Components of dynamic application security testing

Whether you’re talking about partly manual or wholly automated dynamic security testing, DAST tools (aka vulnerability scanners) are indispensable for analyzing and testing web application and API environments. Regardless of the specific DAST products and their place in your application security program, any dynamic testing process needs to go through multiple stages to get you from your starting state to actual improvements to your security posture. Broadly speaking, these can be divided into three phases:

• Pre-scan steps: Finding out what you have, selecting what needs testing, and prioritizing scans
• Vulnerability scanning: Running passive and active security checks to uncover vulnerabilities and misconfigurations
• Post-scan steps: Acting and reporting on your scan results

What is DAST-first AppSec?

Invicti’s DAST-first approach elevates DAST from just another tool to the foundational platform of a comprehensive application security strategy. Being technology-agnostic, DAST is uniquely placed to maximize test coverage while closely integrating with developer workflows and any other application security testing tools and methodologies that are in place, especially SAST (static application security testing) and SCA (software composition analysis). The Invicti platform combines the best vulnerability scanning engine in the world with extensive pre-scan and post-scan capabilities, connecting to your existing systems and processes via the industry’s largest set of integrations.

Pre-scan steps in DAST

Effective security begins with a thorough pre-scan process to ensure that all your application assets and endpoints are accounted for before vulnerability testing starts. This phase can involve automated discovery, intelligent crawling, and risk-based prioritization to optimize security efforts. Unlike basic scanners that require manual input, advanced solutions like the Invicti platform provide comprehensive pre-scan automation to maximize test coverage and ease asset management.

Web asset and API discovery

Before launching a scan, you need to first identify all web applications and APIs that you have and need to test. Web asset discovery involves uncovering all accessible components of an application, including hidden pages and endpoints. Invicti automates this process with continuous asset discovery, reducing security blind spots and ensuring a complete view of the attack surface.

API discovery is equally crucial but even harder, with Invicti being the only DAST vendor to provide API discovery features as part of its AppSec platform. Invicti’s layered approach to API discovery combines several methods in one tool:

• Zero-configuration discovery to identify API specs by checking your cloud environments for API specification files in typical locations
• Integrations with popular API management systems to sync the latest API specifications
• Analysis of network API traffic in container deployments to reconstruct API definitions based on observed traffic

Selecting test targets through crawling and other methods

All DAST tools use crawling to navigate web pages and applications and locate specific parameters and endpoints for testing. Modern web applications rely heavily on JavaScript and dynamic content, making accurate crawling essential. Invicti’s advanced crawling features built around a full browser engine are designed to execute JavaScript and parse both static and dynamic elements, ensuring full coverage of an application.

Other discovery methods, such as API documentation parsing and domain enumeration, complement crawling by identifying additional assets that might otherwise be overlooked. Invicti combines multiple techniques to provide a comprehensive map of the application’s structure.

Risk prioritization and predictive analysis

Not all assets or vulnerabilities present the same level of risk, making prioritization essential for efficient testing and later remediation. Uniquely, Invicti’s Predictive Risk Scoring uses a proprietary machine learning model to evaluate the likely risk level of a discovered site based on over 200 parameters before even scanning it, allowing for risk-based prioritization already at the pre-scan stage.

Vulnerability scanning with DAST

Once the pre-scan phase is complete, DAST tools conduct vulnerability testing through active and passive scanning. These scans simulate real-world attacks to identify application security weaknesses. Most open-source and manual tools focus solely on this scanning stage.

The vulnerability scanning engine

A DAST scanner’s effectiveness hinges on its ability to detect and validate security flaws accurately. The scanning engine works by sending test payloads to application inputs and analyzing server reactions for signs of vulnerability. Invicti’s scanning engine optimizes this process to minimize disruption to production environments while maintaining high accuracy.

A wide range of vulnerabilities—including SQL and NoSQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and security misconfigurations—are automatically tested. Building on two decades of DAST expertise with Acunetix and Netsparker, Invicti maximizes accuracy with proof-based scanning by safely confirming exploitable vulnerabilities and delivering proof that they are not false positives.

Authenticated vulnerability testing

Many security flaws exist behind login forms and restricted areas, making authenticated scanning essential for a complete assessment. To test all parts of an app effectively, DAST tools must handle session management and authentication mechanisms, including OAuth, JWT, and SSO. Invicti supports a variety of authentication methods, ensuring that protected areas are properly tested without requiring manual intervention.

