According to Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, web applications are a top hacking vector in data breaches. Organizations today need to ensure that their application security approach has evolved above the old and traditional practices of blocking traffic and investing deliberately in securing the networks.

With the massive rise of cybercrimes and use of sophisticated technologies by the bad guys, the old application security approach is collapsing. The Web Application Firewall (WAF) was considered as an effective AppSec solution until recently but at present it is depleting in terms of its effectiveness.

On the flip side, Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions are gaining pace. Generally, WAF can monitor all the network traffic from the OSI layer up to the Application layer. Contrastingly, SAST has a more direct approach as it focuses on the substratum of the application – the source code itself!

Checkmarx SAST (CxSAST) is an enterprise-grade flexible and accurate static analysis solution used to identify security vulnerabilities in custom code. It basically involves the integration of the static code scanning into every stage of the SDLC. The remediation of software vulnerabilities becomes effective and rapid when raw chunks of source code too can be scanned. One of the major advantages of CxSAST over WAF, is its ability to check vulnerable junctions in the application code.

Following are the plus points CxSAST provides over the traditional WAF:

• Total Cost of Ownership – Compared to WAF, CxSAST requires minimal maintenance, saving your employees precious time.
• Better ROI – As CxSAST can remediate vulnerabilities in the development and build stage of the SDLC, it saves the organization of time, money, and resources. It also minimizes the need for post-release patches and security updates.
• False Positives do not affect Performance – False positives can be addressed with ease in CxSAST unlike WAF. In WAF, although it is a false positive, the user will remain blocked.
• Educational Advantage and Improvement of Coding Standards – When implementing the CxSAST both the development and the testing teams are a part of the security validation process which promotes AppSec awareness and enhances the developer’s coding skills.
• Not limited only to web applications – Unlike WAF, CxSAST is capable of testing different software like mobile applications, software on embedded devices, etc.