The Best DAST Tools

The growing number of cyberattacks necessitates out-of-the-box approaches to protect your applications from malicious attacks. One such cybersecurity protection strategy is Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST). As a part of the Application Security (AppSec) category of tools, DAST helps developers create secure code and make security testing an essential part of the development process.

Here is our list of the best DAST tools:

1. SOOS A web app and API scanner that integrates into your build pipeline and presents the results in a powerful dashboard.
2. Invicti An application security tool that builds security automation in every SDLC step.
3. Appknox An automated scanner that helps protect multiple web applications simultaneously.
4. Veracode Supports the development team with on-demand analysis for aggressive development and scalability.
5. Detectify EASM Platform A vulnerability scanner that protects the attack surface from external threats.
6. Rapid7 InsightAppSec A black-box security testing tool to automate the identification and triage of issues.
7. AppCheck Emulates manual penetrating testing to identify vulnerabilities in your web apps.

Read on to learn more about what is DAST, how it can benefit your organization, and what are some of the best DAST tools available today.

What is DAST?

DAST is an approach that mimics a cyberattacker to check if your web application can thwart it. Essentially, DAST is the process of analyzing a web application through its front end to identify any vulnerabilities. This simulated attack generates a set of metrics, using which you can identify security vulnerabilities.

The biggest advantage of DAST is that it is independent of the application and doesn't impact its working or accessibility in any way. Also, it can identify vulnerabilities immediately and does not require source code access. However, the downside is that the information generated by DAST tools has to be correlated with other data to get meaningful insights, and often, this also requires a security expert.

Is DAST Beneficial for Organizations?

DAST is highly beneficial for organizations as it helps to create secure applications. More importantly, it helps to catch vulnerabilities during the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), which means, the vulnerabilities can be fixed before the application is released. Consequently, cybercriminals cannot exploit this vulnerability and access sensitive content. Needless to say, organizations can save financial and reputational damage.

Now that you know why a DAST tool can be a great addition to your organization, let's see a bit into how it works.

How Does DAST Tools Work?

A DAST tool is essentially a scanner that continuously searches through an application for vulnerabilities. It compares the application's data with the patterns associated with attacks like SQL Injections and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS).  Additionally, DAST tools function in a dynamic environment and hence, they can identify flaws that static tools can't identify.

DAST is not just another scanner, rather it simulates attacks to see how the application behaves. If it allows the simulated attacks, then the DAST tool sends notifications to the concerned teams with details of the attack. Using this information, developers can alter the code to address these vulnerabilities.

So far, we have seen all about DAST Tools. Next, let's look at some of the best available choices for you.

The Best DAST Tools

Let's take a detailed look into the features of each of these tools.

1. SOOS

SOOS is a web app and API scanner that integrates with your CI/CD pipeline and Issue Management Tools. A highlight of this tool is that there are no limits on how many websites or APIs you can scan.

Key Features:

• Unified Dashboard: SOOS comes with a unified dashboard that displays all the pertinent information in a way that you can understand easily. It enables you to know the vulnerabilities, so you can dig further, and fix the associated source code modules.
• Excellent Integration: SOOS comes with many CI/CD integrations, including AWS CodeBuild, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and more. The advantage is you can use SOOS to natively integrate with your existing processes and tools. You can even create a controlled environment for testing, as it works well with containerization platforms like Docker.
• Highly Versatile: This platform is highly versatile and can be used across all web applications. It also supports the most popular programming languages like Java, Python, Ruby, .NET, RUST, JavaScript, PHP, C++, and more. You can use this tool to identify most types of attacks like SQL injection, security misconfigurations, deserialization, component vulnerabilities, etc. Additionally, you can extend the power of OWASP ZAP for potential exploit paths.

Overall, SOOS is a feature-rich DAST tool that can be a great addition to your development team.

For SOOS, use the pricing calculator to estimate costs and start a free trial to explore the platform's features.

2. Invicti

Invicti is an application security testing tool that automates security in every step of your SDLC process. The obvious advantage is that your development team can save many hours of manual tasks and monitoring.

Key Features:

• Comprehensive Scanning: Invicti can scan every corner of the app to gain comprehensive visibility into the working of your app and its vulnerabilities. This feature can come in handy in many situations, like when you have thousands of apps and want to test them for vulnerabilities. Likewise, it can help if the app is extensive or if you're working with a legacy app where some parts of the code are not familiar to your developers.
• Extensive: This tool is highly versatile, as it can scan any type of web application, service, or API. It also works well with first and third-party open-source code, regardless of the programming language, framework, or technology on which they are built.
• Automation Capabilities: Invicti offers powerful automation and workflow features to make it easier for you to assign security-related tasks and manage them. Furthermore, you can add these tasks automatically to your existing workflow, thereby saving precious time and effort.

In all, Invicti is an all-encompassing tool that identifies vulnerabilities and helps developers to fix them.

Invicti offers two plans: Invicti Pro and Invicti Enterprise, both available for demo. You can also start a free trial to explore the platform.

3. Appknox

Appknox is a DAST tool that assesses the security of your mobile and web applications in real-time, while it's running in its dynamic environment. It works well particularly well with finance-related apps as it includes extensive reporting as well.

Key Features:

• Accesses Real Devices: Unlike many other platforms, the simulation happens on real devices. The advantage is that using real devices helps you see the impact of vulnerabilities firsthand and enables you to replicate a wide range of use cases that happen in the real world. It can even simulate remote access to your app and can be comprehensive in testing for vulnerabilities.
• Automated Scans: Appknox's automated scans make it easy to test multiple web and mobile applications simultaneously. Besides saving time and effort, you can better identify common patterns across applications and create development guidelines to ensure that these vulnerabilities do not come up in future development projects.
• Regulatory and Legal Compliance: Appknox enables you to meet all your regulatory and legal compliance, as it identifies vulnerabilities, and also generates reports that prove your compliance to leading standards. More importantly, it points out the areas that could result in non-compliance, and using this information, you can do an internal audit and fix the problems.

