📊 NEW! Voice of Practitioners 2024: The State of Secrets in AppSec

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📊 NEW! Voice of Practitioners 2024: The State of Secrets in AppSec

READ REPORT

Product comparisons

Find the suitable code security solution for your needs

Choosing the right code security solution can be challenging

With more than 20 open-source projects, platforms like GitHub or GitLab, and other security vendors offering secrets detection, finding the best solution for your organization takes time and effort. So before committing, do your research.

Our product comparisons examine every feature to help you decide between GitGuardian, the #1 security app on the GitHub Marketplace, and other solutions.
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What should you look for in a code security platform?

If you are here, you are already aware of the risk hardcoded secrets pose to your security posture, and you want to tackle the problem. But how should you evaluate the various options, and what common pitfalls should you avoid?
  • Can it provide complete visibility over your SDLC?

    Opt for a solution that gives visibility into every corner of your software development lifecycle. Ideally, the solution should connect to your Version Control Systems (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure Repos), CI/CD tools, and package registries; and map all the assets it should monitor.With solutions requiring manual input of your assets, you may be missing visibility over some of the developer activity and areas of risk in your software development lifecycle.

    Also, look for a solution that provides an aggregated view of your incident data in a rich user interface or dashboard. It will be easier for your security and development teams to find, investigate, and collaborate on remediating their incidents.

  • Does it provide wide coverage?

    Organizations often don’t have a complete inventory of the third-party services or internal components their development teams create and maintain. Without this information, you should look for a solution that supports detecting a wide range of secrets – specific, generic, or even custom patterns.

  • Does it raise a lot of false positives?

    If a solution cries wolf, its adoption by security engineers and developers will likely be low. Over time, false positives lead to “alert fatigue.” From our experience, users of specific open-source secret scanners report many false positives. Secrets scanners that rely on entropy checks without performing additional contextual analysis of the code are prone to this.‍

    Tip: Don’t be lured by the false promise of zero false positives. If a code security tool does not report false positives, chances are high that it silently skips real findings.

  • How can it help with incident remediation?

    Detection is only the start; you must also devise a process for remediating hardcoded secrets. Opt for a solution that will support your teams throughout remediation with features like automated alerting, ticketing, prioritization, and collaboration. Make sure that the solution of your choice also integrates developers in the process.

  • Can it teach your developers secure coding practices on the job?

    Developers are responsible for hardcoding secrets during software development. Pick a solution capable of providing your developers with early feedback and alerting them while writing code in their IDE or creating a pull/merge request. This will heighten their security senses and help prevent exposing more secrets.

  • How easy is it for security engineers and developers to use?

    The right solution will help you remediate more incidents in less time. The key is finding one that’s powerful yet intuitive. If it takes your team months to get the hang of it and integrate it within your existing pipeline, that’s a lot of lost time and productivity.

    Tip: Read vendor reviews to see how easy end users find a solution. Check out these examples from GitGuardian users on Capterra, G2, PeerSpot, Sourceforge, etc.

  • Can it scale with your business requirements over time?

    Prefer a solution that will adapt to your evolving technological stack. Ideally, it should integrate with multiple source control servers, CI/CD systems, package registries, etc. It should also be able to scan hundreds or thousands of repositories, regardless of their size, covering all code contributions from your developers. If your organization has strict data privacy requirements, look for a solution that can be self-hosted on your infrastructure.

  • What level of support can you expect from its maintainers?

    Addressing secrets sprawl in an organization is a complex and cumbersome task. A dedicated support team with specialized experts can help accelerate onboarding during the initial pilot, have a smooth setup and deployment process, devise remediation workflows, discuss product-related questions, and provide answers almost instantly.

    Tip: Ask your vendor for reference calls and similar deployment examples.

GitGuardian vs. Open Source Libraries

Choosing GitGuardian or an open-source solution is a question of build or buy. Remember that most open-source solutions will only provide the detection layer; everything else will be up to you.
GitGuardian logo
TruffleHog Open Source v3

Open Source Alternatives

GitGuardian vs 
TruffleHog Open Source v3

TruffleHog Open Source (v3) is a popular command-line interface (CLI) that helps find hardcoded secrets in git repositories and other developer tools.

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GitGuardian logo
Gitleaks

Open Source Alternatives

GitGuardian vs 
Gitleaks

Gitleaks is an open-source secret scanner for git repositories, files, and directories.

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GitGuardian logo
Yelp/detect-secrets

Open Source Alternatives

GitGuardian vs 
Yelp/detect-secrets

Yelp detect-secrets is a Python CLI and library for detecting secrets within a codebase; it scans files within Git repositories using a pattern matching or entropy filtering technique.

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GitGuardian vs. Developer Platforms

Platforms like GitHub or GitLab also offer secrets scanning in their advanced security packs. When comparing them to GitGuardian, the accuracy and coverage of the detectors, collaboration capabilities, and total cost of ownership should guide your decision.
GitGuardian logo
GitHub Advanced Security

VCS Security Packs

GitGuardian vs 
GitHub Advanced Security

GitHub makes extra security features available to customers under a GitHub Advanced Security license. These features include code scanning, secret scanning, and dependency review.

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GitGuardian logo
GitLab Secret Detection

VCS Security Packs

GitGuardian vs 
GitLab Secret Detection

GitLab Secret Detection uses an analyzer containing the Gitleaks tool to scan the repository for secrets.

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GitGuardian vs Point Solutions

 These solutions are designed for security and development teams and offer more than just detection capabilities. Most point solutions have already started transitioning to a platform-based approach like GitGuardian.
GitGuardian logo
SpectralOps

Point Solutions

GitGuardian vs 
SpectralOps

SpectralOps (now part of CheckPoint) offers Spectral Scan, a single self-contained binary that helps find hardcoded secrets and Infrastructure-as-Code misconfigurations in source code and CI/CD pipelines.

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GitGuardian logo
Cycode

Point Solutions

GitGuardian vs 
Cycode

Cycode is a software supply chain security solution that provides visibility, security, and integrity across all phases of the SDLC.

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GitGuardian logo
Apiiro

Point Solutions

GitGuardian vs 
Apiiro

Apiiro is a cloud application security platform that empowers security and development teams with complete visibility and actionable context to proactively remediate critical risks in modern applications and software supply chains.

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GitGuardian logo
BluBracket

Point Solutions

GitGuardian vs 
BluBracket

BluBracket (acquired by HashiCorp) is a security solution for code in a software-driven world. BluBracket gives companies visibility into where source code introduces security risk while enabling them to fully secure their code—without altering developer workflows or productivity.

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Highly rated by thousands of users around the world

Capterra Logo

4.9

G2 Logo

4.8

Gartner Logo

5

GetApp logo

4.9

Software Advice logo

4.8

SourceForge logo

5

Why do security teams choose GitGuardian
over other available options?

With GitGuardian actions, we were able to take all repos to the cloud, which is better. We also weren't able to see the coding history before, such as who left a password in the code. With GitGuardian, you can see everything in the history. You can clean things well when you are able to see the historical changes in the code. We also tried open-source tools, but the false positives made them a waste of time.
Emre Ceevik, Devops Engineer

Read the case study

We were using another product on GitHub, similar to GitGuardian, but it was not really as good as GitGuardian. The graphical interface and the detail GitGuardian gives you are really amazing. And there are fewer false positives than any other platform. We are able to notify developers of issues on the spot and tell them, "You have exposed a secret." It is absolutely brilliant.
Abbas Haidar, Head of InfoSec

Read the case study

Secure. Every. Code. Commit.