We performed a comparison between Contrast Security Assess and PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional 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 accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."
"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"There is no other tool like it. I like the intuitiveness and the plugins that are available."
"I have found the best features to be the performance and there are a lot of additional plugins available."
"With the Extender Tab, if you know how to code then you can create a plugin and add it to Burp."
"The solution scans web applications and supports APIs, which are the main features I really like."
"BurpSuite helps us to identify and fix silly mistakes that are sometimes introduced by our developers in their coding."
"The Spider is the most useful feature. It helps to analyze the entire web application, and it finds all the passes and offers an automated identification of security issues."
"We are mostly using it for scanning the entire website. So, we basically create a script with the entire website and then run it for different injections."
"The active scanner, which does an automated search of any web vulnerabilities."
"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."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"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."
"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."
"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."
"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"There should be a heads up display like the one available in OWASP Zap."
"If your application uses multi-factor authentication, registration management cannot be automated."
"You can have many false positives in Burp Suite. It depends on the scale of the penetration testing."
"There needs to be better documentation provided. Currently, we need to buy books, or we need to review online some use cases from other professionals who have been using the solution to find out their experience. It is not easy to find out how to properly do a security assessment."
"Currently, the scanning is only available in the full version of Burp, and not in the Community version."
"The biggest improvement that I would like to see from PortSwigger that today many people see as an issue in their testing. There might be a feature which might be desired."
"The scanner and crawler need to be improved."
"The Auto Scanning features should be updated more frequently and should include the latest attack vectors."
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Contrast Security Assess is ranked 31st in Application Security Tools with 11 reviews while PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is ranked 9th in Application Security Tools with 55 reviews. Contrast Security Assess is rated 8.8, while PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Contrast Security Assess writes "We're gathering vulnerability data from multiple environments in real time, fundamentally changing how we identify issues in applications". On the other hand, the top reviewer of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional writes "The solution is versatile and easy to deploy, but it needs to give more detailed security reports". Contrast Security Assess is most compared with Veracode, Seeker, Fortify WebInspect, HCL AppScan and GitLab, whereas PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is most compared with OWASP Zap, Fortify WebInspect, Acunetix, HCL AppScan and Qualys Web Application Scanning. See our Contrast Security Assess vs. PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional report.
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