PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional Reviews

I used this solution while working with a bank, and while it wasn't much of a DevSecOps tool, it was a good tool for penetration testing.

It is a good manual penetration tool. It was easy to learn.

If your application uses multi-factor authentication, registration management cannot be automated. There are also some session management issues we have found if we want to integrate it into the pipeline. There were also some authentication-related issues we found at the time. These issues were more specific to the enterprise edition. I have worked on a paid version of the standalone solution, which is best for manual penetration testing.

I rate Burp Suite's stability a ten out of ten.

I rate Burp Suite's scalability a seven out of ten. We wanted to have more scalability in my last company, where we wanted the enterprise edition, but there were some challenges we faced. We couldn't find a solution to the problem statements for most of our business use cases back then. We then dropped the idea of using Burp Suite Enterprise and opted for a standard one for manual penetration testing.

There were ten users in my unit working with Burp Suite.

Support-wise, the solution was also very good. Across the globe, all the manual penetration testers use Burp Suite. If we had any questions, we received good support from GitLab and other forums.

Whenever we raised any query, such as if we wanted to file an invoice for reimbursement at the organization level, the support was good at the nontechnical and technical levels.

Positive

The initial setup is easy, not only in the office, since I'm working on my laptop now with the community edition. The configuration is pretty straightforward.

Burp Suite is affordable. Admins can purchase the tool, which is affordable enough that college students can purchase it if they want to learn it.

The solution is not a good candidate for a DevSecOps tool.

I recommend this solution for manual penetration testers. It is the best tool with the best support. PortSwigger has added plugins to efficiently catch bugs, for example, HTTP request smuggling. There are a lot of plugins, such as how to hide the JWT token. These plugins minimize the effort required by manual penetration testers so they can find bugs quickly with the help of these plugins. They have good support if anybody wants to learn how to use and install plugins. There is a lot of documentation available online.

I rate PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional an eight out of ten.

The solution has improved the organisation as it helps with scanning and doing the reports for the developers. The solution also helps with communicating the everyday issues and delivering high security and web applications to the customers.

The intercepting feature is the most valuable.

Mitigating the issues and low confluence issues needs some improvement. Implementing demand with the ChatGPT under the web solution is an additional feature I would like to see in the next release.

The solution is used for scanning and doing reports for the developers.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. Ten specialists are working with Burp Suite Professional currently. We plan to increase the usage in the future. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The solution is implemented through a third-party team.

Positive

I have used Nessus, previously. Nessus helped with only OS and analysis but Burp Suite helps with application scanning, detecting vulnerabilities and expertisation.

The initial setup is easy. The deployment is done under a professional, and it takes one hour to be deployed. We have to add our information to get our code directly into the box and then we scan their applications. A single person is required for the deployment. I rate the initial setup a ten out of ten.

The solution is implemented through a third-party team.

The pricing of the solution is reasonable. We only need to pay for the annual subscription. I rate the pricing five out of ten.

All the security issues and the integration of the vulnerabilities will happen automatically and manually in the website. So the solution will be very helpful for the website. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

I mainly use Burp Suite for manual testing, using it as a proxy to do my manual pen test.

Burp Suite gives you a very good automated scanning tool, which gives you around sixty to seventy percent security coverage without having to use a security resource. Once the developer gets the report, they've got the PortSwigger lab to explain the vulnerability and have a POC right there, so it's very beneficial for developers.

The most valuable feature is Burp Collaborator.

BurpSuite has some issues regarding authentication with OAT tokens that need to be improved.

I've been using this solution for around seven years.

The Professional version is not very scalable because you need to buy licenses for each user, but the Enterprise version takes care of that.

The support for the Enterprise solution isn't the best (I'd rate it as three out of five), but the Professional version provides all the documentation and the PortSwigger labs, so it's much better.

Positive

I previously used OS SAP, but I switched to Burp Suite when the support for that solution stopped.

The initial setup is very easy because Burp Suite has very good documentation. Setup took less than an hour, though it might take a less-experienced person longer to install a mobile application because of the application-level security.

I would say Burp Suite has now surpassed SAP as a tool. The main aspect of Burp Suite is that it's like an army knife for a hacker, it's not just the automation or the scanning that it brings. For a person with 80-90% knowledge of application security, this tool is a must-have. I would rate Burp Suite nine out of ten.

