Security Scanning vs Manual Security Auditing

Developers should learn and use security scanning to integrate security into the development lifecycle (DevSecOps), preventing costly breaches and ensuring compliance with standards like OWASP Top 10 or GDPR meets 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. Here's our take.

Security Scanning

Nice Pick

Developers should learn and use security scanning to integrate security into the development lifecycle (DevSecOps), preventing costly breaches and ensuring compliance with standards like OWASP Top 10 or GDPR

Pros

• It's critical for use cases such as CI/CD pipelines to catch vulnerabilities early, auditing production environments for risks, and securing cloud infrastructure against common threats like misconfigured access controls
• Related to: devsecops, owasp-top-10

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Manual Security Auditing

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

The Verdict

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

The Bottom Line

Security Scanning wins

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