CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

42Crunch vs Black Duck

42Crunch sells a platform for governing the security of MCP servers, APIs and AI agents at enterprise scale. 42Crunch says it helps enterprises bring AI security under control. 42Crunch describes the job as discovering every MCP server that AI agents expose or consume, securing each one against attack, and assessing compliance with AI regulations and security frameworks. Black Duck sells application security testing products and services, including agentic AI AppSec, SAST, DAST, IAST and SCA. CISO Tribune files both under Dynamic application security testing. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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Up to four companies side by side.

  • 42Crunch
  • Black Duck
42Crunch vs Black Duck: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
42Crunch42Crunch sells a platform for governing the security of MCP servers, APIs and AI agents at enterprise scale. 42Crunch says it helps enterprises bring AI security under control. 42Crunch describes the job as discovering every MCP server that AI agents expose or consume, securing each one against attack, and assessing compliance with AI regulations and security frameworks.42crunch.comBlack DuckBlack Duck sells application security testing products and services, including agentic AI AppSec, SAST, DAST, IAST and SCA.blackduck.com
What it sells
  • AI Regulatory Compliance[5]Evaluates every MCP server against regulatory and industry frameworks. Maps each finding to the control it breaches.
  • Black Duck Polaris Platform[6]A single SaaS platform for AppSec testing, automation and policy controls.
  • Coverity Static Analysis[1][8]Static code analysis built for developers and backed by security teams.
  • Black Duck SCA[8][9]Software composition analysis for open source and third-party code.
  • Defensics Fuzzing[8]Black box fuzzing of services and protocols.
Categories
Headquarters
London, United KingdomNot stated on its pages
Founded
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesOwned by Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners since 2024[2][3][13][20]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • September 23, 202642Crunch announced the general availability of its MCP Security Governance solution.[8]
  • January 19, 202642Crunch announced the availability of API Contract Generator in developer IDEs.[9]
  • April 9, 2026Black Duck appointed Dom Glavach as Chief Information Security Officer to lead its global security strategy.[16]
  • February 11, 2026Black Duck signed a managed security service provider agreement with Accenture.[17]
  • December 10, 2025Black Duck launched Black Duck Signal, an agentic AI solution for detecting and remediating vulnerabilities in applications.[18]
  • December 3, 2025Black Duck appointed Roman Telerman as its new Chief Financial Officer.[19]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
From its own pages, 42Crunch sells mainly to enterprise security and platform teams that govern MCP servers, APIs and AI agent security at scale. Its pricing is sized to the number of APIs, MCP servers and users in an organization. Individual developers who use its AI coding agent plugins have a separate self-serve pricing option.From its own pages, Black Duck sells mainly to development and DevOps teams and to security teams. Black Duck names enterprises, startups, PE firms and legal teams as users of its audits. Black Duck acts as a technical advisor to private equity firms and their portfolio companies. Black Duck says its tools work in the cloud or on premises.
Last verified
November 9, 2026November 2, 2026

Where they overlap

  • 42Crunch and Black Duck are both filed under Dynamic application security testing.

Where they differ, field by field

  • 42Crunch's primary category is API security; Black Duck's is Software composition analysis.
  • 42Crunch is also filed under AI model and agent security. Black Duck is also filed under Static application security testing.
  • 42Crunch lists AI Regulatory Compliance. Black Duck lists Black Duck Polaris Platform, Coverity Static Analysis, Black Duck SCA and Defensics Fuzzing.
  • 42Crunch is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
  • Black Duck is owned by Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners, since 2024.

What it sells: 42Crunch

What AI Regulatory Compliance does[5]
42Crunch continuously evaluates every MCP server against the regulatory and industry frameworks an organization answers to. It maps each finding to the specific control it breaches. The page says compliance posture is computed by the control on every audit and every scan, not assembled from documents afterward. Its headline refers to real-time compliance reporting mapped to five frameworks.

What it sells: Black Duck

What Black Duck Polaris Platform does[6]
Black Duck describes Polaris as a platform that unifies SAST, SCA, DAST, DevOps automation, policy controls and AppSec analytics in one SaaS platform. Black Duck says its application security platform has flexible pricing and plans that scale with the business.
What Black Duck SCA does[8][9]
Black Duck SCA identifies all open source dependencies in software and generates a Software Bill of Materials. It surfaces the licenses used for each identified open source dependency.

Questions about 42Crunch and Black Duck

What do 42Crunch and Black Duck sell?
42Crunch sells AI Regulatory Compliance. Black Duck sells Black Duck Polaris Platform, Coverity Static Analysis, Black Duck SCA and Defensics Fuzzing.
Are 42Crunch and Black Duck in the same category?
They share Dynamic application security testing. 42Crunch's primary category is API security and Black Duck's is Software composition analysis.
Where are 42Crunch and Black Duck headquartered?
42Crunch is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
Who owns 42Crunch and Black Duck?
Black Duck is owned by Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners, since 2024.
Who are 42Crunch and Black Duck sold to?
From its own pages, 42Crunch sells mainly to enterprise security and platform teams that govern MCP servers, APIs and AI agent security at scale. From its own pages, Black Duck sells mainly to development and DevOps teams and to security teams.
What have 42Crunch and Black Duck announced recently?
September 23, 2026: 42Crunch announced the general availability of its MCP Security Governance solution. April 9, 2026: Black Duck appointed Dom Glavach as Chief Information Security Officer to lead its global security strategy.

