About Contrast Security

Contrast neither scans nor attacks applications, but uses patented state-of-the-art deep security instrumentation technology to combine the most effective elements of static and dynamic testing, software composition and configuration analysis technologies, and deliver them directly into applications. As you can see on the following picture, Contrast instruments not just the custom code but other elements of the application as well providing far better coverage as compared with other application security solutions.

Contrast differentiators

As we discussed, Contrast Security is unique in the way how it identifies vulnerabilities. Now let’s take a look at some of the benefits of this approach.

Highest Accuracy

Instrumentation allows Contrast Security to report the vulnerabilities from the inside of applications which produces highly accurate results without dependence on security experts. In addition, Contrast Security combines the most effective elements of Interactive (IAST), Static (SAST), and Dynamic (DAST) application security testing technologies, software composition analysis (SCA), as well as configuration analysis, all integrated within the application stack. This combination of techniques produces the telemetry necessary to detect vulnerabilities with virtually no false positives and no false negatives for a large number of vulnerability classes.

Scalable Architecture

Contrast Assess scales because it adds application security instrumentation into each application, delivering and distributing vulnerability assessment and protection across an entire application portfolio. Every running application continuously produces results in parallel. Contrast differs from legacy approaches that require application security experts – a human element that does not scale. Even with hundreds or thousands of applications, Contrast Assess provides an always up-to-date dashboard for each application with vulnerability, library, architecture, and other security details.

Contrast is ideal for DevSecOps

Unlike legacy approaches that require time-consuming, late-stage scans that disrupt the development process, there is no separate security testing phase with Contrast Assess. Contrast Assess uses its deep security instrumentation to produce a continuous stream of accurate vulnerability analysis whenever and wherever software is run.

Development, QA, DevOps, and security teams get results as they develop and test software, enabling them to find and fix security flaws early in the software lifecycle, when they are easiest and cheapest to remediate.

Production operations and security teams can leverage the same instrumentation capabilities provided by contrast to monitor for and block against attacks occurring against their application layer.

Contrast Security enables DevOps teams to deliver security-as-code by:

  • Empowering developers to embed security as early as possible in the cycle
  • Providing continuous vulnerability assessment throughout SDLC (see the following picture)
  • Automating security into the pipeline
  • Monitoring attacks the way you monitor performance

How is Contrast Assess Different than SAST?

Traditional SAST solutions attempt to build a model of an application and pseudo-execute it from known entry points – but SAST is blind to how all the pieces of an application work together and operate at runtime, and can generate extensive false negatives and false positives.

Contrast Assess observes real data and control flow activity from within a running application, and identifies a much broader range of vulnerabilities – with greater accuracy – than traditional SAST solutions. Contrast Assess is fully distributed and infuses each application with a “self-assessment” capability that performs analysis continuously, in parallel, across an entire portfolio of applications. SAST solutions cannot operate in a distributed manner because they rely on experts to analyze and triage results, which creates a significant bottleneck.

How is Contrast Assess Different than DAST?

Traditional DAST tools try to exploit the running application with attacks, and detect vulnerabilities by analyzing HTTP responses – but DAST is blind to what occurs within the application, and provides only limited coverage of an application. These tools are very limited when it comes to APIs, where a crawlable UI is not available.

Contrast Assess performs a complete static analysis of all the code, as described above, and analyzes HTTP traffic and HTTP responses from inside the application. Because this occurs from within the application, it also provides more accurate analysis than traditional Penetration (Pen) Testing tools. And, unlike either SAST or DAST products, Contrast Assess uses techniques found in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools to build an inventory of all the libraries and frameworks used by the application to identify vulnerabilities across all those components as well.