Welcome
Welcome to the documentation for HCL AppScan Standard version 10.4.0
Getting started
This section provides a short tour of basic product features and procedures, including using the wizard to set up a scan.
Configuration
You configure a scan by choosing settings that best describe your application, and the kind of testing you want.
- Presets
  Presets give you the main configuration views needed for a particular type of scan.
- Views
  - Starting URL and domains
    Configure the Starting URL for the scan, and any additional servers and domains to be included.
  - API
    For scanning web APIs, define the your API type (improves coverage by better configuring custom parameters), explore method, and domains to be tested.
  - Exclude paths and files
    You can configure AppScan to ignore certain paths in the application, or specific types of file.
  - Multi-step operations
    Record and manage multi-step operations that are required to reach specific parts of the application that could otherwise be missed.
  - Login management
    Show AppScan® how to log in to your application.
  - Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
    Configure AppScan® to use one-time password or security questions (multi-factor authentication) when logging in.
  - HTTP authentication
    Add server-level authentication and client-side certificates, if required by the application.
  - AWS authorization
    Configure AWS settings.
  - Communication and proxy
    Configure communication timeout and proxy server settings.
  - Parameters, cookies & headers
    Identify session IDs and list parameters to exclude from the scan.
    - Parameter definition
      You can define parameters, cookies and headers that you want to exclude from being tested during scans.
    - Parameter names
    - Session IDs
    - Redundancy tuning
      Careful redundancy tuning can significantly reduce scan time.
      - Redundancy tuning options
        Redundancy tuning for parameters and cookies with special attributes, listed in Configuration > Parameters and Cookies.
      - Redundancy tuning defaults
        Redundancy tuning for parameters and cookies with special attributes, listed in Configuration > Parameters and Cookies.
      - Changing redundancy tuning defaults
        The default redundancy tuning setting is applied to all new additions to the list in Configuration > Parameters and Cookies, unless manually changed.
      - Changing redundancy tuning for a specific parameter
    - Custom Parameters tab
      The Custom Parameters tab of Parameters and Cookies view in the Configuration dialog box.
    - Custom Header tab
      The Custom Headers tab of Parameters and Cookies view in the Configuration dialog box.
  - Automatic form fill
    Provide AppScan® with valid parameter values for filling forms in your application during the scan.
  - Error pages
    Add strings, regular expressions and URLs to identify your application's custom error pages.
  - Explore options
    Define the explore method (action-based, request-based, or both) that AppScan will use to explore the application, as well as other basic and advanced explore settings.
  - Test policy and optimization
    Define the collection of tests that will be sent to the application during testing (the test policy), and apply optimization for faster scans at times in the product lifecycle when speed is more important to you than scan depth.
  - Environment definition
    Environment definition is not essential, but enables AppScan® to safely refrain from sending non-relevant tests during the scan, resulting in a faster and more accurate scan. Customizing CVSS 3.1 environmental scores will improve the accuracy of your scan results.
  - Test options
    Additional test options.
  - Privilege escalation
    Compare scans that used different user privileges, to discover if privileged resources are accessible to non-privileged users.
  - Content-based view
    Lets you define a logical structure for the application tree, for cases where a URL-based tree will just be a long list under one or two URLs. This is not essential, but can make it much easier to navigate results.
  - Advanced configuration
    This view gives you access to many advanced registry settings and it should only be used by experienced AppScan users, or when instructed to do so by the support team to troubleshoot a problem.
- Scan using a Postman Collection
  If you have a Postman Collection of requests to your web API, you can import it and use it as the basis for a scan.
- Scan file structure
  Explains the basic structure of an AppScan Standard SCAN file.
- Scan templates
  A scan template is simply a scan configuration that has been saved so that you can use it again.
- Changing the configuration during a scan
Manual exploring
Manual exploring enables you to explore specific parts of your application, filling in fields and forms as you go. This can be a way of ensuring that particular areas of the site are covered, and that AppScan has the information needed to complete forms correctly.
Scanning
Learn how to start a scan, and what happens during the scan; how to manually manipulate the Explore stage, and how to export the results of a scan.
Data
Data view is populated with information about the structure of the site during the Explore stage of the scan.
Issues
Issues view provides access to the results of a scan. You can view results at a high level or select specific tests or objects and access more details. These details include how to fix, requests/responses, and differences between the test variants that resulted in issues. You can manipulate the severity of issues, resend tests (with or without modifications), and create reports based on Issues.
Reports
This section describes how to generate reports from the scan results.
Tools
This section explains how to use additional tools provided with HCL AppScan Standard.
Integrations
This section describes integrations of other applications with AppScan Standard:
Best practices
This section contains some best practices and use cases for advanced users.
FAQ & Troubleshooting
CLI
This section describes the syntax and options available using the Command line interface.
References
Menus and toolbar summaries, and glossary

Redundancy tuning

Careful redundancy tuning can significantly reduce scan time.

AppScan® tries to avoid sending more than one request when it is clear that no new information will be revealed. In many cases a difference in the value of a particular parameter is insignificant, and it is not necessary to send more than one request when all other parameters are the same and only that value is different.

Consider the following two requests:

.../doAction.pl?action=buy&timestamp=14:00&n=1

.../doAction.pl?action=buy&timestamp=15:30&n=1

The only difference between them is their Timestamp value.

In most cases it would be sufficient to send a single request using either of the configurations, and unnecessary to send them both. It is unlikely that the response to one of the requests would reveal any weakness that would not also be revealed by the other. You should therefore configure the Redundancy Tuning settings for the Timestamp parameter so that in cases like this only one of the requests will be sent.

See also:

Redundancy tuning options

Redundancy tuning defaults

Changing redundancy tuning defaults

Changing redundancy tuning for a specific parameter