The rapid evolution of cyber threats and security breaches targeting critical web applications has propelled Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) into the spotlight. As organizations embrace digital transformation, the need for continuous security validation of business-critical software has become pivotal.
This comprehensive buyer‘s guide will arm you with expert insights on navigating the DAST marketplace in 2024 – from understanding key capabilities to selecting the right solution for your needs.
What is DAST and Why Does it Matter?
DAST tools assess a web application or API‘s security posture while it‘s running, typically from an end user‘s perspective. DAST solutions simulate malicious attacks to detect vulnerabilities like SQL injections, cross-site scripting, insecure configurations, and more.
Unlike static testing, DAST validates applications in a live production-like state, providing insight into real-world exposure. And without needing access to source code, it‘s well-suited for testing third party software as-is.
For these reasons, DAST has become the cornerstone of AppSec programs across industries – complementing SAST, SCA, and manual pen testing within a defense-in-depth security strategy.
Continuous DAST testing is no longer optional for security-conscious enterprises operating critical web apps and APIs – the risk of exploits is far too high.
How DAST Tools Work
DAST tools typically work by interacting with web apps much like an end user would, while employing sophisticated automation under the hood. Here‘s a high-level overview:
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Mapping the Attack Surface: DAST starts by spidering the app to discover all pages/inputs, gathering details like technologies used, entry points, and data flows.
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Attacking & Detecting: With knowledge gathered in the previous step, DAST tools run a series of exploits tailored to vulnerabilities associated with those technologies and configurations.
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Analyzing & Prioritizing: The results are then analyzed using advanced correlation engines to eliminate false positives, ranking vulnerabilities by severity and business risk.
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Reporting & Integrations: Findings are output to reports, notifications, tickets, and fed into workflows like bug trackers, SIEMs, WAFs, and DevOps pipelines.
Leading DAST solutions augment this core approach with advanced capabilities:
- Integrating multiple forms of appsec testing for broad, accurate coverage.
- Tightly integrating with CI/CD tooling for seamless automation.
- Providing contextual guidance to development teams for faster remediation.
- Employing AI and analytics for more targeted, intelligent testing and alerting.
Key Capabilities of DAST Solutions
With the DAST landscape evolving at a rapid pace, it‘s important to understand the spectrum of capabilities available when evaluating solutions:
Coverage
- APIs and Web Services: Assessing REST, SOAP, and GraphQL APIs.
- Mobile Apps: Testing iOS and Android mobile applications.
- Client-Side App Logic: Crawling and testing complex single page apps (SPAs).
- Authentication: Properly handling forms, JWTs, SSO, and 2FA.
- Technologies: Support for latest frameworks like React, Angular, Spring Boot, .NET Core.
Functionality
- Authentication & Business Logic Attacks: Testing application design flaws.
- Manual Testing: Complementing automation with manual test scripting.
- False Positive Remediation: Tuning tools to reduce noisy alerts.
- CI/CD Integrations: Plugins for automated scanning in pipelines.
- WAF & CDN Integration: Sync findings with protective measures.
Reporting & Analysis
- Dashboards: Intuitive reporting with vulnerability trends and metrics.
- Integrations: Feeding findings into notification channels, tickets, SIEMs.
- Guidance: Providing actionable remediation advice tailored for developers.
- Risk Scoring: Considering exploitability and business context to prioritize.
Deployment & Scaling
- On-Prem Scanning Infrastructure: Enterprise hardened scanners installed locally.
- Cloud Hosted: Fully SaaS-based delivery removing infrastructure hurdles.
- Scalability: Handling large apps, many concurrent scans, and high throughputs.
Today‘s DAST leaders exceed minimum capabilities – they‘ve invested heavily in accuracy, scalability, actionability of findings, and ease of use. They tackle authentication, dispatch huge combination of test cases in parallel, seamlessly integrate everywhere, and provide highly tuned guidance.
These innovations separate adequate point solutions from transformational DAST capabilities that enterprises demand.
Reviews of the Top 7 DAST Tools
With the DAST landscape changing rapidly, I‘ve distilled down the top vendors to focus on based on market traction, capabilities, and user sentiment across the community.
Here‘s an overview of how the market leaders stack up, along with key details on their specialties.
