In complex application development environments, Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools emerge as indispensable platforms to help safeguarding applications from potential security vulnerabilities from the development phase. By scrutinizing the application’s source code, byte code, and binaries, SAST tools can identify security weaknesses before they are exploited in the real world. This fosters a proactive security posture, ensuring your applications have security at their core.
SAST tools work by analyzing an application from its foundations, scrutinizing its codebase without the need to execute the application. In doing so, SAST tools can identify vulnerabilities that may be hard to spot without closely scrutinizing the system. Identifying errors and vulnerabilities on this level also makes the resolution process more efficient; developers know exactly where the issue is and the problems that they need to fix. This results in secure and resilient application structures, saving time and resources that, in the long run, might otherwise be spent in addressing security incidents.
In this guide, we list the top 10 SAST tools that can help secure your applications from the most fundamental level. For each solution, we’ll explain the products key features, as well as suggesting its ideal use case. Our analysis revolves around key aspects such as the range of vulnerabilities they can detect, ease of integration into existing development environments, support for various programming languages, and user feedback.
Appknox offers streamlined security solutions that proactively identify vulnerabilities in your mobile applications. The Appknox SAST platform allows you to pre-emptively address potential security threats, thereby ensuring that your software development life cycle (SDLC) is smooth and streamlined. The platform has a consolidated, user-friendly dashboard that simplifies the process of securing your Android or iOS mobile apps by allowing you to quickly upload their binaries and receive real-time feedback. This delivers comprehensive vulnerability details, highlighting potential business and compliance impacts. The solution also offers recommendations to resolve identified vulnerabilities and enhance regulatory compliance.
Appknox SAST is renowned for its ease of use, speed, and consistent reliability. The platform delivers over 140 test cases, including 50 dedicated to Static Application Security Testing (SAST). These tests assist in verifying your app’s compliance with legal regulations, as well as allowing you the flexibility to customize requirements according to your business needs. Appknox offers password-protected, exportable reports that allow you to access insights on the go. These reports empower you to understand vulnerabilities and collaborate with your team on necessary improvements.
Checkmarx Static Application Security Testing (SAST) offers application security testing by scanning source code to uncover potential vulnerabilities. The platform is aimed at identifying security issues early in the software development life cycle. In practice, this means that Checkmarx SAST allows for scanning without the need to first build the code. It is compatible with a variety of programming languages and frameworks, eliminating the need for special configurations. In addition to this, Checkmarx SAST integrates smoothly with many mainstream development tools such as IDEs, source code management platforms, and CI servers.
Notably, Checkmarx SAST’s advanced automation features effectively align with common development and application release tools. This streamlines the scanning process and can automatically enforce security policies across the development lifecycle. The tool also assists in prioritizing and remedying vulnerabilities by categorizing them based on their severity. It will then provide remediation guidance and can identify the best location in the code for fixes. These features ensure that developers can address the most pressing security concerns efficiently, aiding in faster and less faulty software releases.
Contrast Scan, by Contrast Security, is a static code analysis tool that is tailored for modern development pipelines. It delivers swift, yet precise, security testing, giving you clear insights into the status of your software. This tool seamlessly integrates with common development processes and offers a versatile range of deployment methods, such as command-line interfaces, build automation tools, API calls, as well as secure code uploads.
By using a unique risk-based scanning algorithm, Contrast Scan can focus on vulnerabilities that are genuinely exploitable. This approach ensures that teams can concentrate on high-priority vulnerabilities, while discarding irrelevant data. One of the benefits of this is that scan durations can be reduced by up to 15x in comparison to other tools. During this process, developers receive specific remediation guidance, highlighting the specific line of code that requires attention. This enables prompt and accurate corrections without extensive security training. Contrast Scan’s advanced algorithm and security rules ensure that results are concentrated on genuinely actionable vulnerabilities, significantly reducing the distractions of false positives.
Fortify Static Code Analyzer (SCA) is a cybersecurity tool designed to identify and address security vulnerabilities within source code. SCA begins by converting source code files into an intermediate format that is optimized for security analysis. This structure is then analyzed for security vulnerabilities using the product’s extensive set of secure coding rules. The tool cross-references an expansive database of secure code rules and policies with a codebase scan to highlight potential security risks. Using a range of advanced algorithms, the analyzer inspects every feasible execution and data path to pinpoint and remedy vulnerabilities.
