- A deal with depth somewhat than breadth: It makes use of high-confidence, focused guidelines to determine vulnerabilities.
- It’s managed by improvement groups: The event crew addresses points as a part of their common workflow.
- Prevents new vulnerabilities: It stops particular courses of vulnerabilities from coming into the code base throughout improvement.
- Requires second-generation SAST instruments: To be efficient, the device must be quick and focused in order that it might function on each commit and each pull request shortly and in a approach that limits the eye a developer must pay to it.
No matter whether or not you select a contemporary or conventional SAST, there’s one other consideration… to bundle or to not bundle. SAST distributors generally bundle different software safety testing (AST) instruments together with software program composition evaluation (SCA), container scanning, and secret detection. For distributors, this is smart — why promote you one factor if they will promote two, three, or extra. However does it make sense for you?
Most often, bundling can be good for shoppers. However let’s transcend the apparent (it may be cheaper). Bundling SAST with different ASTs may be massively useful for productiveness — assuming you have got comparable aims for all of your instruments (e.g., developer productiveness) — as a result of it might create a extra built-in and streamlined AppSec program. To determine if the bundle will prevent time, begin along with your technical necessities for every device. When you’ve narrowed down your listing, search for instruments that present a united interface for the AppSec crew that consolidates or de-duplicates findings. Not solely will that make your crew extra environment friendly, it might additionally aid you keep away from investing in instruments like software safety posture administration (ASPM) which are designed to consolidate alerts when your instruments don’t play properly collectively. Lastly, learn the way a lot effort it takes so as to add every AST. AppSec groups usually lack sturdy entry to CI, so most organizations will need a straightforward set up expertise the place they don’t have to put in every device individually. Ideally, this ought to be as non-disruptive as attainable to each the AppSec and improvement groups.
Bundling won’t be for you in case your technical necessities can’t be adequately met by a single vendor. For instance, you may want a standard SAST device however can’t deal with a loud SCA. It’s tempting to go along with a less expensive bundle however that may result in shelfware, so beware.
