weak passwords, unauthorized changes and misconfigured privileges.

IBM

Snyk excels in integrating security within the development lifecycle, providing teams with an AI Trust Platform that combines speed with security efficiency, ensuring robust AI application development.

Snyk empowers developers with AI-ready engines offering broad coverage, accuracy, and speed essential for modern development. With AI-powered visibility and security, Snyk allows proactive threat prevention and swift threat remediation. The platform supports shifts toward LLM engineering and AI code analysis, enhancing security and development productivity. Snyk collaborates with GenAI coding assistants for improved productivity and AI application threat management. Platform extensibility supports evolving standards with API access and native integrations, ensuring comprehensive and seamless security embedding in development tools.

What are Snyk's standout features?

Simplicity and Integration: Easy to integrate across platforms like GitLab, GitHub, and Jira.
Comprehensive Vulnerability Database: Offers accurate reporting for effective vulnerability management.
Developer-Friendly Design: Supports multiple programming languages, appealing to developers.
Automation and Flexibility: Enhances workflow efficiency with automated capabilities.

What benefits can users expect?

Efficiency in Vulnerability Detection: Streamlines prioritization and remediation processes.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers a competitive pricing model compared to alternatives.
Enhanced Workflow: Integration with DevOps tools improves development processes.

Industries leverage Snyk for security in CI/CD pipelines by automating checks for dependency vulnerabilities and managing open-source licenses. Its Docker and Kubernetes scanning capabilities enhance container security, supporting a proactive security approach. Integrations with platforms like GitHub and Azure DevOps optimize implementation across diverse software environments.

Snyk

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

StartApp, Segment, Skyscanner, DigitalOcean, Comic Relief

Buyer's Guide

Vulnerability Management

September 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Tenable, Wiz, Qualys and others in Vulnerability Management. Updated: September 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best Vulnerability Management vendors.

We monitor all Vulnerability Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.