One of the most effective practices for ensuring that your software is secure and safeguarded against security vulnerabilities is using the right secure coding tools — like SAST and DAST.
The Key Differences Between SAST and DAST
Both SAST and DAST are used to find software security vulnerabilities in your code. However, these DevOps tools are used at different times during the development process.
Here are the key differences between SAST and DAST.
SAST:
- White Box Security Testing
- Source code is required.
- Vulnerabilities found earlier in development and are less expensive to fix.
- Unable to identify timing- and environment-related issues.
- Generally, supports all kinds of software.
DAST:
- Black Box Security Testing
- A running application is required.
- Vulnerabilities found later in development and are more expensive to fix.
- Can identify run-time and environment-related issues.
The Main Advantages of Using SAST Tools
The main advantages of using SAST tools include the following:
- SAST tools find coding issues by looking for known vulnerability patterns in internationally recognized coding standards for quality, safety, and security — such as CERT, OWSAP, and CWE.
- SAST tools detect and fixes defects early in development. This leads to lower costs to fix defects.
- SAST tools often features a Shift-Left approach, which enables analysis to be done anywhere — including on your desktop and in your CI/CD pipelines.
- SAST tools are easy to automate, able to effectively scale to your project, and automatically provide the highest levels of code coverage.
- SAST tools provide fast feedback along with the exact location of vulnerabilities and their cause.
The Main Advantages of Using DAST Tools
The main advantages of using DAST tools include the following:
- DAST tools analyze the entire application as it runs within the full system environment.
- DAST tools are able to “look inside” your application and dynamically analyze execution logic and live data.
- DAST tools are language and source code independent.
- DAST tools check for memory consumption and resource use.
- DAST tools attempt to break encryption algorithms from outside of your program.
- DAST tools verify permissions to ensure the isolation of privilege levels.
- DAST tools check for cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and cookie manipulation.
- DAST tools test for vulnerabilities in third-party interfaces.
- DAST tools understand arguments and function calls.
- DAST tools record application execution for post-mortem test failure analysis.
- DAST tools catch hard application failures.
- DAST tools perform unattended script-based dynamic analysis. In order for an effective security program, you will need both a SAST and DAST tool.
To read more, please visit: https://www.perforce.com/blog/kw/sast-vs-dast