OWASP ZAP

Finding the best web security tool that is open-source and free to use is challenging. Right? Therefore, OWASP ZAP comes into the market as a popular web application security project. This security scanner runs active testing against the current application and identifies potential security threats. 

The best thing about OWASP ZAP is it can be deployed via API in an automated manner. For regular security testing, penetration testers can run an automated scan to find vulnerabilities in each page of the web application. The automated scanner finds defects or issues and then fixes them with regular operation. 

OWASP ZAP helps in manual security testing to strengthen your developed applications so they can safely operate on the internet.

• A great tool for penetration testers and security analysts to find vulnerabilities in web applications. 
• You can perform active and passive scans to test your developing applications. These scans can create or delete data to catch potential vulnerabilities. 
• It offers a range of options for security testing and automation.
• OWASP ZAP supports different authentication formats, including script-based, JSON-based, and form-based authentication. 
• The WebSocket allows you to transmit data and provide open communication between client and server. This allows attackers to continuously scan and detect issues in the application. 
• The installation is simple, and you need to have JAVA 8 or higher to use OWASP ZAP on your computer. 

This highly popular penetration testing software helps security professionals by intercepting, displaying, and modifying web application requests. To search folders on web servers, you can use dictionary lists. It also allows you to retrieve links and important URLs. Engineers use this tool in CI/CD pipeline to identify potential risks in the application. 

In OWASP ZAP, you can perform two types of scans: active and passive. Active scan is a considerably better way to check vulnerabilities, but it can attack the application. On the other hand, passive scans do not change anything in your created app and are usually low-risk than active scans. Thus, you can install OWASP ZAP to reinforce your system security.