We performed a comparison between Acunetix and Contrast Security Assess 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 vulnerability scanning option for analyzing the security loopholes on the websites is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"The most valuable feature of Acunetix is the UI and the scan results are simple."
"The automated approach to these repetitive discovery attempts would take days to do manually and therefore it helps reduce the time needed to do an assessment."
"Overall, it's a very good tool and a very good engine."
"There is a lot of documentation on their website which makes setting it up and using it quite simple."
"We are able to create a report which shows the PCI DSS scoring and share it with the application teams. Then, they can correlate and see exactly what they need to fix, and why."
"Acunetix is the best service in the world. It is easy to manage. It gives a lot of information to the users to see and identify problems in their site or applications. It works very well."
"One of the features that I feel is groundbreaking, that I would like to see expanded on, is the IAS feature: The Interactive Application Security Testing module that gets loaded onto an application on a server, for more in-depth, granular findings. I think that is really neat. I haven't seen a lot of competitors doing that."
"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."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"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."
"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."
"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and 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."
"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."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the way the licensing model is currently is not very convenient for us because initially, when we bought it, the licensing model was very flexible, but now it restricts us."
"There's a clear need for a reduction in pricing to make the service more accessible."
"While we do have it integrated with other solutions, it could still offer more integrations."
"You can't actually change your password after you've set it unless you go back into the administration account and you change it there. Thus, if you're locked out and don't remember your password, that's a thing."
"We have had issues during upgrades where their scans worked on some apps better with previous versions. Then, we had to work with their tech support, who were great, to get it fixed for the next version."
"It would be nice to have a feature to "retest" only a single vulnerability that the customer reports as patched, and delete it from the next scans since it has already been patched."
"The vulnerability identification speed should be improved."
"Acunetix needs to include agent analysis."
"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 would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
Acunetix is ranked 16th in Application Security Tools with 26 reviews while Contrast Security Assess is ranked 30th in Application Security Tools with 11 reviews. Acunetix is rated 7.6, while Contrast Security Assess is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Acunetix writes "Fantastic reporting features hindered by slow scanning ". On the other hand, 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". Acunetix is most compared with OWASP Zap, Tenable.io Web Application Scanning, PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional, HCL AppScan and Fortify WebInspect, whereas Contrast Security Assess is most compared with Veracode, Seeker, Fortify WebInspect, Checkmarx One and HCL AppScan. See our Acunetix vs. Contrast Security Assess report.
See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors and best Application Security Testing (AST) vendors.
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