DEVOPSdigest

Contrast Security announced the release of Contrast Scan that revolutionizes static application security testing (SAST) with pipeline-native static analysis to analyze code and detect vulnerabilities early on in the software development life cycle (SDLC).

The release of Contrast Scan extends the DevSecOps capabilities of the Contrast Application Security Platform to the entire SDLC, empowering security teams to run scans up to 10x faster and remediate vulnerabilities up to 45x faster while meeting compliance requirements of an organization's security policy.

Incumbent legacy static approaches employ noisy rule sets to look for code quality issues. This outside-in approach generates immense volumes of security findings that become increasingly more time- and resource-intensive to manage. This is exacerbated due to the number of distracting false-positive alerts that kill productivity—upwards of 85% in many instances. For newer developer-friendly code scanning tools, application security shifts left too far, exacerbating the problem of false positives and leaving developers with no context on prioritization or how-to-fix guidance.

Contrast Scan aims to solve these challenges with a pipeline-native approach that achieves dramatic improvements in speed, accuracy, and developer experience, accelerating digital transformation by removing inefficiencies and roadblocks that slow release cycles. Onboarding with Contrast Scan is quick and easy—requiring zero configuration and literally three clicks to get findings. Further, as Contrast Scan is integrated as part of the Contrast Application Security Platform, organizations have a unified, developer-friendly view of vulnerabilities and attacks with harmonized security profiles across SAST, interactive application security testing (IAST), runtime protection and observability, and software composition analysis (SCA), all in one DevSecOps platform.

Key benefits of Contrast Scan include:

- Results that matter delivered 10x faster. A demand-driven algorithm powers the static analysis engine in Contrast Scan, enabling teams to pinpoint exploitable vulnerabilities while ignoring those that pose no risk. As a result, based on real-world scan results, Contrast Scan can shrink the amount of time to run scans by 10x. Faster scans remove DevOps security roadblocks that slow innovation, improve the efficiencies of security and development teams, and reduce the operating expenses (OpEx) of scanning.

- 45x faster remediation times. When used in concert with the broader set of capabilities in the Contrast platform, Contrast Scan accelerates remediation times by 45x. This is achieved by enabling developers to focus on exploitable flows, prioritize routes with entry points based on runtime and production traffic analysis, and leverage actionable remediation guidance. All of this pays down security debt, which results in reduced application security risks.

- 30% improvement in application security efficiencies. By integrating pipeline-native static analysis security testing into the Contrast Application Security Platform, application security teams can improve scan, triage, and remediation efficiencies by up to 30%. Contrast's comprehensive DevSecOps approach bakes security into rapid-release cycles that are typical of modern application development and deployment environments. It also offers complete coverage of the DevSecOps life cycle with application tools optimized from build to production. This streamlines compliance reporting—often shrinking the time to demonstrate security policy compliance from days to minutes.

Today's organizations should not be forced to choose between speed and security. With the addition of Contrast Scan, the Contrast Application Security Platform now offers a path to DevSecOps that allows organizations to secure any application anywhere—from a developer's desktop, at a release gate, or in instances of production. The Contrast platform was purpose-built to deliver true DevSecOps with SCA, application security testing (AST), and exploit prevention capabilities using instrumentation across the entire SDLC.

"Contrast Scan is a game changer for both application security and application development teams," said Steve Wilson, CPO at Contrast Security. "It allows teams to get unprecedented observability into their applications' threat landscape early in the development life cycle—without all the noise of traditional static scanning tools. This means organizations' applications will remain more secure while enabling them to maintain the agility of their development teams."