Web Application Security solutions are essential for protecting web applications, services, and data exchanges against threats and potential vulnerabilities. As web applications become more sophisticated and complex, the need for robust security solutions that are capable of addressing a broader range of security threats only increases. Web Application Security solutions help developers and IT teams identify, analyze, and remediate vulnerabilities within web applications, ensuring that online platforms are secure and comply with industry standards and regulations.
Web Application Security solutions include tools such as Web Application Firewalls (WAF), Security Assessment and Vulnerability Management, Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP), API Security solutions, and other cutting-edge tools and technologies that work together to protect modern web applications. These solutions employ various techniques, including static and dynamic code analysis, penetration testing, and behavioral monitoring to uncover vulnerabilities and provide real-time protection.
As businesses adopt digital transformation and rely heavily on online platforms, choosing the right Web Application Security solution is critical to maintaining security and improving customer trust. This guide will explore the top 10 Web Application Security solutions in the market today, examining their features and overall effectiveness based on our user experiences and industry feedback.
Acunetix by Invicti is a web application security testing tool designed to help small and mid-sized organizations enhance their online security and protect sensitive data. Acunetix enables its users to identify more than 7,000 potential vulnerabilities, including SQL Injections and Cross-site Scripting attacks. It also supports scanning of HTML5 and JavaScript Single Page Applications (SPAs), allowing for a thorough assessment of various website files—even those with custom authentication methods and session management.
Acunetix supports the export of discovered vulnerabilities to popular security tools (like web application firewalls), which can apply virtual patches to vulnerabilities in production. This feature provides users with the time necessary for a complete and careful remediation process. In addition to highlighting vulnerabilities, Acunetix offers actionable insights and recommendations that users can implement to correct the identified issues. The platform also facilitates the retesting of fixes and the compliance reporting for standards like PCI DSS, OWASP Top 10, ISO 27001, and HIPAA.
With seamless integration of popular issue trackers such as Atlassian Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Bugzilla, and Mantis, Acunetix ensures a comprehensive and efficient approach to web application security.
Checkmarx SAST is a static analysis solution that is designed to identify security vulnerabilities in custom code for development, DevOps, and security teams. This enterprise-grade solution scans source code early in the software development life cycle (SDLC), offering insights for vulnerability remediation. As a leading provider in the Enterprise AppSec space, Checkmarx’s unique cloud-native platform secures every phase of development, optimizing the DevSecTrust process.
With its ability to perform fast and accurate incremental or full scans, Checkmarx SAST provides flexibility, accuracy, integration, and coverage. The solution supports numerous programming languages and frameworks, without the need for specialized configurations. Moreover, Checkmarx SAST is compatible with a wide range of mainstream IDEs, source code management platforms, and CI servers, allowing for seamless integration with the tools developers are already using. Checkmarx SAST offers customizable queries to reduce false positives, categorizes detected vulnerabilities by severity level, and provides remediation guidance for efficient issue resolution.
Overall, Checkmarx SAST allows developers to identify and fix vulnerabilities within their codebases and open source components. The solution helps detect risks during functional testing and offers integrated, targeted AppSec training to support continuous enhancement of development teams’ security knowledge and practices.
Fortify, a software security vendor, was founded in California in 2003 and later became a subsidiary of OpenText in 2022. Fortify specializes in providing application security solutions to ensure the safety and reliability of applications throughout their lifecycle. The company offers a diverse range of security services tailored to different types of applications, including APIs, web apps, mobile apps, infrastructure as code, containers, and clients and embedded systems.
Fortify’s comprehensive Application Security Testing (AST) portfolio aims to provide fast and frictionless security without compromising on quality, covering all aspects of app development from cloud-native to modernization. Their extensive Fortify platform is a holistic and inclusive solution, designed to facilitate a smooth application security journey for businesses at all stages of growth. The platform comprises various components, such as Static Code Analyzer for automated static code analysis, WebInspect for dynamic testing of running applications, and software composition analysis for remediation, reporting, and analytics of open source and custom code.
Fortify also offers AppSec services, with a team of security experts on hand to assist clients in enhancing their application security processes and strategies. With Fortify, organizations can confidently build and maintain secure applications, protecting their digital assets and user experience.
HCL AppScan is a versatile application security testing platform used by organizations, ranging from startups to large enterprises, allowing them to secure their applications and maintain data safety. With a focus on helping developers, DevOps, and security teams, AppScan offers a suite of technologies to quickly identify and remediate application vulnerabilities throughout the software development lifecycle.
The platform provides multiple testing tools, including dynamic analysis (DAST) for testing applications and APIs while they’re running; static analysis (SAST) to examine source code for potential vulnerabilities; interactive analysis (IAST) for monitoring applications and APIs without hindering development; and software composition analysis (SCA) to detect vulnerabilities in open-source software components. HCL AppScan supports seamless integration with IDEs and CI/CD pipelines, enabling developers to write more secure code from the start. The platform offers customizable sliders to balance speed and accuracy and incremental scanning for examining only the newly added code, ensuring continuous security throughout the SDLC. With auto-fix capabilities and machine learning to reduce false positives, AppScan helps prioritize vulnerabilities for targeted remediation.
