Gartner defines AI-augmented software testing tools as enablers of continuous, self-optimizing and adaptive automated testing through the use of AI technologies. The capabilities run the gamut of the testing life cycle including test scenario and test case generation, test automation generation, test suite optimization and prioritization, test analysis and defect prediction as well as test effort estimation and decision making. These tools help software engineering teams to increase test coverage, test efficacy and robustness. They assist humans in their testing efforts and reduce the need for human intervention in the different phases of testing.
API protection products protect APIs from exploits, abuse and access violations, and assist in remediating API exposures. These products perform API discovery and posture management and provide runtime protection. API protection products may be delivered as cloud-based or on-premises solutions. API protection products serve to provide capabilities to organizations that need to protect their data assets primarily from attacks against the first-party APIs they expose publicly. They also need to provide coverage for the internal APIs and the third-party APIs that they may consume. API products deliver a catalog of inventoried APIs, a prioritized list of remediations of API exposures and alerts on suspicious or malicious activity on APIs.
Penetration Testing tools and services are designed to test vulnerabilities and weaknesses within computer systems and applications by simulating a cyber attack on a computer system, network, or web application. Companies conduct penetration tests to uncover new defects and test the security of communication channels and integrations. These tools and services either use vulnerability scanners or conduct manual/automated tests that scan networks and systems for open ports, and services and conduct vulnerability assessments to find any software lapse that may prove a route of attack on the system later. Further, the identified vulnerabilities are exploited to gain unauthorized access to systems or data and they try to escalate or pivot to key assets to have a better understanding about the impact of a specific attack. The process ends with generating a detailed and comprehensive testing report that describes, gives evidence for, assesses the risk, and recommends the solution to any vulnerability found. Typically, these are used by security professionals and ethical hackers to identify vulnerabilities, evaluate risks or/and validate controls, understanding how the cyber-attacks work, and test the effectiveness of security measures.
VA solutions identify, categorize and prioritize vulnerabilities as well as orchestrate their remediation or mitigation. Their primary focus is vulnerability and security configuration assessments for enterprise risk identification and reduction, and reporting against various compliance standards. VA can be delivered via on-premises, hosted and cloud-based solutions, and it may use appliances and agents. Core capabilities include: - Discovery, identification and reporting on device, OS, software vulnerabilities and configuration against security-related criteria - Establishing a baseline for systems, applications and databases to identify and track changes in state - Reporting options for compliance, control frameworks and multiple roles Standard capabilities include: - Pragmatic remediation prioritization with the ability to correlate vulnerability severity, asset context and threat context that then presents a better picture of true risk for your specific environment - Guidance for remediating and configuring compensating controls - Management of scanner instances, agents and gateways - Direct integration with, or API access to, asset management tools, workflow management tools and patch management tools