The Hidden Costs of Open Source Scanners

Open-source SAST scanners like Semgrep, SonarQube, Brakeman, and Bandit might seem like a great way to reduce costs, but the reality is far from simple. When compared to Corgea, the real expenses—both financial and operational—quickly add up. Let’s break down the hidden costs and limitations of relying solely on open-source solutions.

To clarify, some open-source SAST scanners do have paid offerings that do provide some coverage over the topics below. We're aiming to highlight here the limitations of using unpaid offerings in SAST, and their real-cost.

1. The Real Price of 'Free'

• Open Source Scanners: The cost of maintaining, integrating, and manually fixing issues can quickly outweigh the perceived savings. Hidden costs include:

  • Developer hours spent triaging false positives.

  • Gaps in vulnerability detection leading to potential breaches.

  • Lack of compliance enforcement increasing organizational risk.

• Corgea: While not "free," the value delivered—through time savings, reduced risk, and advanced features—far exceeds the cost.

2. Missing Critical Vulnerability Detection

• Open Source Scanners: Focus on static analysis and basic checks, but lack advanced detection for:

  • Business and code logic vulnerabilities

  • Broken authentication flows

  • Malicious code insertion

• Corgea: Delivers AI-driven detection for these critical areas, identifying vulnerabilities that open-source tools overlook.

3. Time and Effort Spent on False Positives

• Open Source Scanners: High false positive rates mean your teams spend countless hours triaging irrelevant findings, creating inefficiencies and frustration.

• Corgea: Utilizes AI-powered false positive detection, dramatically reducing noise so your team can focus on real vulnerabilities.

4. Lack of Automation for Fixes

• Open Source Scanners: Identifying issues is where the journey ends—you’re left to fix vulnerabilities manually.

• Corgea: Provides auto-fix capabilities, generating remediation suggestions and patches, saving time and reducing human error.

5. Weak Policy and Compliance Management

• Open Source Scanners: No advanced policy enforcement or SLA tracking, making it hard to align with organizational security standards and compliance requirements.

• Corgea: Features tools like PolicyIQ for custom compliance policies, advanced blocking rules, and automated SLA management, ensuring consistent enforcement and tracking.

7. Limited Language and Framework Coverage

• Open Source Scanners: Coverage is often dependent on the specific tool, meaning you might need multiple scanners to cover your entire stack. For example, Bandit only focuses on Python, which means you have to piece together multiple scanners. This leads to fragmented workflows and inconsistencies. The exception here would be Semgrep and SonarQube's language support.

• Corgea: Supports 11+ languages and frameworks out of the box, consolidating your code scanning into a single, powerful solution.

8. Limited Integrations and Developer Support

• Open Source Scanners: Basic integrations with source control tools, but lack support for developer workflows like IDE extensions, PR scanning, and collaboration tools.

• Corgea: Fully integrates with developer tools (IDE extensions, CLI), collaboration tools (Jira, Slack), and third-party scanners, enabling seamless workflows across teams.

9. Lack of Analytics and Reporting

• Open Source Scanners: Provide basic reports, often requiring manual compilation and analysis.

• Corgea: Offers advanced analytics and reporting, providing actionable insights for leadership and technical teams to measure and optimize security efforts.

10. No Enterprise-Grade Support

• Open Source Scanners: Community support often means delayed responses and limited resources when critical issues arise. Semgrep and SonarQube do have paid offerings with support that's better than the community one.

• Corgea: Provides priority support with options for calls, chats, and emails, ensuring your team gets timely help when it matters most.

11. The Scalability Challenge

• Open Source Scanners: While they may suffice for small projects, they struggle to scale effectively in enterprise environments, especially with complex codebases and teams.

• Corgea: Built to scale, with features like role-based access control (RBAC), SSO integration, and team management to support large organizations.

Switch to Corgea Today

With Corgea, you get a comprehensive, developer-friendly security solution that not only finds vulnerabilities but also helps you fix them efficiently. Stop wasting time and resources on fragmented, incomplete tools. Let Corgea transform your application security process.