Fortify SCA is integrated with Fortify Software Security Center (SSC); this is a centralized management tool that provides organizations with a holistic view of their application security status. SSC helps businesses manage, review, prioritize, and track software security testing activities across their portfolio. Fortify SCA also seamlessly aligns and integrates with various tools including platforms like Jira and GitHub, as well as CI/CD tools such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps. The solution supports over 27 programming languages as well as providing flexible deployment options (on-premises, cloud-based, and SaaS). The platform’s Audit Assistant uses ML to streamline and enhance vulnerability assessments. This reduces the time and effort required for manual audits.
GitLab offers an in-context testing solution that is designed to simplify the development process. With an automated pipeline triggered by every change, GitLab streamlines testing procedures, making life easier for developers, resulting in more secure applications. This comprehensive platform covers a range of development areas including code, performance, load, and security testing. GitLab’s platform is security compliant; this is achieved through integrating scanning and compliance pipelines into a unified interface. This imbeds visibility and control at the heart of the solution. The platform also offers approvals, audit reports, and traceability to simplify policy compliance.
The platform presents a single platform to automate both application and infrastructure management. This approach minimizes license costs and learning curves, as well as leveraging DevSecOps best practices for infrastructure. SAST capabilities are used to assess source code for known vulnerabilities. The results of these tests are integrated into merge requests, approval workflows, and the security dashboard. Advanced vulnerability tracking algorithms help identify and manage vulnerabilities effectively. GitHub’s solution offers a comprehensive suite of features aimed at streamlining development processes, ensuring security, and monitoring compliance, as well as facilitating scalability across diverse cloud environments. It is an effective tool for businesses looking to optimize their DevSecOps practices.
HCL AppScan CodeSweep is a SAST tool tailored for both novices and experts, with on-the-fly security testing, automated fix capabilities, and support for over 30 languages and frameworks. It is adept at detecting a range of security vulnerabilities, spanning from web to mobile and open-source domains. The platform employs an array of industry-leading technologies that aid in resolving software vulnerabilities prior to application deployment. It offers seamless compatibility with integrated development environments (IDEs) and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. The tool also delivers efficient and precise static analysis, with features like intelligent finding analytics; this dramatically reduces false positive rates, whilst providing intelligent code analytics.
The platform delivers various testing technologies, including static, dynamic, interactive, and open-source application security testing. It also leverages machine learning to enhance scan accuracy and reduce false positives, whilst providing a suite of tools to give coverage for web, mobile, and open-source applications. Features like container scanning and software composition analysis provide a robust approach to cloud security. The platform aids in mitigating risks associated with open-source components by continuously scanning for vulnerabilities.
Snyk is a developer-centric security tool designed to integrate seamlessly with existing workflows. The platform focuses on comprehensive code security. It combines data from public sources, the developer community, proprietary research, and ML, along with human-in-the-loop AI, that enables developers to quickly identify and rectify vulnerabilities in apps. Snyk offers coverage for the entire code base; this includes proprietary code, open-source packages, containers, and cloud infrastructure. Developers also benefit from advice on fixing code, ensuring both speed and security during product development.
The tool ensures that security practices are maintained without disrupting ongoing work. It is compatible with many popular languages, Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) tools. Furthermore, Snyk’s knowledge base continually updates via its ML engine (this reviews millions of open-source libraries). The platform provides developers with immediate suggestions on how to improve and secure code development, courtesy of Snyk’s proprietary engine. The solution places emphasis on in-workflow security, allowing developers to detect issues early in the development process, and integrates vulnerability scans into the build phase.
Sonar offers Static Application Security Testing (SAST) capabilities that allow businesses to detect and address security vulnerabilities at the application code level. Sonar is particularly focused on issues arising from interactions with third-party open-source libraries. This expanded coverage is achieved through tracing data flow both within and outside libraries, thereby aiding in identifying vulnerabilities that might otherwise be overlooked. Sonar is effectively integrated into the DevSecOps pipeline, ensuring timely detection and remediation of code quality and security concerns. It also delivers comprehensive reports, spanning standards such as OWASP Top 10 and PCI DSS. This allows teams to maintain a clear view of their application’s security posture.
Sonar’s deeper SAST technology covers analysis of third-party libraries and dependencies in languages like Java, C#, and JavaScript/TypeScript. It also caters to a wide array of popular open-source libraries, taking their subsequent dependencies into account too. Machine Learning is employed for optimization, ensuring efficient and precise code analysis. Sonar facilitates an accelerated secure development process by allowing SAST to be conducted earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). This means that vulnerabilities can be spotted and rectified sooner, reducing the risk of potential security breaches.