Invicti
Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 (54 reviews)
A longtime AppSec leader, Invicti offers an integrated DAST and IAST testing platform providing broad, accurate testing tailored to modern web application environments.
Use Cases: Mid-to-large enterprises scanning complex web apps, APIs, and mobile apps. Tight integrations with CI/CD pipelines.
Notable Features
- Combines DAST and IAST techniques for comprehensive coverage of modern app architectures.
- Highly accurate findings with low false positives via advanced correlation engine.
- Enterprise-scale on-prem or cloud-based deployments.
- Developer-centric integrations and remediation guidance.
Burp Suite
Rating: 4.8/5 on G2 (112 reviews)
The long-favored open source DAST tool for hands-on security professionals. Burp empowers detailed manual testing to complement its solid automation capabilities.
Use Cases: Highly technical security teams and consultants performing lots of manual testing, though automatic scanning is capable too.
Notable Features
- Powerful manual testing features like an interception proxy.
- Broad vulnerability coverage targeted at skilled pen testers.
- Active open source community behind development.
- On-prem deployments with a commercial Pro version available.
NowSecure
Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 (27 reviews)
A mobile-centric DAST solution focused on securing the unique risks mobile applications create.
Use Cases: Mobile app dev teams needing to secure iOS, Android, hybrid, and React Native apps.
Notable Features
- Specialized security testing coverage for mobile app issues.
- High automation rates reducing reliance on manual testing.
- Integrates mobile app testing into CI pipelines.
- Includes network simulation and behavioral analysis capabilities.
Indusface WAS
Rating: 4.5/5 on G2 (50 reviews)
An application security suite anchored by the Indusface DAST engine combined with Web Application Firewall (WAF) capabilities.
Use Cases: Organizations wanting hybrid DAST and WAF protection backed by managed security services.
Notable Features
- Tightly integrates DAST findings into automated virtual patching policies.
- Cloud-delivered DAST and WAF reduces infrastructure demands.
- Detailed compliance reporting like PCI, ISO27001.
- Global threat intelligence feeds power enhanced detections.
Contrast Assess
Rating: 4.5/5 on G2 (49 reviews)
An IAST solution from Contrast Security providing in-app visibility that other testing methods lack – though more focused on QA than pen testing.
Use Cases: Development teams looking for detailed vulnerability guidance and QA testing.
Notable Features
- Powerful analysis of app architecture, data flows, libraries.
- Exceptionally detailed and actionable findings tailored for devs.
- Embedded agents provide internal app visibility.
- Integration in SDLC and IDEs using Assess.
Checkmarx
Rating: 4.2/5 on G2 (33 reviews)
An AST solution that combines SAST, DAST, IAST and software composition analysis (SCA) techniques for comprehensive AppSec testing, recently acquired by Hellman & Friedman LLC at a $1.15 billion valuation.
Use Cases: Large or complex development environments wanting to consolidate AppSec testing tools and vendors.
Notable Features
- Unified SAST, DAST, IAST and SCA testing capabilities.
- CI/CD integration and developer remediation focus.
- Broad language and framework support.
- Clear interactive reports tailored for multiple stakeholders.
HCL AppScan
Rating: 4.1/5 on G2 (49 reviews)
A longstanding brand in the application security testing market with capabilities spanning SAST, DAST, and IAST testing. Offers on-prem, cloud-hosted, and hybrid deployment options.
Use Cases: Heavily regulated large enterprises like financial services and healthcare with significant legacy web apps. Custom plugin development for specialized testing.
Notable Features
- On-prem supported like mainframes enable large complex environments.
- Deep regulatory compliance reporting and standards support.
- Enterprise-focused support like role-based access control (RBAC).
- Highly customizable via Extension Studio and CLI for advanced users.
This overview shows distinct use cases emerging among the various DAST solutions – though considerable overlap exists between full-featured offerings like Invicti, Checkmarx, and HCL.
Other growing players like Qualys WAS and Rapid7 AppSpider warrant evaluation for your specific needs as well.
When and How Often to Run DAST Tests
To maximize value from DAST testing, it‘s important to employ it at critical milestones:
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During development: Integrating DAST API scanning early in the SDLC enables identifying and remediating issues efficiently.
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Release candidate validation: Scan release candidates before deployment to avoid disruptions post-release.
