Invicti DAST leads on coverage and accuracy in independent Miercom benchmark

Key takeaways

• Invicti DAST was the only tested solution to detect all 31 critical vulnerabilities present in the test applications.
• The benchmark covered 11 diverse targets, including APIs, SPAs, GraphQL services, and traditional web apps.
• Depending on the test target, some competing tools would miss critical issues, overreport false positives, or report zero findings where vulnerabilities were known to be present.
• Scan speed varied across vendors, but extremely fast scans usually came at the cost of greatly reduced coverage.
• DAST on the Invicti Platform demonstrated consistent performance across all target environments with minimal workflow changes required.

Independent validation of DAST accuracy across modern architectures

The Miercom benchmark evaluated multiple DAST solutions under comparable conditions. 11 intentionally vulnerable applications were used as test targets to measure detection accuracy, scan behavior, and usability across widely varying architectures. This approach reflects a core reality of modern application security: organizations are no longer securing a single monolithic app but a mix of APIs, microservices, JavaScript-heavy frontends, and legacy systems. Any meaningful evaluation must account for that diversity.

According to the report, Invicti consistently identified high-impact vulnerabilities across all tested environments while maintaining stable scan execution. As Miercom notes in its executive summary:

“The effectiveness of a DAST solution is determined not only by the volume of findings produced, but by the accuracy, severity coverage, consistency, and operational practicality of those findings across environments.”
—Miercom DAST Scanner Security Benchmark 2026

This framing highlights a key distinction in DAST performance: tools that generate large numbers of findings may still fall short if they fail to reliably detect critical exploitable issues or distinguish between false positives and real vulnerabilities.

Where competitors fall short: Complete detection of critical vulnerabilities

One of the most notable outcomes of the benchmark was Invicti’s complete detection of all 31 critical vulnerabilities known to exist in the test targets. By contrast, other evaluated solutions often identified significantly fewer critical issues. In some cases, scanners reported no critical findings at all, despite their confirmed presence in the applications.

The report also points to a recurring trade-off in DAST tooling. Some scanners completed their runs more quickly, but at the expense of depth and accuracy. Others produced higher volumes of lower-severity findings, increasing noise and triage workload without materially improving risk visibility.

Invicti’s results showed scan durations consistently aligned with coverage depth, emphasizing detection quality over superficial speed. In other words, whenever an Invicti scan ran for longer, it was because it was testing deeper and identifying more real issues. When a competitor performed a scan much faster, it was usually at the cost of vastly reduced coverage. 

Striking the right balance of speed and accuracy is crucial for teams that prioritize actual risk reduction rather than scan completion metrics.

Why accuracy matters for real-world AppSec programs

For security teams, the Miercom benchmark findings have very practical consequences. Missing critical vulnerabilities in production systems creates immediate exposure, while excessive false positives slow down remediation and erode trust in security tools.

By highlighting the ability of DAST to accurately identify exploitable security gaps in running applications and APIs, the Miercom results also validate the practicality of a DAST-first approach to application security, as championed by Invicti. Within the Invicti Platform, DAST serves as a crucial validation layer across the broader application security program. By accurately confirming exploitability, it helps security and development teams prioritize what to fix first and avoid wasting time on non-actionable findings.

This aligns with how modern AppSec programs operate: by combining visibility across applications and APIs with accurate, actionable results that support faster remediation and clearer risk prioritization.

Recognition from Miercom

Based on its performance in the benchmark, Invicti was awarded the Miercom Certified Secure certification, which is granted to solutions that demonstrate strong security efficacy without compromising performance or reliability.

“The Miercom benchmark highlights the importance of accurate vulnerability detection in today’s complex application environments,” said Rob Smithers, CEO of Miercom. “Security teams are dealing with a wide range of modern architectures, and many tools generate noise while missing the vulnerabilities that actually matter. Independent testing like this helps demonstrate which solutions can reliably identify real risk across modern web applications and APIs.”

This perspective reflects a broader shift in how organizations now evaluate and use application security tools: the move away from feature checklists and towards measurable outcomes in real-world conditions. The same trend was highlighted in the Latio 2026 Application Security Market Report.

Get the full DAST benchmark report

The Miercom DAST Scanner Security Benchmark 2026 report provides detailed insights into testing methodology, application targets, and comparative results across all evaluated solutions.

Download the full Miercom DAST benchmark report to explore the findings in detail, and request a demo of the Invicti Application Security Platform to see how Invicti’s DAST-first approach can provide risk-based prioritization in your environment.