Coverity is a static analysis tool designed for developers and security teams to ensure the security and quality of applications. This tool constructs an in-depth model of each application, offering insights into its dependencies, compilers, dataflow, and control flow paths. It provides extensive coverage of security and industry standards, encompassing areas like OWASP Top 10, MISRA, and CERT Java. Reports generated by Coverity can be downloaded as PDFs; this is important during the auditing and compliance processes. The tool also comes with features including easy onboarding, streamlined integrations, real-time defect identification, actionable remediation guidance, and detailed reporting.
Thanks to its familiarity with over 20 programming languages and 200 frameworks, Coverity can differentiate between false positives and actual issues. The platform deploys scans early in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to detect security and quality issues promptly. These scans run in real-time within the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and can be triggered on pull requests. Coverity’s accurate scan results mean that developers can focus on genuine defects, rather than being side tracked by false positives. The tool is notable for its enterprise-scale scanning, extensibility, and deployment flexibility, whether on-premises or in a private cloud.
Veracode offers the ability to scan over 100 languages and frameworks both quickly and accurately. Developers can find and rectify vulnerabilities efficiently through utilizing real-time feedback. Additionally, the system can decrease flaws in new code by up to 60% through integrated development environment (IDE) scans. The platform also delivers a low false-positive rate, meaning that developers can focus on resolving actual issues.
The Veracode platform integrates seamlessly with over 40 developer tools, ensuring that security can be integrated into a wide range of IDEs and other software suites. The system also provides comprehensive reporting and analytics, enabling businesses to assess the security status of all their applications from a single, centralized location. This is all underpinned by a scalable cloud architecture, ensuring that as a business grows, the security solution can grow simultaneously, without compromising speed or efficiency.
Everything You Need To Know About Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools (FAQs)
What is Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools?
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools are used to anlyze applications at the code level to identify and flaws or vulnerabilities that could be exploited once the software is in use. This type of analysis is very effective and accurate because it happens on the most basic, fundamental level: the coding. Any problems further down the line can be traced back to the code. It makes sense, then, to fully analyse the code to identify any weaknesses.
Implementing a SAST tool within the development process brings several benefits:
- Early Detection of Vulnerabilities – Spotting security weaknesses early on, reducing the cost and complexity of fixing issues at later stages.
- Compliance Adherence – Helping organizations meet necessary security compliance standards by ensuring code is written to meet security best practices.
- Enhanced Security Posture – Cultivating a security-conscious development environment, which is integral in building robust and secure applications.
- Integration with DevOps – Seamlessly integrating with DevOps processes to incorporate security checks within the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline.
How Do Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools Work?
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools are used to assess the codebase of applications in development. A SAST tool will read and analyze every single line of code, cross referencing it with a database of known errors or vulnerabilities. If any sections of code match these known errors, the section will be highlighted, and relevant users can be alerted.
By going through each line of code in this way SAST tools are able to reduce the likelihood of attackers being able to exploit any vulnerabilities. Common attacks, according to OWASP, include SQL injections, server-side injections, and command injections. This class of attack is when an attacker’s code is inserted into the heart of a software. From here, attackers have a sort of “back door” into the application, putting users at risk.
What Features Should You Look For In Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools?
Selecting the right choice of SAST tool can be a critical decision; if you select an appropriate and effective tool, you can vastly reduce the risk of attack further down the line. Different SAST tools offer varying degrees of depth in analysis, support for programming languages, and integration capabilities with other development tools. In this section, we will consider the key features that you should look for when choosing a SAST solution.
- Integration – Without efficient and reliable integration, your SAST tool will be limited in its capabilities. It should readily integrate with your application development workflow, allowing it to scan and monitor code throughout its journey.
- Comprehensive Database – Your solution should be linked to a large, and expanding, database of known threats and vulnerabilities. This will allow it to detect a broad range of threats, thereby ensuring your code is secure and robust.
- Appropriate Notifications – When errors, misconfigurations, or vulnerabilities are detected, your solution should notify relevant users, ensuring that they understand the findings and can respond to them.
- Remediation – While traditional SAST tools would focus on identification of vulnerabilities, newer solutions will provide training materials and actionable intelligence, explaining how best to resolve an issue.
- Low False positive Rate – As SAST solutions go through every single line of code, they tend to pick up errors that do not pose a direct security risk. Good SAST solutions will consider the impact and relevance of a misconfiguration, before alerting admins. This allows them to focus on genuine threats, rather than being sidelined by false positives.
- OWASP Top 10 – The OWASP Top 10 acts as a directory that indexes the most common and most critical security risks to web applications. Your SAST solution should be designed around this framework, ensuring that it is optimized to identify this broad range of threats.
