Considerations before Choosing Static Analysis Tool

By CIOReview | Wednesday, March 20, 2019

The enterprise static analysis and the open source static analysis play vital roles in enhancing the security program of an application. Static analysis (SAST) analyzes the entire code of an application and provides insights into security and quality defects, which helps developers to address the issues before the application goes into production. The SAST analysis of an application helps in making the data more secure, ensuring that the data has fewer vulnerabilities.

Many application developers refrain from the static analysis because of the inefficiency of many SAST tools in coping up with the modern development environment. These tools can sometimes be a liability for companies instead of being a safety net. Here are a few reasons which make many traditional SAST tools ineffective in the modern development environment:

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The interruption in the workflow: Sometimes issues in the software development life cycle (SDLC) are discovered very late in the SAST analysis, which can have adverse effects on the productivity of a company. The developers have to go through the entire code to pinpoint the issue and fix it. It can also affect the productivity of their existing project.

Confusing results: Many SAST tools have a high false positive rate, which can hamper the real findings. It is also possible that the information from the SAST tools does not reach the developers, making it tough for developers to filter the critical issues.

Scalability: Codebases are generally built around multiple languages and frameworks. These codebases can grow as the demand of the clients increase. Many SAST tools do not provide coverage for all the languages and platforms. These tools also fail to live up to the scalability requirements.

Modern SAST tools offer many unique features with its integration with agile and DevOps workflows. These tools provide scalability to analyze large and complex codebases, resulting in fewer interruptions, less confusion, and more secure applications. Enterprises should choose an efficient SAST tool based on security budget, development workflow, languages, frameworks, size of codebases, existing tools, and other features of the development environment. Enterprises should choose an efficient enterprise or open source SAST tool to enhance their security testing program.

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