Hi everyone. I've been lurking for a while, learning a ton from this forum, and finally have a question I couldn't find a direct answer for via search. I hope it's okay to ask here.
I'm currently in the middle of a pretty involved SaaS evaluation process for a comprehensive cloud security platform, with a heavy focus on IaC security for our Terraform codebase. We're a mid-sized team managing a multi-cloud setup (mostly AWS, some Azure), and our procurement cycle has us looking at several vendors. A key component for us is the Terraform scanning capability, both for shift-left in the pipeline and for auditing existing deployed code.
We've been using Checkov in a limited capacity for about six months. It's served us okay as a free tool, but we're hitting some limits, especially around custom policy creation, the learning curve for the team, and the volume of noise we sometimes get. Our RFP process brought OpenClaw into the picture, and their sales team is heavily promoting a completely rebuilt IaC scanner they just launched this quarter. They claim it has a deeper understanding of Terraform context and significantly lower false positives.
My problem is that it's very new, and I'm struggling to find unbiased, hands-on comparisons. The vendor benchmarks I've found seem... well, sponsored. I'm trying to build a real Total Cost of Ownership model, and the efficacy of the core scanner is a huge variable.
So I'm reaching out to see if anyone in the community has had a chance to test OpenClaw's new IaC scan, specifically against Terraform, and can share any concrete experiences. I'd be incredibly grateful for any details you could provide, even if it's just on a small test repo.
Some specific things I'm trying to evaluate:
* **Accuracy & Noise:** Did you see a noticeable difference in false positive rates compared to Checkov (or other tools like Terrascan)? Any examples of issues Checkov missed that OpenClaw caught, or vice-versa?
* **Policy Customization:** How does writing custom policies compare? Is it more declarative? Easier for security engineers who aren't full-time developers?
* **Performance:** Scan speed on a moderately large repository (say, a few hundred modules)?
* **Integration Fit:** We're looking at CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab) and IDE (VS Code) integrations. Was the setup straightforward?
* **Coverage:** How comprehensive was it across AWS and Azure resource types? Did it handle complex inter-resource dependencies well?
I know this is a long list of questions. I'm just trying to move beyond sales demos and marketing claims into what it's actually like to use day-to-day. Any insights, even on just one or two of these points, would be a massive help for our evaluation.