We performed a comparison between Contrast Security Assess and OWASP Zap based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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."
"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."
"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."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"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."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, it's very difficult."
"The OWASP's tool is free of cost, which gives it a great advantage, especially for smaller companies to make use of the tool."
"They offer free access to some other tools."
"The API is exceptional."
"The reporting is quite intuitive, which gives you a clear indication of what kind of vulnerability you have that you can drill down on to gather more information."
"The product discovers more vulnerabilities compared to other tools."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. I think it's stable enough. I don't see any crashes within the application, so its stability is high."
"It updates repositories and libraries quickly."
"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."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"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."
"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 solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"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."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"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."
"The automated vulnerability assessments that the application performs needs to be simplified as well as diversified."
"The port scanner is a little too slow."
"Zap could improve by providing better reports for security and recommendations for the vulnerabilities."
"The solution is somewhat unreliable because after we get the finding, we have to manually verify each of its findings to see whether it's a false positive or a true finding, and it takes time."
"Reporting format has no output, is cluttered and very long."
"ZAP's integration with cloud-based CICD pipelines could be better. The scan should run through the entire pipeline."
"It would be a great improvement if they could include a marketplace to add extra features to the tool."
"It would be ideal if I could try some pre-built deployment scenarios so that I don't have to worry about whether the configuration sector team is doing it right or wrong. That would be very helpful."
Contrast Security Assess is ranked 23rd in Static Application Security Testing (SAST) with 11 reviews while OWASP Zap is ranked 8th in Static Application Security Testing (SAST) with 37 reviews. Contrast Security Assess is rated 8.8, while OWASP Zap is rated 7.6. 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 OWASP Zap writes "Great for automating and testing and has tightened our security ". Contrast Security Assess is most compared with Veracode, Seeker, Fortify WebInspect, HCL AppScan and Qualys Web Application Scanning, whereas OWASP Zap is most compared with SonarQube, Acunetix, Qualys Web Application Scanning, Veracode and PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional. See our Contrast Security Assess vs. OWASP Zap report.
See our list of best Static Application Security Testing (SAST) vendors.
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