The solution is primarily used for scanning the webpage and for the incoming traffic for the application.

The solution is most valuable for finding and developing the application. If there is leakage of data or some external links, we can deal with it.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good.

The solution offers helpful technical support and has excellent documentation.

Sometimes the solution can run a little slow. When we’re cracking passwords, we have issues with responsiveness.

I used the solution for one year.

Mostly the solution is stable. Sometimes while using the password cracker, it took some time. Sometimes it gets a bit slow by adding up the number of rules. It took some time to crack the passwords of applications.

It is pretty easy to scale the product.

We had ten to 12 people using the solution. It was a small environment.

Technical support was excellent. They were very fast. They also offered good documentation which was very helpful to have on hand.

Positive

I started with Burp Suite. I’ve only used that. I haven't used anything other than that.

For the setup, on my end, I just got access via the organization when I first started using it. I haven't set up the entire cloud, the Burp Suite cloud. I used it by using some credentials only. Therefore, I'm not that good at setting up the enrollment.

The entire setup was done on the cloud. There were only three to four people needed for deployment and maintenance. They are well experienced in those areas.

The deployment part was entirely done by another team. We, as a team, used to test the application. We didn't know much about how the setup was arranged.

I’m not aware of the pricing side of things. It might have been paid monthly, however, I don’t know much more than that.

My company was parters with Portswigger.

I’m not sure which version of the solution we were using.

Everyone seems very happy with the solution. There are some learning modules as well so that we can go into the tool and understand it well. I would suggest the solution to my colleagues.

I’d rate the solution nine out of ten.

Clients come to me for an assessment of their web applications to see the risks that they are facing with their applications. They want to ensure that their application is free of being manipulated and also secure, so they reach out to us to do vulnerability assessment and application penetration testing. We make use of PortSwigger's BurpSuite tool carry this out. We look at it more from an application standpoint, what common vulnerabilities there are like the top 10 OWASP vulnerabilities like Injection(OS/SQL/CMD), broken authentication, session management, cross site request forgery, unvalidated redirects/forwards, etc. Those are the primary uses we make use for this tool.

We're an independent IT organization that specializes in vulnerability assessment and penetration testing, and we focus here on application security. This tool really helps me unearth security issues and vulnerabilities that are on the applications shared by my clients. Unearthing these issues really helps me build confidence and relationships with clients on two counts. First part is that, they want a reliable and robust tool with which we are able to unearth security issues in there. The second part of it is, I give them more confidence in their application securedness before they make a decision on going live.

I can't name customers, but I've been working with a US university education platform providing client for the last three years. Earlier we tried different tools but in the last couple of years, we stuck to the Burp Suite tool and year after year, we've been periodically doing the application security for them. The confidence has really leveraged the relationship to build the pipeline of business that I have. At the same time, the confidence that the customer in their platform going live has remained intact. That really helps me build accountability and it helps me put forward my organization as a strong security testing organization space.

I like the way the tool has been designed. Once I capture the proxy, I'm able to transfer across, all the requested information that is there. I can send across the request to the 'Repeater' feature. I put in malicious payloads and then see how the application responds to it.

More than that, the Repeater and Intruder are really awesome features on BurpSuite. For example, if I'm going to test for a SQL injection, I have certain payloads that are trying to break into the application. I make use of these predefined payloads which come as part of the tool are really useful for us to use and see how the application behaves. With the help of the BurpSuite tool, we are very well ahead to see if the application is going to break at any point in time.

So the Repeater and the Intruder, are great features that are there. More than that I think the entire community support is really fabulous. As well as of the number of plug-ins that people have written for the tool. Those have been standouts. Community support is really strong. We see a lot of plug-ins that are made available that work along with the tool.

In the earlier versions what we saw was that the REST API was something that needed to be improved upon but I think that has come in the new edition when I was reading through the release offset available. 

There is a certain amount of lead time for the tickets to get resolved. The biggest improvement that I would like to see from PortSwigger is what many people see as a need in their security testing that coudl be priortized and developed as a feature which can be useful. For example, if they're able to take these kinds of requests, group them, prioritize and show this is how the correct code path is going to be in the future, this is what we're going to focus around in building in the next six months or so. That could be something that will be really valuable for testers to have.

I've been using the solution for about three years.

