Manual Security Audits vs Automated Security Scanning

Developers should learn manual security audits to enhance application security, especially for high-risk systems like financial or healthcare software, where automated scans may not catch logic flaws or business logic vulnerabilities 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 Audits

Nice Pick

Developers should learn manual security audits to enhance application security, especially for high-risk systems like financial or healthcare software, where automated scans may not catch logic flaws or business logic vulnerabilities

Pros

• It is essential during security-critical phases like pre-release reviews, compliance audits (e
• Related to: penetration-testing, code-review

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 Audits is a methodology while Automated Security Scanning is a tool. We picked Manual Security Audits based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Manual Security Audits wins

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