About 42Crunch

42Crunch sells a platform for governing the security of MCP servers, APIs and AI agents at enterprise scale. 42Crunch says it helps enterprises bring AI security under control. 42Crunch describes the job as discovering every MCP server that AI agents expose or consume, securing each one against attack, and assessing compliance with AI regulations and security frameworks.[4][10]

42Crunch says AI coding agents ship MCP servers faster than any manual inventory process can track. 42Crunch discovers every MCP server across an organization automatically, both sanctioned and shadow alike, audits each one and ranks it by risk. 42Crunch says every request from an AI agent passes through the MCP server before it ever reaches an enterprise system or the API behind it. 42Crunch also says an MCP tool is only as secure as the API it wraps.[4]

42Crunch says its deterministic contract-driven model applies equally to the MCP and API layer. Every MCP server and every API behind it gets a machine-readable contract of its declared surface. In the 42Crunch model, discovery writes the contract, testing measures against it, and runtime enforces it. 42Crunch says the model it uses to secure APIs now extends to the MCP servers AI agents call and expose.[4][6]

On the MCP side, 42Crunch sweeps registries, gateways and repos to surface the shadow servers agents are already calling, then reads each server's advertised tools, resources and prompts and emits a contract. Every finding carries severity, evidence and the fix. 42Crunch fails the build when a server leaves its approved contract, then keeps watching the one in production for new tools, rewritten descriptions and widened permissions.[4]

Tests are generated from the OpenAPI definition and run in the pipeline, covering broken object-level authorization, broken auth, mass assignment and unrestricted resource consumption. All AI generated code is automatically fixed by 42Crunch. For runtime, 42Crunch describes a positive-security firewall assembled from the contract itself, where unknown paths, extra parameters, malformed payloads and over-sharing responses are rejected before they reach the backend.[4]

For compliance, 42Crunch says the EU AI Act, ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF, CSA AICM and OWASP are all tagged automatically on every audit. A security review doubles as compliance evidence without extra work. Each finding arrives already tied to the control it answers, so the audit trail for an AI estate is a by-product of the scan. 42Crunch computes compliance posture control by control on every audit and every scan, not assembled from documents afterward. Each audit and scan checks a server against all applicable frameworks at the same time.[4][5][11]

A server below the threshold does not reach production.[12]

42Crunch is built for enterprise security and platform teams governing MCP servers, APIs and AI agent security at scale. 42Crunch pairs API Audit, Scan and Protection with MCP Contract, Audit, Scan and Protect on one platform, with one set of SQG policies and one CI/CD pattern. Pricing includes a dedicated encrypted tenant, SSO and a dedicated support manager, sized to the number of APIs, MCP servers and users. Individual developers who use the 42Crunch AI coding agent plugins have a self-serve pricing option.[2][3][4][5][6][7][10][12]

42Crunch on the record

Sources

42Crunch full record

  1. [1]42crunch criticalblue announce partnership42Crunch · 42crunch.com · published November 21, 2018 · Tier A
  2. [2]42crunch.com42Crunch · 42crunch.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]42crunch publishes state of api security 202642Crunch · 42crunch.com · published February 11, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]42Crunch — AI Security Platform for MCP42Crunch · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]AI Regulatory Compliance | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Management der MCP-Server-Sicherheitslage | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]About 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]42Crunch Launches MCP Security Governance, Giving Enterprises Detailed AI Exposure Management and Compliance with AI Regulatory Frameworks42Crunch · published September 23, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]42Crunch Launches API Contract Generator in Developer IDEs42Crunch · published January 19, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Pricing | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]KI-Regulierungskonformität | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Management der MCP-Server-Sicherheitslage | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A

Black Duck full record

  1. [1]blackduck.comBlack Duck · blackduck.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Clearlake and francisco partners complete acquisition of black duck software formerly known as synopsys software integrity group 302264926Clearlake Capital Group via PR Newswire · prnewswire.com · published October 1, 2024 · Tier A
  3. [3]Black Duck Reviews, Ratings & Features 2026 | Gartner Peer InsightsGartner Peer Insights · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier C
  4. [4]Application Security Testing | Software Composition Analysis & Open Source Security | SAST/DAST/SCA | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Black Duck Named a Leader in the Inaugural 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Software Supply Chain Security - Jun 22, 2026Black Duck · published June 22, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Polaris Demo | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Get pricing | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Embedded and ISV Software | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Open Source Security & License Compliance | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]DevOps integrations for developers | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Security Solutions for development and DevOps teams | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Software Audit Services | Security & Due Diligence | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Mergers & Acquisitions | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Application Security Solutions for Cloud Security | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Black Duck Customer Success | Black DuckBlack Duck · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Black Duck Appoints Dom Glavach as Chief Information Security OfficerBlack Duck · published April 9, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]Black Duck Announces MSSP Agreement with Accenture, Combining World-Class Application Security Technology and ServicesPR Newswire · published February 11, 2026 · Tier A
  18. [18]Introducing Black Duck Signal™: Agentic AI Application Security for Modern DevelopmentBlack Duck · published December 10, 2025 · Tier A
  19. [19]Black Duck Appoints Roman Telerman as Chief Financial Officer to Drive Strategic GrowthBlack Duck · published December 3, 2025 · Tier A
  20. [20]Black Duck Polaris Platform Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2G2 · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier C

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