CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Apiiro vs Black Duck

Apiiro offers Guardian Agent, which protects coding agents, prevents risk and AutoFixes backlogs, powered by the Apiiro Context Graph. Black Duck sells application security testing products and services, including agentic AI AppSec, SAST, DAST, IAST and SCA. CISO Tribune files both under Software composition analysis. 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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  • Apiiro
  • Black Duck
Apiiro vs Black Duck: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
ApiiroApiiro offers Guardian Agent, which protects coding agents, prevents risk and AutoFixes backlogs, powered by the Apiiro Context Graph.apiiro.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-SAST[9]Static analysis that uses context from the customer's software graph and business risk to detect vulnerabilities.
  • AI-SCA[10]Open source security that moves from CVE matching to risk validation and fix.
  • 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
Not stated on its pagesNot 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
Not stated on its pages
  • 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: listed, seen November 10, 2026[15]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
From its own pages, Apiiro presents Guardian Agent as delivering outcomes for CISOs and CTOs. In our reading, the Apiiro Context Graph is aimed at application security, development and compliance teams working alongside coding agents. Apiiro gives maintainers free AutoFix.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 3, 2026November 2, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Apiiro and Black Duck are both filed under Software composition analysis.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Apiiro's primary category is Application security posture management; Black Duck's is Software composition analysis.
  • Apiiro is also filed under Software supply chain security and AI model and agent security. Black Duck is also filed under Static application security testing and Dynamic application security testing.
  • Apiiro lists AI-SAST and AI-SCA. Black Duck lists Black Duck Polaris Platform, Coverity Static Analysis, Black Duck SCA and Defensics Fuzzing.
  • Black Duck is owned by Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners, since 2024.

What it sells: Apiiro

What AI-SAST does[9]
AI-SAST shifts static analysis from a detection problem to a risk validation and fix problem. AI-powered SAST uses context from the customer's software graph and business risk to detect vulnerabilities, validate true positives and identify false positives. Deep Code Analysis builds the Software Graph across files, code modules, repositories and code owners, updated on every commit.
What AI-SCA does[10]
AI-SCA shifts open source security from CVE matching to risk validation and fix. Contextual analysis decides whether a vulnerability is used in code, internet exposed and exploitable. Malicious packages, license conflicts and AI components are covered beyond CVEs. Dependency scanning reaches the leaf node, covering direct, transitive and custom-built internal dependencies.

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 Apiiro and Black Duck

What do Apiiro and Black Duck sell?
Apiiro sells AI-SAST and AI-SCA. Black Duck sells Black Duck Polaris Platform, Coverity Static Analysis, Black Duck SCA and Defensics Fuzzing.
Are Apiiro and Black Duck in the same category?
They share Software composition analysis. Apiiro's primary category is Application security posture management and Black Duck's is Software composition analysis.
Who owns Apiiro and Black Duck?
Black Duck is owned by Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners, since 2024.
Who are Apiiro and Black Duck sold to?
From its own pages, Apiiro presents Guardian Agent as delivering outcomes for CISOs and CTOs. From its own pages, Black Duck sells mainly to development and DevOps teams and to security teams.
What have Apiiro and Black Duck announced recently?
April 9, 2026: Black Duck appointed Dom Glavach as Chief Information Security Officer to lead its global security strategy.

About Apiiro

Apiiro offers Guardian Agent, which protects coding agents, prevents risk and AutoFixes backlogs, powered by the Apiiro Context Graph. Apiiro describes agentic development as a setting where code is written by agents, risk appears at machine speed, and offensive agents exploit vulnerabilities in seconds. Guardian Agent delivers three outcomes for CISOs and CTOs by executing actions and measuring success. On compliance, Apiiro provides automated evidence collection and policy enforcement for every feature and code change.[1][3][4][5]

Guardian Agent actions run on the AppSec Context Graph, made up of a Software Graph and a Risk Graph, which gives every action the context of policies and software architecture from prompt to code to runtime. Patented Deep Code Analysis (DCA) and code-to-runtime matching continuously map each customer's evolving software architecture, including APIs, AI assets, PII, OSS, internal packages and their material changes. Apiiro correlates code to runtime to trace exposure paths and reachability. Apiiro governs every tool and change, human or agent, with one policy and risk engine.[2][3][4]

