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Eliminate false positives with WhiteHat Dynamic

Charlotte Freeman

Aug 16, 2023 / 2 min read

In the digital age, web apps are the engine that powers business. Organizations rely on web apps to run everything from internal team sites and HR portals to external client portals, business interfaces, and shopping carts. But web apps are also where threat actors can attack your business-critical applications to access your back-end databases.

A Forrester report released on June 7, 2023, discusses the move DevOps teams are making from “shifting left” to “shifting everywhere.” The industry has been working toward moving the responsibility for security testing out of the exclusive domain of security teams and into the development cycle, but the concept of shifting everywhere entails thinking about how to do security at each step of the software development life cycle. One of the key challenges organizations face with shifting everywhere is the proliferation of testing. Organizations are running software composition analysis, static application security testing, interactive application security testing, fuzz testing, and more in development. But more tests mean more results, and too often those results contain duplicate findings and numerous false positives.

And this problem doesn’t stop when development does. When you release into production is when you become most vulnerable to threat actors. This is where WhiteHat™Dynamic from Synopsys comes in. WhiteHat runs dynamic application security testing (DAST) on your completed web apps and interfaces, and it runs them continuously. The results are then deduplicated and verified by the experts in our Threat Resource Center, so you get continuous monitoring and zero false positives.


Why false positives are such a problem

Enterprise organizations can have hundreds or even thousands of development teams, each working with different tools and using different open source and third-party components to accomplish their goals. Doing security at this scale means wading through duplicate results and false positives.

  • False positives identify a coding fault that does not exist. This requires teams to waste time looking for bogus bugs, which can cause them to distrust the tools' dependability and usefulness.
  • False positives cause software deployment delays by consuming development time. This is especially problematic in agile or fast-paced development environments where frequent iterations and releases are required.
  • False positives can keep developers from detecting and correcting code flaws because they may be too distracted with false positives to detect true bugs. This can result in bugged software, user dissatisfaction, and security risks.
  • False positives can put a hardship on software project maintenance. Because false positives can reappear in subsequent testing cycles, developers have to do the rework of repeatedly spending time and effort on them.

How WhiteHat Dynamic helps with false positives

With its nonintrusive testing approach, WhiteHat Dynamic from Synopsys minimizes any potential impact on live applications while still providing comprehensive and accurate dynamic application security testing. By providing real-time monitoring and alerts for any potential security issues, WhiteHat enables rapid response and remediation. And the Synopsys team of security experts deduplicates and verifies testing results, as well as provides world-class support and guidance to help organizations improve their security posture.

WhiteHat Dynamic offers ease of use, scalability, and cost-effectiveness while ensuring absolute coverage. It provides organizations with a way to improve their security program, and provides security teams with time to focus on tasks that help manage the organization’s risks.

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