SAST vs SCA vs DAST vs IAST: choosing the right scan for the right stage | Harness Blog
Blog post from Harness
SAST, SCA, DAST, and IAST are complementary application security testing methods that address different risks across the software development lifecycle. SAST analyzes proprietary code before execution to identify risky patterns early but may generate false positives, while SCA examines third-party dependencies and known vulnerabilities but may not determine whether vulnerable components are actually used. DAST probes a running application externally with attacker-like requests, making it useful for identifying exploitable behavior and testing systems without source access, though it often cannot locate the underlying code issue. IAST instruments a running application to track data through code during testing, providing precise findings with fewer false positives but requiring operational effort to deploy and maintain agents. SAST and SCA are generally suited to commits, pull requests, and early CI stages, whereas DAST and IAST are used in QA, staging, or pre-production environments. An effective security program combines the methods according to organizational needs, centralizes results, removes duplicate findings, and prioritizes issues based on real exploitability and available team capacity.
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