Detectify Surface Monitoring vs ModSecurity

Detectify Surface Monitoring continuously monitors internet-facing subdomains for exposed files, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations. It discovers domains, subdomains, IP addresses and ranges, open ports, and running technologies; cloud connectors for AWS, Azure, Cloudflare, and GCP can help locate assets across an external attack surface. Thousands of security tests cover issues such as misconfigurations, XSS, SSRF, and RCE. Teams can define custom rules for particular changes, then filter and tag findings that include remediation tips. The cloud service supports API access, authenticated and browser-based scanning, API testing, and CI/CD integration. Integrations include Jira, Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, ServiceNow, Splunk, webhooks, GitLab, and GitHub Actions. Detectify says research from a community of more than 400 ethical hackers informs the product, with some findings reaching implementation in as little as 15 minutes. Plans list annual platform fees from free for Starter to €15,000 a year for Enterprise; monitoring costs extra per domain on every plan. A 14-day trial is listed.

ModSecurity is an open-source web application firewall that examines incoming HTTP(S) traffic and can block malicious requests before they reach an application. It runs inside Apache, Nginx or IIS as a module, not as a separate appliance or proxy. The project provides traffic visibility, a rules language and an API for implementing protections. ModSecurity can run alone or with the OWASP Core Rule Set, which the FAQ says provides broad coverage against common web attacks. Listed uses include real-time security monitoring and access control, HTTP traffic logging, passive security assessment and web application hardening. It supports Linux, Unix-like systems, Windows and macOS when paired with a compatible web server. Installation guidance recommends starting in detection-only mode, reviewing and tuning events, then enabling blocking. Inspecting every request can have a small performance impact, and tuning rules can help manage it. OWASP maintains the project with community contributors, with Slack and GitHub listed for community activity. The plan costs nothing; managed rule sets are not included.