Manual Security Processes vs Automated Security Scanning

Developers should learn and use manual security processes when building or maintaining critical applications, especially in high-risk domains like finance, healthcare, or government, to ensure robust security beyond automated checks 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 Processes

Nice Pick

Developers should learn and use manual security processes when building or maintaining critical applications, especially in high-risk domains like finance, healthcare, or government, to ensure robust security beyond automated checks

Pros

• They are crucial during the design phase for threat modeling, in code reviews to catch subtle bugs, and in penetration testing to simulate real-world attacks, helping comply with regulations like GDPR or PCI DSS
• Related to: penetration-testing, threat-modeling

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

The Bottom Line

Manual Security Processes wins

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