Netsparker: Your Best Alternative to Acunetix

Cyber security decision makers already know that an effective vulnerability management program requires not only a network security scanner, but a web vulnerability scanner that can scan and identify security issues in web applications and web APIs. You may be familiar with some of the scanners on the market, but it is time to get to know the best Acunetix alternative: the Netsparker web application security solution.

Why You Need The Best Web Application Scanner

As businesses depend more on web applications for keeping employees connected and customers engaged, they are becoming a larger part of the landscape of online threats. According to the latest Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, more data breaches are connected to web application vulnerabilities than any other initial cause. Website security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross site scripting (XSS) are important to find and fix during the vulnerability assessment process, since attackers are actively exploiting them to compromise credentials and data.

The Best, In An Independent Test

When choosing IT security software tools, don't just trust what the people selling them have to say: consider impartial, independent tests.

The Benchmark

Independent security researcher Shay Chen released his most recent survey and comparison of web vulnerability scanners (dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools). He tested a wide range of web security scanners against WAVSEP (Web Application Vulnerability Scanner Evaluation Project), a benchmark that tests security software's ability to scan real-life web technologies and identify real-life security flaws like SQL injection, XSS, path traversal, OS command injection, remote file inclusion, and more.

The Market

The web vulnerability scanning tools Chen tested included both commercial and open source vulnerability scanners. He tested the most prominent commercial solutions including Netsparker, Acunetix, PortSwigger Burp Suite, Rapid7 AppSpider, HP WebInspect, and Janusec WebCruiser. He also reviewed common open source solutions including Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP), Arachni, IronWasp, and WATOBO.

The Best

Only one web vulnerability scanner from all those that Chen tested found all of the security vulnerabilities in the WAVSEP benchmark: Netsparker.

Unsurpassed Accuracy Without the Noise

It gets better. Not only did Netsparker map out the entire attack surface and find every vulnerability in the benchmark, but it did so without reporting any false positives. Acunetix reported 1.8% false positives -- results that your IT security team has to spend hours manually finding and filtering out.

Proof of Exploit

Netsparker is the only scanner with Proof Based Scanning™ technology. Every vulnerability identified in the scan report is accompanied by proof of exploit: the payload used in the HTTP request that exploited the vulnerability, as well as the data compromised in response. At a glance, your security team knows that each finding is a real, exploitable web vulnerability.