Burp Suite is quite robust. The good part is that it also comes with an automatic back-up feature in it which automatically saves all the request-responses, alerts, attacks in the systems periodically.In the event of your laptop crashing/going down on power, you still have last saved application state which has saved the recording. Once you power up again, you can launch Burp Suite and go back the last point of save of the complete recording /requests/tests in the system.

With the open edition, it's not a problem to install on any number of machines. When it comes to the professional edition, you need a license and you have to pick a license type. I have to use it against a particular machine on which I would run. From there I would run my scans. Let's say I don't find my laptop or my computer fast enough, and I decide to move my license across to a higher processor, higher memory laptop or computer, I can easily move the license across to the new machine.

As long as I am on that particular license use, I have one license that I'm able to move across to one instance at any given point of time. That is quite stable. I think even more than that, for a top-priced edition you can take multiple contract licenses. Something like a license server where you might have five licenses. You might have 10 installations and you can have different people working on various routes use the tool. Only those five licenses will be needed. In that instance, scalability is definitely a great point for most uses.

Currently, if you look at the users that are linked to roles that we have, one is the security test engineer and one is the security test analyst. At any given point in time, only one person uses the tool for engagement in the professional edition. We have about two to three people working with us on these projects.

I found technical support to be quite responsive. I usually get an email response within three or four hours which is very good. There's plenty of documentation that has relatively good pointers as to the documentation's impact. Also, documentation is a good part of the knowledge base. They have started something that's very awesome by implementing that. They point us to areas in our tickets that have answers within the available knowledge base documentation, which is shared as part of the whole response. It's definitely a good thing.

I've used different tools like Acunetix. 

The first tool that we started with was Acunetix. Acunetix as quite expensive, first and foremost. It's more suitable for web application scanning and penetration. PortSwigger's has a larger play beyond applications, it supports REST API and all that stuff, that kind of support is great with PortSwigger.

The kind of mechanism that's there is you can just capture the flow if the application. They usually have what is called as a flow sequence in proxy history with which all the user actions are captured. That's all that is done by the tool completely. Once that information is there, much you can control exploit requests with the tool. Whatever the tool shows, I have the opportunity to throttle and change payloads and see how the application behaves.

We used the online web scanners with Acunetix. We found it a little difficult and that was one reason why. In fact, when we got the contract with the client and we evaluated multiple tools, that's why we chose PortSwigger's BurpSuite.

The initial setup was straightforward. It's not complex at all. Today it comes along with a job size which makes it much more affordable and easy. I don't think the installation is ever a challenge here. 

In some setups, all I do is this: if I'm setting it up for Windows, I cannot get my path through which I want to set this up. A few clicks and I'll be able to get the entire tool set up. I would say it requires some amount of knowledge to do testing. So also we are able to set up the tool against an application. Let's say there is an application that comes through for testing. Until I get to know the way I have to configure the target URLs and capture the entire traffic flow. That is easy. Now there are jar files also being made available for easier instantiation of the tool.

It is not a challenge in setting up the tool at all because there's plenty of videos and documentation available around in both the PortSwigger website as well as in open forums like YouTube and all that. It's quite easy to set it up. Personally, I haven't had trouble. We haven't had any major challenges in terms of setting up the tool. Not just purely from an installation standpoint, but also from a perspective of beginning to capture traffic across the different applications that we serve. 

The installation takes about less than four to five minutes. It doesn't take more than that.

In terms of security implementation strategy, when we take control of any tests that we do, we set the proxies in place based on the settings that are there on the tool and then set up the same proxy across on a browser for which we will capture the traffic. Once we do that, our implementation strategy is to capture the entire traffic in terms of specifying a target URL, the application or the website and the test. We do a proper login and ensure that all the data captures are there. Then we see that all the requested sponsors are getting logged in properly inside the tool and we are able to capture that. So once we do that, we try to simulate all user flows that would be there on the tool. 

Based on the different tools that are there, we capture the flow and enter a fake login and then we do a scan. The scan helps to unlock issues that are there. That kind of test is to identify all the actions that we do. We particularly do what is called an active scan which is like after you use the browser, make all the user clicks, events, and all that, the tool is able to capture it in the background. It does an active scan, and it gives what are potential issues that are there. So once we are done with that, we look at all the issues that are there, and then we make it run through a boot scan based on the requests that we have captured. Typically this takes a final good amount of time which depends on the amount of traffic that you have captured through the tool.