Authentication security checks help identify issues such as privilege escalation and session fixation. Invicti automates these tests, detecting session mismanagement risks that could lead to unauthorized access.

Vulnerability validation and prioritization

Reducing false positives is critical for an effective security program, as excessive noise can slow down response times and undermine trust in security tools and efforts in general. DAST tools vary in their approach to validation, with most relying on heuristic analysis alone and only a few attempting more controlled confirmation. Invicti’s proof-based scanning technology provides conclusive evidence of vulnerabilities, eliminating the need for manual verification for those issues.

By focusing on validated findings, organizations can ensure that developers address real threats. Invicti integrates directly into developer workflows, allowing for efficient vulnerability management and remediation.

API security testing

APIs present a growing attack surface, requiring dedicated security measures beyond traditional web application testing. Automated API security testing involves scanning for misconfigurations, authentication weaknesses, and excessive data exposure. Invicti streamlines this process with built-in support for OAuth, JWT, API key validation, and automated analysis of API documentation like Swagger and GraphQL schemas.

Manual vs. automated scan initiation

Effective DAST solutions offer multiple ways to trigger scans, ensuring flexibility across different environments. Scans can be initiated manually for ad-hoc testing, scheduled at regular intervals to maintain continuous security monitoring, or triggered automatically based on specific events, such as code commits or deployments.

CI/CD pipeline integration ensures that security testing occurs continuously within DevSecOps processes. Invicti supports automation with platforms like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI, allowing security checks to run in the pipeline just like any other type of test. Embedding security scans directly into the software delivery process helps detect vulnerabilities early to reduce the time, complexity, and cost of remediation.

Post-scan steps for application security testing

Once vulnerabilities are identified, the focus shifts to remediation, workflow integration, and compliance reporting. Advanced DAST solutions help streamline these efforts by automating vulnerability tracking and enabling security teams to act on findings efficiently.

Issue prioritization

Vulnerability scanners assign a severity rating to each result they report, typically providing a CVSS score alongside a more descriptive rating. Since these scores are the primary basis for prioritization, scanner accuracy can make or break remediation efforts. Basic scanners can leave teams drowning in vulnerability reports that need manual verification to tell what is real and what needs to be actioned first.

Invicti’s proof-based scanning shows which vulnerabilities are not only real but remotely exploitable and should be addressed first. This level of accuracy allows confident automation, greatly cuts down on manual verification, and helps get the right issues to the right developers in the right order.

Remediation guidance

Security findings must be actionable to ensure timely fixes and prevent recurring issues. Because DAST operates on a running application rather than its source code, generating precise and meaningful vulnerability reports for developers is especially important—and challenging.

For leading solutions such as Invicti, developer-friendly remediation steps will provide full technical information and practical guidance, including code snippets and best practices. For automatically confirmed vulnerabilities, Invicti’s developer reports also include the attack payload and precise information about the injection point along with detailed fix recommendations to support secure coding and avoid similar issues in the future.

Workflow integrations

To be effective, security testing must integrate seamlessly and automatically into existing development and security workflows to meet developers where they work—emailing report PDFs from disconnected test tools is unlikely to result in quick fixes. With advanced DAST like Invicti, issue tracking and remediation workflows are automated through integrations with Jira, ServiceNow, and other popular platforms. Automatic ticket creation and tracking help to reduce manual effort and improve response times, helping you build and maintain a smooth and effective DevSecOps process.

Compliance and reporting

Regulatory requirements drive many security initiatives, making clear reporting a necessity. Compliance mapping ensures that DAST findings align with frameworks such as PCI DSS, ISO 27001, or HIPAA. Invicti automates compliance reporting, simplifying audit preparation and day-to-day compliance monitoring. Apart from compliance needs, Invicti can also generate a variety of reports catering to different audiences, from providing security posture and vulnerability trend overviews for leadership to delivering full technical details for developers.

Final thoughts: Making your application security DAST-first

A vulnerability scan engine used to be basically the whole DAST solution, but now it is only one component of a much bigger application security process that needs to cover the entire web attack surface. This article only scratches the surface of what goes into building and running a DAST tool and making it the cornerstone of effective application security. Ask for a free proof-of-concept demo to see how Invicti’s DAST-first AppSec platform puts you in control of your application and API security!

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