We performed a comparison between HCL AppScan and Sonatype Lifecycle based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Security Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The product has valuable features for static and dynamic testing."
"The product is useful, particularly in its sensitivity and scanning capabilities."
"For me, as a manager, it was the ease of use. Inserting security into the development process is not normally an easy project to do. The ability for the developer to actually use it and get results and focuses, that's what counted."
"It highlights, with several grades of severity, the types of vulnerabilities, so we can focus on the most severe security vulnerabilities in the code."
"It comes with all of the templates that we need. For example, we are a company that is regulated by PCI. In order to be PCI compliant, we have a lot of checks and procedures to which we have to comply."
"The solution offers services in a few specific development languages."
"The most valuable feature of HCL AppScan is its integration with the SDLC, particularly during the coding phase."
"The most valuable feature of HCL AppScan is scanning QR codes."
"Sonatype support is quite responsive. When we needed something, we could reach out and set up a meeting. They provide the best support possible."
"The scanning capability is its most valuable feature, discovering vulnerable open source libraries."
"It was very easy to integrate into our build pipeline, with Jenkins and Nexus Repository as the central product."
"The key feature for Nexus Lifecycle is the proprietary data they have on vulnerabilities. The way that they combine all the different sources and also their own research into one concise article that clearly explains what the problem is. Most of the time, and even if you do notice that you have a problem, the public information available is pretty weak. So, if we want to assess if a problem applies to our product, it's really hard. We need to invest a lot of time digging into the problem. This work is basically done by Sonatype for us. The data that it delivers helps us with fixing or understanding the issue a lot quicker than without it."
"It scans and gives you a low false-positive count... The reason we picked Lifecycle over the other products is, while the other products were flagging stuff too, they were flagging things that were incorrect. Nexus has low false-positive results, which give us a high confidence factor."
"The policy engine is really cool. It allows you to set different types of policy violations, things such as the age of the component and the quality: Is it something that's being maintained? Those are all really great in helping get ahead of problems before they arise. You might otherwise end up with a library that's end-of-life and is not going to get any more fixes."
"The most important features of the Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle are the vulnerability reports."
"Fortify integrates with various development environments and tools, such as IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) and CI/CD pipelines."
"In future releases, I would like to see more aggressive reports. I would also like to see less false positives."
"Scans become slow on large websites."
"Visibility is an issue for us. Our partners do not know we have integrations with some of IBM products."
"The product has some technical limitations."
"Improving usability could enhance the overall experience with AppScan. It would be beneficial to make the solution more user-friendly, ensuring that everyone can easily navigate and utilize its features."
"The dashboard, for AppScan or the Fortified fast tool, which we use needs to be improved."
"Sometimes it doesn't work so well."
"Improvement can be done as per customer requirements."
"We got a lot of annotations for certain libraries when it comes to Java, but my feeling, and the feeling of a colleague as well, is that we don't get as many for critical libraries when it comes to .NET, as if most of them are really fine... It would be good if Sonatype would check the status of annotations for .NET packages."
"They're working on the high-quality data with Conan. For Conan applications, when it was first deployed to Nexus IQ, it would scan one file type for dependencies. We don't use that method in Conan, we use another file type, which is an acceptable method in Conan, and they didn't have support for that other file type. I think they didn't even know about it because they aren't super familiar with Conan yet. I informed them that there's this other file type that they could scan for dependencies, and that's what they added functionality for."
"We created the Wiki page for each team showing an overview of their outstanding security issues because the Lifecycle reporting interface isn't as intuitive. It is good for people on my team who use it quite often. But for a tech engineer who doesn't interact with it regularly, it's quite confusing."
"The GUI is simple, so it's easy to use. It started as great to use, but for larger scale companies, it also comes with some limitations. This is why we tried to move to more of an API approach. So, the GUI could use some improvements potentially."
"Not all languages are supported in Fortify."
"If you look at NPM-based applications, JavaScript, for example, these are only checkable via the build pipeline. You cannot upload the application itself and scan it, as is possible with Java, because a file could change significantly."
"Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle can improve the functionality. Some functionalities are missing from the UI that could be accessed using the API but they are not available. For example, seeing more than the 100 first reports or, seeing your comments when you process a waiver for a vulnerability or a violation."
"There is room for improvement in the code analysis aspect of Sonatype Lifecycle, specifically in the area of deployment security."
HCL AppScan is ranked 15th in Application Security Tools with 41 reviews while Sonatype Lifecycle is ranked 6th in Application Security Tools with 43 reviews. HCL AppScan is rated 7.8, while Sonatype Lifecycle is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of HCL AppScan writes " A stable and scalable product useful for application security scanning". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sonatype Lifecycle writes "Seamless to integrate and identify vulnerabilities and frees up staff time". HCL AppScan is most compared with SonarQube, Veracode, Acunetix, PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional and OWASP Zap, whereas Sonatype Lifecycle is most compared with SonarQube, Black Duck, Fortify Static Code Analyzer, GitLab and Qualys Web Application Scanning. See our HCL AppScan vs. Sonatype Lifecycle report.
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