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Continuously: Running scans on a regular cadence via CI/CD integration provides ongoing production monitoring.
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After changes: Significant application or infrastructure changes warrant on-demand scans to detect risks introduced.
Leaning heavily on automation and integrations reduces the marginal effort of more frequent testing. Scheduling weekly or daily recurring scans is sound hygiene for business critical apps.
For less critical apps, a monthly testing regimen strikes a practical balance. But any longer than 30 days leaves undetected risks lingering.
Limitations of DAST Tools
While offering immense value, DAST solutions aren‘t a silver bullet. Common limitations to consider:
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Blindspots: Pure blackbox DAST testing inherently can‘t analyze what it can‘t reach. Certain vulnerabilities will fly under the radar.
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False Positives: Imperfect attack simulations and underlying app complexity occasionally generate misleading or inaccurate alerts requiring investigation.
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Resource Intensity: Large scale scanning demands considerable computing resources, and extensive concurrent scans can burden targets.
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Ci/CD Friction: Developing appropriate scripts and configurations takes time when embedding in pipelines.
These limitations underscore why DAST works best alongside other AppSec testing like SAST, SCA, and manual reviews by DAST experts.
You can also leverage IAST techniques like Contrast Assess do to illuminate blindspots, and select solutions like Invicti providing guided remediation intelligence to save time on false positives.
The Future of DAST Tools
Given its immense value validating the real-world security posture of deployed software, DAST will continue gaining prominence within AppSec programs in 2024 and beyond.
Here are key trends to watch:
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DAST Convergence Across Vendors: Standalone DAST solutions will become less common as vendors expand or acquire to provide integrated SAST/DAST/IAST capabilities.
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Everything Shifts Left: Testing earlier via pipelines integrations enables earlier fixing – driving further automation and CI/CD convergence.
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DAST Gets Smarter: Leveraging AI, ML, behavioral analysis and global threat intelligence makes scanning faster, more targeted, and higher assurance.
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DAST Complements WAFs: Policy syncing helps WAFs virtually patch risks DAST tools uncover that dev teams can‘t easily fix in code.
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DAST for APIs Accelerates: REST API consumption growth drives demand for more API scanning automation. GraphQL and gRPC support expands.
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Mobile DAST Matures: Automated iOS and Android testing coverage and assurances improve to meet mobile app dev demands.
The net effect of these innovations will be delivering application security testing "as code" like other phases of software delivery have achieved. DAST‘s value prop for enterprises will continue growing as solutions facilitate use earlier, with greater accuracy, and lower effort via automation.
Selecting Your Optimal DAST Solution
With readiness to meet escalating AppSec testing needs varying greatly among enterprises, one size doesn‘t fit all when choosing DAST software.
Organizations maintaining smaller, less critical web apps may find open source DAST like Burp or OWASP ZAP sufficient – valuing hands-on evaluators over enterprise scale automation.
Mid-market companies with growing AppSec testing needs likely want intelligent automation, integrations, and guidance balancing cost, risk and in-house skills. Invicti, NowSecure or Checkmarx offerings often strike this balance well.
Heavily regulated, complex development environments demand depth of assurance, real-time visibility, and trusted vendors. HCL AppScan‘s on-prem support and Contrast‘s IAST shine here.
Fast-moving organizations aggressively transforming software delivery need API testing scaling easily, pipeline frictionlessness, and background automation to enable velocity. Invicti leads this advanced CI/CD use case.
Getting hands-on experience via free trials allows evaluating your team‘s needs and preferences more meaningfully than any high-level analysis. Leverage product demos, sandbox environments, and pilots for data-driven decisions aligning capabilities, complexity and costs with business criticality.
The Bottom Line on Selecting DAST Tools
With software serving as the chief advantage and attack vector for modern enterprises simultaneously, securing web applications and APIs with modern DAST solutions has become an essential capability.
Hopefully this comprehensive buyer‘s guide has illuminated specialized use cases and key features differentiating solutions. More importantly, it‘s shone a light on tablestakes expectations and emerging innovations to evaluate your program‘s needs against.
By instrumenting production-facing software with cutting edge DAST protections – while complementing with layered defenses – your organization can confidently digitize operations knowing risks are vigilantly assessed in an ever-evolving threat landscape.