Apiiro discovers, inventories and catalogs AI models, agents, MCP servers, AI datasets, 3rd-party services and everything inside codebases. Apiiro discovers and inventories the AI tools that developers and coding agents use, including IDEs, extensions, skills, plugins and MCP servers. Apiiro discovers, inventories and tracks open-source dependencies, licenses, end-of-life status, versions and vulnerabilities, and where they are used across the software architecture graph. Apiiro discovers, inventories and assesses cryptographic usage in code, including encryption, hashing, keys, secrets, certificates, algorithms and KMS implementation. Apiiro discovers, inventories and maps CI/CD pipelines, build systems, artifacts, registries, deployment flows and the software delivery paths from code to runtime. Apiiro's policy and risk engine is an open, graph-based risk engine that correlates findings from 1st/3rd-party tools, maps them to the software graph, detects toxic combinations and blast radius, and prioritizes business-specific risk. Apiiro assesses AI usage risks across code and the software supply chain, including dependencies, models, coding agents, MCP servers, skills and extensions. Apiiro continuously ingests, assesses, manages and tracks Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) across codebases, the software supply chain (OSS) and 3rd-party applications.[1][7]

Autonomous monitoring detects new feature tickets in Jira, GitHub and Azure DevOps and triggers threat analysis with no human in the loop.[8]

AI-SAST shifts static analysis from a detection problem to a risk validation and fix problem. Deep Code Analysis (DCA) continuously builds a Software Graph of the software architecture across files, code modules, repositories and code owners, updated on every commit and material change. AI-SCA shifts open source security from CVE matching to risk validation and fix. Apiiro continuously detects vulnerable and malicious OSS components and risky licenses using AI-powered context from the customer's software graph and business risk. Dependency scanning runs to the leaf node, covering direct, transitive and custom-built internal dependencies. Open source coverage extends beyond CVEs to malicious packages, license conflicts and AI components.[5][6][7][9][10][12]

Apiiro detects secrets in code, history, documentation and pipelines. Apiiro surfaces secrets deleted from the codebase that remain in every branch and revision of Git history. Apiiro checks every detected secret against the issuing platform, marking it valid, invalid or revoked. Guardrails block valid secrets at the pull request, before deployment. Apiiro inventories AI agents, MCP servers, GenAI frameworks, models, datasets and AI-related secrets from code on every commit. Apiiro blocks unapproved frameworks and models at the pull request. Apiiro generates audit-ready evidence for the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001 from code.[11][12]

Apiiro maps packages, skills and plugins to their repositories, coding agents, pipelines and running containers. Apiiro's Dependency Firewall scans open-source code using Deep Code Analysis to detect and block malicious packages before installation. Apiiro inspects packages downloaded by coding agents, locally and in the cloud, across operating systems. Package policies control installations based on malware, backdoors, vulnerabilities and application risk.[13]

AutoFix takes findings from Apiiro's own scanners, 3rd-party scanners and frontier model scans, and fixes them across the attack surface. Apiiro generates each fix in the context of the software architecture graph and organizational policies, and runs tests to prove nothing breaks. Apiiro reflects Chainguard's remediation state directly in Risk Graph, so findings Chainguard has already fixed stop showing as open. Apiiro AutoFixes OSS in first-party code based on risk and gives maintainers free AutoFix to accelerate community fixes.[1][2][3][5][6][7][8][9][10][14]

Apiiro on the record

Sources

Apiiro full record

  1. [1]apiiro.comApiiro · apiiro.com · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Apiiro named the most innovative aspm provider worldwide byfrostsullivansApiiro · apiiro.com · published December 9, 2025 · Tier A
  3. [3]Apiiro Context Graph: How it Works, Benefits, Use Cases | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Guardian Agent: Application Security Posture Management to action | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Guardian Agent: Secure agentic development | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Free AutoFix for open source maintainers | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Apiiro: Secure your agentic developmentApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Guardian Agent: AI Threat Modeling, Secure by Design | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]AI-SAST: Static scanning reimagined | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]AI-SCA: Open source security reimagined | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Secrets Security: Detect, validate, fix | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]AI-SPM: Discover & govern every AI asset | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Guardian Agent: Protect from Software Supply Chain Attacks | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Guardian Agent: AutoFix SAST, SCA, Secrets, API, Containers | ApiiroApiiro · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Apiiro Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & FeaturesG2 · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier C

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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