Escape vs 42Crunch

Today, attackers prioritize exploiting an application's business logic flaws and API vulnerabilities, which may result in the unauthorized extraction of sensitive data. Understanding an application's business logic is challenging, and requires a security platform that comprehends an application's functionalities to address complex API attacks.

So I think there's going to be a long time before that happens, and I suspect that we're going to have a lot more like us, as security folks, we'll probably stop focusing on the foundational issues. And we'd be looking at much more difficult issues that our tooling has a hard time to find. Like business logic issues in itself very difficult or even AI-related issues securing AI and LLM  in itself.  - Jeevan Singh at The Elephant in AppSec Podcast

Escape is the only API security solution that combines the capabilities of API inventory, API Security testing, and business logic security testing. Unlike DAST and classic pentesting tools, Escape does not only find vulnerabilities but also helps security teams automate their API inventory without any agent or additional software deployment.  

In this article, we will highlight key differences between Escape and Burp Suite Enterprise that can impact your organization's defenses against targeted attacks and the protection of your organization's sensitive data. But first, let's lay the foundation by defining the key elements for our comparison.

Features of the best API security tools

When it comes to keeping your APIs safe, you need a good API security solution. Let's examine the main features that make the best API security tools special.

API Discovery & Inventory

Don’t know what your developers expose online? Here is when API Discovery and Inventory come into play. Every undocumented API feels like a ticking time bomb, a potential gateway for malicious breaches.

To ensure that the organization's data and services remain protected and bridge the gap between innovation and security, your top priority is to create a comprehensive inventory of all used APIs.

Automated API Discovery tools are indispensable to ensure efficiency, accuracy, and comprehensive coverage. Manual discovery should be seen as a complementary approach rather than the primary method in modern API management.

CI/CD Pipeline Integration

If you want to catch and fix security issues early in your development process, you must integrate security within your CI/CD pipeline. It ensures your applications are built securely from the ground up and helps your organization to shift left in the testing of APIs.

Support in remediation

Tired of struggling with developers to implement security in the SDLC? Making life easier for your developers is important to ensure swift security fixes. Detailed code snippet remediation helps break down complex security issues into simple, actionable steps, so your developers can quickly fix any problems that pop up.

Ease of deployment

No one wants a complicated implementation process. The faster you can start discovering and scanning your APIs, the faster you can secure your organization. Agentless solutions are your best bet: they enable data gathering without the need to alter the application's code or insert any agents into the application's communication path.

No fuss, just quick and efficient protection.

Testing undocumented APIs

Hidden vulnerabilities pose a significant risk. It's critical to discover and test undocumented APIs to find those hidden weaknesses and keep your data safe from potential threats.

Do you also want to ensure that your organization fully complies with HIPAA, new PCI-DSS 4.0 or GDPR (discover here how GDPR affects APIs)? Then, you need to ensure the security of all APIs, including those that are undocumented. Testing is crucial for ensuring compliance with these and many other regulations.

Contextual risk-based prioritization

Prioritizing security risks is vital. Contextual Risk-Based Prioritization is a strategy used in risk management and security to determine the priority of addressing vulnerabilities or threats based on their potential impact and context within a specific environment.

It helps you focus on what's most important first, making sure you're directing your efforts where they matter the most.

Head-to-head comparison: Escape vs 42Crunch

Now, let's dive in on how Escape compares to 42Crunch based on the factors above.
Here you can find the head-to-head comparison of both tools:

Let's zoom in on the details

42Crunch

42Crunch offers a platform featuring automated tools designed to enhance the security of APIs throughout the software development lifecycle. Leveraging an API security model based on testing OpenAPI/Swagger files, 42Crunch can streamline security evaluations across your CI/CD pipelines.

This process involves security testing to provide security scores and remediation advice for addressing vulnerabilities directly to developers within their integrated development environment (IDE), as well as a real-time security enforcement mechanism through an API firewall.

Escape and 42Crunch share common benefits, such as the integration of security testing in CI/CD and detailed remediations for developers. In the paragraphs below, we'll explore the differences between the two.

Deployment - OpenAPI contract

42Crunch requires defining all the elements of your API in an OpenAPI contract before scanning. OpenAPI specifications present an initial challenge, as they require constant attention for updates and maintenance. Imagine what if a developer doesn't update these files at the right time? Imagine the potential risks if a developer fails to update these files in time; it could provide attackers with an opportunity to exploit your APIs.

Support for various API types

While REST remains prevalent in the world of APIs, GraphQL is rapidly gaining popularity, especially when speed is crucial. It excels in minimizing unnecessary client queries through its unique query definition capabilities. With the increasing adoption of federated GraphQL structures, having a solution that can support multiple API types has become essential.

Unfortunately, 42Crunch is limited to supporting only documented REST APIs.

API Discovery

Automating API discovery is critical for maintaining an up-to-date and accurate API inventory, particularly one that highlights sensitive information. While 42Crunch supports discovery in GitHub, it cannot identify any external APIs. To effectively manage your APIs, you need a solution capable of detecting every API endpoint within your applications. This will empower your team to identify both unknown and vulnerable APIs. More than that, you must ensure that all your APIs, whether external or internal, adhere to standards like HIPAA, GDPR, or others, to protect sensitive data. You can't secure what you can't see.

Escape

Automated API Discovery & Inventory

Escape offers a unique approach to API security through agentless, automated scanning. You can gain a complete view of all your exposed APIs, along with their context, within just minutes.

Escape scans IP ranges and domains to collect key data about discovered APIs, including endpoint URLs, methods, response codes, and metadata, identifying potential security risks and attack paths. Additionally, we can crawl through your Postman collections, GitHub, and GitLab repositories to detect internal APIs.

This enables customers to gain visibility into all external and internal APIs, assess potential vulnerabilities or sensitive data exposure, and ensure a prioritized and effective response.

Unparalleled support for GraphQL APIs

Escape's GraphQL security scanner is currently the best on the market, with an ultra-low false positive rate.

Automated Security in CI/CD

Escape is a dynamic application scanner, and its scans can be triggered through the following usages:

• GitHub action
• Gitlab pipelines
• Bitbucket Pipelines
• on CircleCI
• in Jenkins Pipeline
• Azure DevOps
• Anywhere else using our public API
• Anywhere else using our npm package

For its Enterprise customers, Escape also offers custom security tests.

Hassle-free Implementation

Escape offers both agentless and agent-based implementation, but it's the agentless solution that truly stands out. It doesn't require access to customer data, allowing you to obtain a full inventory and start testing your APIs within minutes.

Tailored Remediation Support

Escape is developer-friendly, providing context and detailed remediations of all its findings. It fingerprints the backend framework the API is built with, providing specific and detailed steps to identify and remediate vulnerabilities.

"Escape - is the only security scanner for GraphQL that is engine aware and developer friendly."
Aleksandr Krasnov, Staff Security Engineer, Thinkific

Why customers choose Escape over 42Crunch

We hope this comparison was useful. So, let's wrap it up!

To put it simply, if you're looking for an agentless API security solution that automates API discovery, secures all your APIs, and can be implemented within minutes, Escape is your best bet. This is especially true if you have GraphQL APIs in your stack, as 42Crunch is unable to provide support for APIs outside of documented REST APIs and can only discover APIs present on GitHub.

Discovering your APIs and running security scans with Escape is simple. You or your security team can have it up and running within minutes. You will get full security observability, helping you focus on the most effective prioritization and response, and get developers on board with security in the SDLC.

Escape offers a free trial to help you experience the platform's power before making your final decision.

If you would like to learn more via live demo and see Escape's power in action with your APIs, we would love to connect with you.