Ask five questions: what do you ship, what can you run, what failure worries you most, who will triage results, and what must you prove to others. Your answers point to one method to start with and one to add next, which beats comparing feature lists.
Question 1: What are you shipping?
Mostly imported code points to dependency scanning. Mostly your own logic points to static analysis. A web app with many pages points to dynamic scanning. A parser, protocol handler or file importer points to fuzzing.
Question 2: What can you actually run?
Match method to input. Dependency scanning needs lockfiles. Static analysis needs source and often a working build. Dynamic scanning needs a running environment with test accounts. Interactive testing needs instrumentation plus test traffic. If you lack the input, you will get thin results however good the tool is.
Question 3: Which failure worries you most?
- A known flaw in a library: dependency scanning.
- An injection bug in your code: static analysis, then dynamic scanning to confirm.
- A crash from malformed input: fuzzing.
- A broken access rule: tests and manual review, since no automated method judges your business rules well.
Question 4: Who will triage the results?
This one decides more rollouts than any feature. OWASP warns that static tools can produce high numbers of false positives and that it is hard to prove a flagged issue is a real vulnerability. If nobody owns triage, pick the method with the fewest ambiguous findings, usually dependency scanning, and add others when someone has time.
Question 5: What must you prove?
If a customer, auditor or regulator asks about testing, check what evidence each method produces and in what format. Standard output formats help. OWASP lists interoperability of output as a selection criterion and points to the SARIF format for static results. Pick something that leaves a dated trail.
Reading your answers
| Your situation | Start with | Add next |
|---|---|---|
| Library-heavy web app, small team | Dependency scanning | Dynamic scan of staging |
| Custom logic, many contributors | Static analysis on pull requests | Dependency scanning |
| Parsers or native code | Fuzzing | Static analysis |
| Regulated data, formal audits | Dependency scanning and static analysis with exportable results | Independent testing |
Nothing here is permanent. Re-ask the five questions each quarter. Teams grow, products change and the first choice often stops being the right one.
Where Safeguard fits
If your answers point to dependency scanning, Safeguard provides SBOM and dependency scanning with reachability analysis to cut noise, policies and gates, and compliance evidence automation. It does not provide static, dynamic or fuzz testing. The free scan is at https://gold.safeguard.sh/scan.
Quick check
Do I need all five methods?
No. Most teams run two or three. Pick by what you ship and what you can triage, and add methods as risk grows.
What if two methods seem equally good for us?
Pick the one whose input you already have and whose results someone is ready to own. Adoption beats theoretical coverage.
Sources
Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.
