Manual Security Auditing vs Automated Security Scanning

Developers should learn manual security auditing to build more secure applications, especially in high-risk environments like finance, healthcare, or critical infrastructure where automated scans are insufficient meets developers should use automated security scanning to integrate security into their devops workflows (devsecops), ensuring continuous security assessment throughout development and deployment. Here's our take.

Manual Security Auditing

Nice Pick

Developers should learn manual security auditing to build more secure applications, especially in high-risk environments like finance, healthcare, or critical infrastructure where automated scans are insufficient

Pros

• It's crucial during the software development lifecycle (SDLC) for identifying logic flaws, business logic vulnerabilities, and zero-day threats that tools can't detect
• Related to: penetration-testing, secure-coding

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Automated Security Scanning

Developers should use automated security scanning to integrate security into their DevOps workflows (DevSecOps), ensuring continuous security assessment throughout development and deployment

Pros

• It is critical for compliance with standards like OWASP Top 10, PCI-DSS, or GDPR, and for preventing costly breaches in production environments by catching vulnerabilities in code, containers, APIs, or infrastructure as code (IaC)
• Related to: static-application-security-testing, dynamic-application-security-testing

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Manual Security Auditing is a methodology while Automated Security Scanning is a tool. We picked Manual Security Auditing based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Manual Security Auditing wins

Based on overall popularity. Manual Security Auditing is more widely used, but Automated Security Scanning excels in its own space.