The one good thing that I would like to highlight is that irrespective of how much traffic is captured from my application flow, the tool is quite robust. I have seen other tools that sometimes the application, or rather the tool, becomes non-responsive. I haven't seen those kinds of issues here.

Then, once we are done with the scan, we pick and choose what are the issues that are there. We look for what are the trouble spots, and what issues are being highlighted. Then we check each of those specific requests, sending them over to another team member, and try them with different payloads, putting them across in the intruder and unearthing issues. So that helps me really test the application using PortSwigger comprehensively, and, more importantly, at the end of the test, it makes it quite easy for me to generate a report which is quite nice and simple which I can forward across to the client. That is essentially the way I go about in my implementation of security testing.

We did the implementation in-house.

In terms of ROI, I'd say it helps with client engagement. The tools in relation to ROI allow me to win back-to-back contracts for application security testing with the customers. I would even say I'd be able to break in on a first engagement itself. 

Licensing costs are about $450/year for one use. For larger organizations, they would be able to test against multiple applications simultaneously while others might have multiple versions of applications which needs to be tested which is why there is an enterprise edition. We might have more than five to six people in the organizations doing security testing. You can give full-base access to them and control who uses your licenses.

It depends on the stream of projects, business pipeline that I get, but security is not something that done all throughout the year. We get it in cycles. We pace it in such a way that from our different customers that we work with, we actually have one project running throughout the year. I might do a project for Client X during the month of let's say January to February. Then for another client, I might have something lined up for April to May. So with a single license, I am able to maximize the usage very well.

The tool comes in three type. First, there is the  Open Community Edition, which is meant for people who use it to learn the tool or use it to secure their system. This edition does not have scanning features enabled to source scan the against application URLs or websites. From the standpoint of learning about security tests or assessing the security of application without scanning, the community edition really helps.

Then you also have a Professional edition which is more meant for doing comprehensive vulnerability assessment and penetration application which is very important. Especially for independent teams like ours who make use of tools based on tech, etc. The good part about the professional edition is that it comes with a term license which is cost-effective. You pay for an annual charge and use it for a year's time and then you can extend it on an as-needed basis.

Apart from these, we also have an Enterprise Edition which has features like scan schedulers unlimited scalability to test across multiple websites in parallel, supporting multiple user access with role based access control and easy integration with CI tools.

The very best way this tool can be used through is to understand the application, identify the various roles that are there in the application. Then capture the user flows, with Port Swigger's BurpSuite, and understand what the requests are making use of the different features in BurpSuite. 

Post this the teams look at and analyze all the requests being sent. Observe the requests, use various roles with the tool using a repeater and intruder, analyze what's breaking through in the application. As you can quickly analyze with the intruder out here how the application's really behaving, how the payload is being sent across the tool. Then you get a quick sense of what's available which could be checked through for false positives and then arrive at the final output along with it.

This is how I would like to handle the implementation of the solution.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

I'm primarily using it for testing of the company's website.

The interface is good.

It is easy to use.

I am certified with the product and have a good understanding of it.

The usability is very good.

It offers very good accuracy. You can trust the results. 

It's good software that is great for a beginner to use.

It can scale. 

The product is stable and reliable. 

It works for me. I don't see any missing features. 

The solution is not easy to set it up. You need a lot of knowledge. I'd like to see more documentation. They need to provide more videos and more information about the solution. The website isn't as helpful as it could be. They need to provide more information and maybe provide courses to help people get the most out of it. 

For smaller organizations, the solution is expensive. 

I've been using the solution for two years. 

I'd rate the stability eight out of ten. It is pretty stable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is very scalable. I'd rate the ability to extend ten out of ten.

Three people are using the solution.

I do not have any experience with technical support. I had a colleague who would deal with support.

I used to use OWASP Zap. It is a free solution. I moved to Burp as the accuracy rate was higher. We wanted something that provided correct information about errors. 

The initial setup was a bit difficult. For a beginner, it's tough to set up. I'd rate the solution three out of ten in terms of ease of setup. There isn't proper documentation to help you through the process. 

I cannot recall how long the deployment took. I watched a lot of videos and just went ahead with eh setup myself. 

The product doesn't require any maintenance. 

I handled the initial setup myself. I did not have any outside assistance. 

I have witnessed an ROI. It is worth the money.

It is a bit expensive for smaller companies. If you're using it in a small company or for your own purposes, it's costly. I'd rate the cost three out of ten in terms of affordability.