HCL AppScan delivers real-time visibility into security measures with centralized dashboards, aggregated scan results, and customizable lenses for risk posture and compliance.
Invicti Security offers a web application security scanner that delivers a comprehensive outlook on an organization’s web application portfolio. It incorporates powerful automation and integrations to achieve extensive coverage of numerous applications, making it an essential security tool for businesses with a large online presence.
The Invicti vulnerability scanner utilizes a Chrome-based crawling engine to access web applications, services, and APIs through HTTP or HTTPS. It can detect a wide range of web application vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), as well as critical and zero-day vulnerabilities. The scanner is more than just an automated website security tool; it also features built-in workflows, reporting capabilities, and seamless integration with issue tracking systems and SDLC, DevOps, and CI/CD environments. With Invicti’s web application security solution, businesses can automatically identify vulnerabilities in their web applications, web services, and web APIs, including those that use JavaScript and other client-side technologies.
Additionally, it provides valuable insight into the security state of all web applications, thanks to managerial and compliance reports for standards such as PCI DSS and OWASP Top 10. Overall, Invicti Security aids enterprises in building more secure web applications while saving time and resources.
PortSwigger Burp Suite is a comprehensive cybersecurity solution designed to help businesses of all sizes identify and address vulnerabilities in their applications. It can detect a wide range of security issues, from classic bugs to the latest vulnerabilities.
The platform is designed for easy deployment and simplicity, allowing users to perform dynamic scans across thousands of sites, manage scanning at scale, and set up sites individually using just a URL. Additionally, it offers intuitive dashboards for tracking trends over time, exporting scan reports to other tools, and generating reports for compliance standards. Integration with various CI/CD platforms, Jira, GitLab, Trello, and a rich GraphQL API enables businesses to seamlessly incorporate security within their software development processes. Features such as role-based access control (RBAC) and single sign-on (SSO) facilitate team management, while integration with issue tracking platforms like Jira encourages collaboration between developers and AppSec teams.
Users can leverage custom scan configurations and Burp extensions to hunt down complex bugs, while minimizing false positives. With support from a trusted cybersecurity research team and used by over 16,000 organizations worldwide, Burp Suite is a reliable solution for modern web security.
Snyk Website Security Scanner is a developer-focused tool designed to help secure website applications by scanning code and infrastructure for vulnerabilities. With its user-friendly interface, Snyk simplifies the process of identifying and addressing security issues in website code.
Snyk offers a range of features for securing websites, including proprietary code protection for popular web ecosystems such as JS, Python, and PHP. Additionally, it scans open-source dependencies through Snyk Open Source, helping identify and resolve vulnerabilities with ease. The platform also streamlines the process of vulnerability fixes, enabling users to apply required upgrades and patches via one-click pull requests. Powered by the Snyk Vulnerability Database, this website security scanner provides users with advanced security intelligence designed to help them handle open-source and container vulnerabilities efficiently.
By making it simple for developers to build secure applications, Snyk Website Security Scanner is a valuable asset for safeguarding website code and infrastructure.
SonarCloud is a leading code review solution that helps development teams maintain clean and efficient code seamlessly within cloud-based workflows. As a versatile tool that supports numerous languages, frameworks, and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) platforms, SonarCloud enables users to protect their software assets for various applications, including embedded, web, mobile apps, and cloud-native apps.
With native integration into popular DevOps platforms such as GitHub, Bitbucket Cloud, Azure DevOps, and GitLab, SonarCloud extends users’ CI/CD workflows by implementing automated code checks without requiring any extra configurations. The platform enforces a clear go/no-go Sonar Quality Gate, ensuring that only code meeting defined quality requirements is merged or deployed. Offering a super-fast analysis with actionable, highly precise results, SonarCloud provides instant feedback in the most relevant context, minimizing distractions and helping teams focus on resolving real issues rather than false positives. The platform promotes collaboration by employing shared, unified configurations to establish a consistent definition of code health across team members.
Additionally, SonarCloud integrates with the SonarLint extension that allows developers to detect code issues directly within their preferred IDEs. By synchronizing rules and analysis settings between SonarCloud and SonarLint, teams can work together effectively to maintain a single standard of clean code.
Synopsys WhiteHat Dynamic is a dynamic application security testing (DAST) solution that helps organizations efficiently identify security vulnerabilities in web applications. This cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering simplifies the implementation process and scales rapidly according to security testing requirements, making it suitable for businesses with large application portfolios.
With continuous scanning capabilities, WhiteHat Dynamic automatically tests new code changes as they are made, ensuring that the latest functionalities are secure without the need for a separate testing environment. The solution is designed to be production-safe, enabling safe scanning of live applications. By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and expert security analysis, this DAST tool minimizes false positives, reducing the time spent on vulnerability triage. WhiteHat Dynamic offers personalized remediation guidance from their team of application security experts, enabling developers to focus on fixing identified issues rather than wasting time on false positives.
