DAST is important because developers don’t have to rely solely on their own knowledge when building applications. By conducting DAST during the SDLC, you can catch vulnerabilities in an application before it’s deployed to the public. If these vulnerabilities are left unchecked and the app is deployed as such, this could lead to a data breach, resulting in major financial loss and damage to your brand reputation. Human error will inevitably play a part at some point in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), and the sooner a vulnerability is caught during the SDLC, the cheaper it is to fix.

A DAST scanner searches for vulnerabilities in a running application and then sends automated alerts if it finds flaws that allow for attacks like SQL injections, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and more. Since DAST tools are equipped to function in a dynamic environment, they can detect runtime flaws which SAST tools can’t identify. To use the example of a building, a DAST scanner can be thought of like a security guard. However, rather than just making sure the doors and windows are locked, this guard goes a step further by attempting to physically break into the building. The guard might try to

1.It works with different kinds of applications. 2. It immediately identifies vulnerabilities that attackers can take advantage of. 3.It does not need access to an application’s source code to work.