I'm not sure of the exact cost of the solution as I don't directly deal with licensing. 

I'm a customer. I'm using the professional version. It is the latest version. They always update it and provide me with the latest upgrades. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. It's very accurate and easy to use. 

I would rate the solution. Ten out of ten. 

The solution is the standard in application penetration testing and this is what we use it for.

I have found the best features to be the performance and there are a lot of additional plugins available.

I have been using the solution for approximately three years.

The solution is reliable, it is very stable.

The installation is straightforward and simple. It only takes minutes to install.

We did the deployment and one individual can do it, it is not complex. We have a team of three engineers and architects doing the deployments and maintenance.

The price for the solution is expensive and could be cheaper. We pay an annual license and our team has several of them.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional a ten out of ten.

It's an individual tool that security professionals use for their manual pen-testing. We use it for capturing the traffic, intercepting the traffic between the browser and the application. We try to manipulate the applications, the traffic so that whatever input that is accepted by the application is sanitized and validated. We try to analyze the application for input validation. All inputs are handled correctly.

Another use case is having a scanner module built-in where you can browse the entire application. The scanner can continuously scan the application for vulnerabilities based on OWASP Top 10 standards. Likewise, you can come to know what vulnerabilities are in the application. Later, you can go through the vulnerabilities one by one and triage them.  

There are many different modules in Burp Suite. We have a comparator module where you can compare the request and response. You have the Repeater module where you can repeat the sequences. They can be used for other test use cases such as doing disciplinary attacks or brute force attacks on the applications. 

Basically, there are a wide variety of use cases and applications.

Request handling capacity, it do not handle huge chuck of requests as it freezes.

And obviously as all tool does Burp also gives some false positive results, vetting has to be done thoroughly.

The most valuable feature of Burp Suite is probably how we can intercept the request and response. We can manipulate a request and send it back to the server. Intercepting is one of the best features for sure. 

The scanner is excellent. The scanner is one of the good features. If you compare it to more expensive tools like WebInspect or IBM AppScan, you'll realize that, at a very low cost, Burp Suite can provide good results.

The is a good amount of documentation available online. The solution is stable.

The initial setup isn't too complex.

The solution offers some great extensions through a BApp store. Users can implement extensions and upload them to the BApp store.

The solution has a great user interface.

Its strong user community is always helpful when it comes to any problem regarding the tool.

Although it provides great writeup for the identified vulnerabilities but reporting needs to improve with various reporting templates based on standards like OWASP, SANS Top 25, etc. The tools needs to expand its scope for mobile application security testing, where native mobile apps can be tested and can provide interface to integrate with mobile device platform or mobile simulator's. Burp suite has great ability to integrate with Jenkins, Jira, Teamcity into CI/CD pipeline and should provide better ways of integration with other such similar platforms.

I've been using the solution for more than eight years now - right from their open-source free version through to their professional version.

The stability is quite good. We have no complaints. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

Obviously, Burp Suite is a DAST tool and good asset for pentester's. However, we need to see how best it can be utilized for automation so that DAST can be automated. Dynamic application testing can be automated and can integrate Burp into CI/CD pipeline using Jenkins. That said, we need to make it use it in a more efficient way. There should be some methods or some guidance from Burp on how best we can use it for automation.

We've never interacted with tech support. That's mostly due to the fact that there is already a lot of material that is available online. With all of the details readily available, we don't need to interact with tech support.

The initial setup isn't too difficult. It's JAR based. I would say it's an analog file. It just requires minimum requirements like Java and a license. After that, you are good to go.

Burp Suite provides different licenses. They have open-source free-to-use licenses, which can be used by anyone. Then, they have a standalone license that, as a security professional, you can use. They have their Enterprise version as well. I use the professional version.

Initially, when we were using Burp Suite, I hardly remember the version we started at. 

The actual costs vary from country to country, however, I would say it's cheaper if you compare it to other DAST solutions and tools.

Compared to other web applications assessment tools Burp suite is a solid tool for web based penetration testing for a reasonable price.

We are just customers and end-users.

I'd advise other organizations that this solution is a pretty good tool for manual penetration testing. It has good features like the Scanner and Sequencer, Repeater, and there are extensions. Burp extensions are available where they can customize Burp behavior using their own or third-party code. Those features will be really useful for Burp users. It's also obviously a very cost-effective option.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.