HCL AppScan (previously known as IBM AppScan) is a family of desktop and web security testing and monitoring tools, formerly a part of the

Rational Software Rational Machines is an enterprise founded by Paul Levy and Mike Devlin in 1981 to provide tools to expand the use of modern software engineering practices, particularly explicit modular architecture and iterative development. It changed its n ...

division of

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

. In July 2019, the product was acquired by

HCLTech HCL Technologies Limited ( d/b/a HCLTech) is an Indian multinational information technology (IT) consulting company headquartered in Noida. Founded by Shiv Nadar, it was spun out in 1991 when HCL entered into the software services business. T ...

and is currently marketed under HCLSoftware, a product development division of HCLTech.

History

AppScan was originally developed by

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

i software company Sanctum Ltd. (formerly Perfecto Technologies) and was first released in 1998. A year later, Sanctum expanded its web security service and launched an

Application firewall An application firewall is a form of firewall that controls input/output or system calls of an application or service. It operates by monitoring and blocking communications based on a configured policy, generally with predefined rule sets to c ...

, called AppShield. The first version of AppShield was developed by a team led by

Gili Raanan Gili Raanan (; born 1969) is an Israeli venture capitalist and former founder of multiple software companies. Raanan started Sanctum in 1997, the company that created the Web application firewall AppShield and the web application penetration t ...

, and was running on a dedicated

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

server. AppScan version 2.0 was released in February 2001, adding a policy recognition engine and knowledge database, an automatic and customizable crawler engine, and an attack simulator. Version 3 was released in April 2002, adding collaborative testing capabilities, where different tasks can be assigned to different testers; and a number of user interface enhancements in both the scanning and reporting sections of the program. By 2003 AppScan was used by over 500 enterprise customers and had nearly $30 Million (USD) in annual revenue. In July 2004, Sanctum was acquired by

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

based company

Watchfire IBM has undergone a large number of mergers and acquisitions during a corporate history lasting over a century; the company has also produced a number of spinoffs during that time. The acquisition date listed is the date of the agreement betwe ...

, which developed a web applications management platform named WebXM. AppScan became Watchfire's flagship product and Sanctum's R&D center in

Herzliya Herzliya ( ; , / ) is an affluent List of Israeli cities, city in the Israeli coastal plain, central coast of Israel, at the northern part of the Tel Aviv District, known for its robust start-up and entrepreneurial culture. In it had a populatio ...

, Israel, became Watchfire's main R&D location. In June 2007,

was acquired by

and incorporated into the

product line, enabling IBM to cover more of the application development lifecycle with the addition of a new tool to help developers further bolster the security of the application itself.

R&D center was incorporated into IBM R&D Labs in Israel. In 2009 IBM acquired Ounce Labs and added yet another tool to AppScan to find and correct vulnerabilities in software source code. This new version was quickly re-packaged as a separate edition of AppScan: AppScan Source Edition. In June 2019, HCL acquired select IBM collaboration, commerce, digital experience, AppScan and BigFix solutions.HCL Technologies to Acquire Select IBM Software Products for $1.8B
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References

{{IBM Software testing Divested IBM products