We performed a comparison between GitLab and Contrast Security Assess based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison results: Based on the parameters we compared, GitLab comes out ahead of Contrast Security Assess. While both solutions’ core features have been rated favorably by their users, Contrast Security Assess’s potentially complex deployment and licensing plan leave room for improvement.
"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."
"It is a stable solution...Contrast Security Assess is one of the first players in this market, so they have experience and customers, especially abroad. Overall, it's a good product."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The dashboard and interface make it easy to use."
"The code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."
"The most important features of GitLab for us are issue management and all the CI/CD tools. Another aspect that I love about GitLab is the UI."
"GitLab is a solution for source code management, container registry, pipelines, testing, and deployment."
"It is scalable."
"GitLab is very well-organized and easy to use. Also, it offers most features that customers need."
"We have seen a couple of merge requests or pull requests raised in GitLab. I see the interface, the way it shows the difference between the two source codes, that it is easy for anyone to do the review and then accept the request; the pull request is the valuable feature."
"I like that it's easy to deploy our services over GitLab. The customer support is also good with a really active community. You have a lot of support that you can get online with your stack. That is probably one of the benefits of using GitLab. It's also really fast."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It's more related to the supporting layer of features, such as issue management and issue tracking. We tend to always use, for example, Jira next to it. That doesn't mean that GitLab should build something similar to Jira because that will always have its place, but they could grow a bit in those kinds of supporting features. I see some, for example, covering ITSM on a DevOps team level, and that's one of the things that I and my current client would find really helpful. It's understandably not going to be their main focus and their core, and whenever you are with a company that needs a bit more advanced features on that specific topic, you're probably still going to integrate with another tool like Jira Service Management, for example. However, some basic features on things like that could be really helpful."
"I believe there's room for improvement in the advanced features, particularly in enhancing the pipeline functionalities."
"GitLab's UI could be improved."
"There is a need to improve or adopt AI into the ecosystem like a co-pilot, which Microsoft has done with GitHub."
"The initial setup was quite challenging because it takes some time to understand how to pull out or push the code."
"I would like to see security increased in the future. A secure environment is very important."
"It could have more security integrations and the ability to check the vulnerability of the code. I don't think it is a responsibility of Gitlab, but it would be nice to have more options to integrate with."
"The integration could be slightly better."
Contrast Security Assess is ranked 30th in Application Security Tools with 11 reviews while GitLab is ranked 7th in Application Security Tools with 70 reviews. Contrast Security Assess is rated 8.8, while GitLab 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 GitLab writes "Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage". Contrast Security Assess is most compared with Veracode, Seeker, Fortify WebInspect and Checkmarx One, whereas GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline, SonarQube and Tekton. See our Contrast Security Assess vs. GitLab report.
See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors and best Application Security Testing (AST) vendors.
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