No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Contrast Security Assess pros and cons

Vendor: Contrast Security

4.3 out of 5

15 reviews
100% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Contrast Security Assess enhances secure software development by identifying vulnerabilities with a low false positive rate. Continuous monitoring and runtime scanning offer real-time assessment, reducing development costs and time. However, it lacks AI testing, involves cumbersome agent upgrades, and does not support all technologies like PHP. Support is hindered by complex log analysis. Despite being a market pioneer with strong integrations, reliance on documentation for fixes is a limitation.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Contrast Security Assess provides more control over secure software development, improving the identification of vulnerabilities with a low false positive rate.

It offers continuous monitoring, reducing the need for waiting on scans, and automatically identifies vulnerabilities through standard developer processes.

The runtime scanning capability of Contrast Security Assess is unique compared to static analysis tools, enhancing real-time vulnerability assessment.

It significantly reduces development time and costs, providing immediate security feedback to developers, improving overall security posture.

Contrast Security Assess has experience as one of the first players in the market, is stable, strong, and supports effective integrations for various customers.

CONS

Contrast Security Assess lacks AI capabilities for automatic testing and AI security testing, which is considered a missed opportunity.

The process for upgrading agents is cumbersome, requiring manual downloads and deployments of new .jar files in Java environments.

Support and troubleshooting are limited due to reliance on cumbersome log file analysis, impacting efficiency.

Contrast Security Assess does not support all technologies used by users, such as PHP, impacting its versatility and tech compatibility.

The retesting feature and vulnerability fix suggestions rely too heavily on documentation, lacking quick and effective solutions.

Contrast Security Assess Pros review quotes

Eucharia Okafor

Dev Ops Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 12, 2026

Security feedback comes to developers instantly with Contrast Security Assess, reducing costs by about 50%.

Read full review

Threat & Vulnerability Management Senior Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Jul 23, 2026

You cannot get much better than Contrast Security Assess for large deployments of applications and also critical applications.

Read full review

reviewer2884320

Management Of Quality Managers at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 3, 2026

Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by providing more control over secure software development.

Read full review

Contrast Security Assess

Free Report: Contrast Security Assess Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Contrast Security Assess. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2026.

908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer2882520

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at a program development consultancy with 1-10 employees

Jul 31, 2026

Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by improving the security features of our application.

Read full review

Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 1, 2022

Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs.

Read full review

Mustufa Bhavnagarwala

CyberRisk Solution Advisor at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Nov 27, 2023

When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities.

Read full review

reviewer1605099

Director of Threat and Vulnerability Management at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Jun 24, 2021

The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of.

Read full review

AK

Senior Manager of Information Security at Kaizen Gaming

May 2, 2023

I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities.

Read full review

AK

Aggelos Karonis

Technical Information Security Team Lead at Kaizen Gaming

Sep 14, 2020

In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs.

Read full review

RR

Senior Security Architect at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 7, 2020

We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used.

Read full review

Show 5 more reviews (out of 15)

Contrast Security Assess Cons review quotes

Eucharia Okafor

Dev Ops Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 12, 2026

Contrast Security Assess could improve in the reporting and the dashboard experience.

Read full review

Threat & Vulnerability Management Senior Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Jul 23, 2026

I do find that here and there with Contrast Security Assess there are user interface issues, particularly with how they work with libraries.

Read full review

reviewer2884320

Management Of Quality Managers at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 3, 2026

Regarding Contrast Security Assess's AI capabilities, I think they are missing a huge opportunity because they could lead the way in automatic testing and AI security testing, but currently, they do not offer this functionality, which is a shame.

Read full review

Contrast Security Assess

Free Report: Contrast Security Assess Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Contrast Security Assess. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2026.

908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer2882520

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at a program development consultancy with 1-10 employees

Jul 31, 2026

I think Contrast can also integrate with some AI tools and provide chat features if possible, so in case we have any more questions, we can chat with that chatbot and get remediations, which I believe would be a better enhancement to Contrast.

Read full review

Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 1, 2022

The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust.

Read full review

Mustufa Bhavnagarwala

CyberRisk Solution Advisor at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Nov 27, 2023

The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities.

Read full review

reviewer1605099

Director of Threat and Vulnerability Management at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Jun 24, 2021

To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use.

Read full review

AK

Senior Manager of Information Security at Kaizen Gaming

May 2, 2023

The product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes.

Read full review

AK

Aggelos Karonis

Technical Information Security Team Lead at Kaizen Gaming

Sep 14, 2020

Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences.

Read full review

RR

Senior Security Architect at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 7, 2020

Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage.

Read full review

Show 5 more reviews (out of 15)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Application Security Tools

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

SonarQube vs Contrast Security Assess

Snyk vs Contrast Security Assess

Checkmarx One vs Contrast Security Assess

GitLab vs Contrast Security Assess

Veracode vs Contrast Security Assess

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Contrast Security Assess

PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs Contrast Security Assess

Acunetix vs Contrast Security Assess

Sonatype Lifecycle vs Contrast Security Assess

Mend.io vs Contrast Security Assess

OpenText Core Application Security vs Contrast Security Assess

Coverity Static vs Contrast Security Assess

GitHub vs Contrast Security Assess

GitGuardian Platform vs Contrast Security Assess

GitHub Advanced Security vs Contrast Security Assess

See all alternatives

Product Categories

Product Categories

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Application Security Tools

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

SonarQube vs Contrast Security Assess

Snyk vs Contrast Security Assess

Checkmarx One vs Contrast Security Assess

GitLab vs Contrast Security Assess

Veracode vs Contrast Security Assess

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Contrast Security Assess

PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs Contrast Security Assess

Acunetix vs Contrast Security Assess

Sonatype Lifecycle vs Contrast Security Assess

Mend.io vs Contrast Security Assess

OpenText Core Application Security vs Contrast Security Assess

Coverity Static vs Contrast Security Assess

GitHub vs Contrast Security Assess

GitGuardian Platform vs Contrast Security Assess

GitHub Advanced Security vs Contrast Security Assess

See all alternatives

Related questions

400

What Application Security Solution Do You Use That Is DevOps Friendly?

128

Which is the most comprehensive open source Web Security Testing tool?

159

What is the best Application Security Testing platform?

149

When evaluating Application Security Testing, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?

188

SAST vs. DAST: Which is better for application security testing?

163

What tools do you rely on for building a DevSecOps pipeline?

260

What does the Log4j/Log4Shell vulnerability mean for your company?

195

Checkmarx or Veracode. Which should we choose?

325

What are your recommended automated penetration testing tools?

170

What are the OWASP top 10 in 2020?