Overall, Appknox is a handy tool to have for web and mobile development teams, as it helps to address issues before they impact your business's revenue and reputation.

Appknox allows you to build a custom plan to fit your needs. You can also request a free demo to see the platform in action.

4. Veracode

Veracode DAST combines speed and automation to make your development process highly cost-effective.  It identifies vulnerabilities during the development of web apps to boost the efficiency of your SDLC processes.

Key Features:

• Identifies Runtime Vulnerabilities: A key aspect of Veracode is that it can scan hundreds of web and mobile applications, including APIs,  simultaneously to identify runtime vulnerabilities. This ability can keep pace with the aggressive development cycles of modern times and ensures that the apps are secure before release. More importantly, it embeds security as a part of the development process to save time and effort.
• Low False Positives: False positives are a shortcoming of many monitoring tools, and Veracode claims to have a low false-positive score. This helps the security and development teams to focus their resources on the aspects that matter the most.
• Time-to-Market: With a proactive approach, Veracode ensures that the developmental timelines are not impacted while at the same time, it helps to create secure apps. The use of automation greatly reduces manual effort and, above everything, reduces the need for rework and disruption later in the cycle.

Overall, Veracode can quickly find runtime vulnerabilities across APIs and web apps to speed up deployment.

Contact Veracode’s customer team for a quote and request a demo to see how it works.

5. Detectify

Detectify is an External Attack Surface Management (EASM) tool that continuously scans apps to discover vulnerabilities. It also provides actionable guidance for the AppSec and ProdSec teams and accelerates remediation, all through a single platform.

Key Features:

• Surface Monitoring: Detectify is a comprehensive surface monitoring tool that continuously scans all your Internet-facing assets, including DNS ports. Due to this extensive scanning, it can identify vulnerabilities at the earliest. The company claims that it can identify 99.7% of vulnerabilities. And the best part is that it requires no complex configurations.
• Wide Coverage: This tool approaches vulnerability assessment through two layers. The surface monitoring capability completely scans the attack surface, while the application scanning feature provides comprehensive insights into custom applications. Such a two-pronged approach ensures that teams can work on vulnerabilities before they impact the end users.
• Support for Large Teams: Detectify offers many custom features to support organizations with large amounts of domains and subdomains. Besides a flexible and scalable offering, you can also get many exclusive features like SSO, API access, custom policies, a dedicated CSM, a multi-team setup, and more.

In all, Detectify can help organizations to protect their apps from external attacks, and in the process, minimize the associated financial and reputational damage.

Detectify's pricing depends on the number of domains, subdomains, and APIs, with options for a full EASM solution or smaller attack surfaces. You can get a custom quote, watch a demo, and try Detectify free for 2 weeks.

6. Rapid7 InsightAppSec

InsightAppSec is a comprehensive platform for black-box testing. It automates the process of identifying problems, prioritizing them, and triaging them to reduce their risk. It also provides actionable inputs to your development team to help them remediate the issues.

Key Features:

• Extensive Attack Coverage: The Rapid7 team claims that InsightAppSec can identify over 95 different types of attacks, including the OWASP top 10. It uses industry-leading frameworks and best practices to create custom checks, which in turn, will identify the vulnerabilities in your environment. In particular, it can identify issues that come with misconfiguration.
• Complete Control: With InsightAppSec, you have complete control over when you should run scans. You can even schedule them in advance to gain visibility over your application's performance at specific times or in particular scenarios. More importantly, you can customize the scans to run during off-peak times to reduce the strain on your infrastructure.
• Reporting and Compliance: InsightAppSec is a powerful reporting tool that generates advanced static and interactive reports. You can use the insights present in these reports for internal auditing as well as compliance with leading standards. Such reports also help build credibility among your end users.

Overall, InsightAppSec is a comprehensive tool for identifying issues in your web applications and fixing them at the earliest.

InsightAppSec pricing starts at $175 per month per app. You can also start a free trial to evaluate its features.

7. AppCheck

AppCheck is an in-depth automated testing tool that can be customized to meet your business objectives and development strategy. It can identify a wide range of attacks, including OWASP, SQL injection, XSS, zero days, and hundreds more.

Key Features:

• Automated Penetration Testing: A highlight of AppCheck is that it can emulate the process of a manual penetration test to identify its vulnerabilities. Since it's designed by pentest experts, the results are likely to be accurate and insightful. Moreover, it can automate the discovery of vulnerabilities through this process.
• Integrates with Ticketing Systems: AppCheck integrates well with most well-known ticketing systems, and this means, it's easy to assign responsibilities to one or more individuals and monitor the progress. Such a process provides comprehensive visibility into your operations while ensuring that the app remains free of critical security issues.
• Complete Control: With this tool, you can schedule continuous security tests or make them ad-hoc, depending on your business needs.  Such flexibility ensures that you have complete control over the scans.

In all, AppCheck is a flexible DAST tool that automates manual testing and adapts to your strategy.

For AppCheck, contact the support team for a quote and start your free trial to explore its features.

Thus, these are some of the best DAST tools.

Final Thoughts

The growing cybersecurity threats necessitate application security tools like DAST that scan your application and its codebase for vulnerabilities and notify you of the same. Using these insights, the development team can plug in the loopholes and make their applications more secure, as a part of the development process. In this article, we looked at the seven best DAST tools and their features. We hope this information helps you to make an informed decision on the right DAST tool for your needs.