The platform provides real-time data tracking and visibility into the overall security status of websites through the WhiteHat Security Index, a single score indicating the security health of web applications.
Veracode is a prominent application security provider that offers services and solutions that help safeguard the software used by businesses today. The Veracode Software Security Platform consistently uncovers flaws and vulnerabilities throughout the entire software development lifecycle, using advanced AI trained on a trusted dataset gained from analyzing trillions of lines of code, ensuring customers can quickly rectify flaws with high accuracy.
One of Veracode’s primary focuses is web application security, as these applications are frequently targeted in security breaches. Veracode offers a range of web application testing solutions to help development teams meet security standards, such as the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 list, which highlights the most critical security flaws to prioritize. Veracode Dynamic Analysis is a unified solution for discovering, securing, and monitoring all web applications, even those that may have been overlooked or forgotten. Veracode Static Analysis identifies and resolves application security flaws quickly, allowing developers to evaluate code in major frameworks and languages without requiring access to source code. Veracode Software Composition Analysis builds an inventory of third-party components and detects vulnerabilities in both open-source and commercial code.
Overall, Veracode equips organizations with the tools and solutions necessary to confidently develop, purchase, and assemble secure applications.
Everything You Need To Know About Web Application Security Solutions (FAQs)
What Are Web Application Security Solutions?
Web application security refers to the practice of protecting websites, applications, and APIs from the threat of attack. Ultimately, the goal of web application security is to protect businesses against cyber vandalism, unethical competition, data thefts, and other possible threats. With web applications being a core component of many businesses and often responsible for handing large volumes of sensitive data, it is crucial to take step to maintain security and prevent risky action like unauthorized access, data breaches, and other cyber threats. Web application security solutions help to identify, mitigate, and prevent security risks at various points in the application stack.
Web application security solutions are a vital component of a strong and comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. It is designed to support organizations of all sizes in safeguarding their online assets and maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of their important and sensitive information.
Why Should You Use A Web Application Security Solution?
Organizations should make use of web application security solutions to provide better protection for their web-based assets, data, and user information from a range of different cyber threats. Some particularly compelling reasons to consider implementing one of these tools include the following:
- Prevent and mitigate cyber-attacks to better secure the organization against data breaches
- Meet regulatory standards while also avoiding legal consequences and penalties
- Proactively secure web applications to avoid reputational damage and demonstrate a commitment to securing user information, which enhances the brand image
- Prevent service disruptions by blocking malicious traffic and attacks, which avoids disruptions to the web applications functionality
- Address both known vulnerabilities and new threats with regular patches and updates to effectively navigate a constantly evolving threat landscape that sees new attacks vectors and techniques emerging regularly
- Ensure better business continuity and less service disruptions with strong applications security
Web application security solutions are a highly useful tools that can contribute greatly to the development of a more comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. By providing protection against various cyber threats, these solutions support organizations in boosting their overall business resilience.
What Features Should You Look For In Web Application Security Solutions?
When evaluating a web application solution, it is useful to think about the features they offer and ensure that those features contribute to addressing today’s most common vulnerabilities and threats. Some core features to look for that contribute to reaching this goal include:
- Vulnerability Scanning and Assessment. A good web application security solution should automatically and consistently scan the web application for vulnerable points in the code, configurations, and infrastructure. This assessment of the web application includes identifying security weaknesses like misconfigurations, outdated software, and weak points that attackers could potentially exploit.
- Web Application Firewall. This feature provides a barrier of protection between the web applications and the internet by inspecting and filtering any incoming web traffic. This is a good way to avoid falling victim to common web application layer attacks – including SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and various other malicious actions – as it allows you to divert potential threats before they can reach the applications and cause harm.
- Access Controls and Authentication. By implementing robust authentication mechanisms and access controls, web application security solutions help organizations to effectively protect their sensitive data. This may include tools like MFA, secure password policies, and proper session management. With authentication and access controls in place, organizations are better equipped to block unauthorized access to critical areas of the web applications and can therefore keep it safer and reduce the risk of a data breach occurring.
- Encryption. A good web application security solution should implement encryption protocols to better secure the transmission of data between clients and the servers. Having strong encryption in place is a great way to protect sensitive information from eavesdropping or man-in-the-middle attacks. It also helps to maintain the integrity and confidentiality of communication within the organization. This helps to safeguard user data and block any unauthorized interception.
- Security Patching and Updating Regularly. This help to ensure that web applications and their dependencies are kept up to data with any and all known vulnerabilities. This keeps them more secure by closing possible security gaps. It should also include practices such as updating software, frameworks, and libraries.
- Analytics and Reporting. A good web application security solution should provide users with robust reporting and analytics capabilities to provide greater insights into metrics like spending, compliance, and supplier performance. Customizable reports and dashboards are useful as they help to support data driven decision making by assessing a security measure’s effectiveness, identify trends and, based on these insights, make decisions that can enhance the organizations overall security posture.
