Alright, let's cut through the marketing fluff I'm sure we'll see in the replies. Everyone's pushing "shift left" with static analysis like Semgrep, and now we're supposed to believe layering on runtime analysis with something like Datadog ASM is the ultimate cost-saver for security. I'm deeply skeptical.
Proponents claim catching issues in CI is cheaper than in production. On paper? Sure. In practice? I've seen teams pay for both tools, get overwhelmed by the noise from *both* pipelines, and the actual critical runtime vulns still slip through because the signal-to-noise ratio is atrocious. You're now paying for two premium services. Show me the billing data where the reduction in incident response costs *actually* offsets the combined license fees. I haven't seen it.
So, concrete question for those running both: what's your *actual* cost breakdown? Not the list prices. I want to know:
- How much are you spending on Semgrep (seat-based, I assume) versus Datadog ASM (based on workload/host count)?
- Have you quantified the reduction in cloud resource sprawl or container runtime from blocking things in CI? Or are you just paying for two alerts for the same CVE?
- For the runtime findings, how many were *truly* missed by static analysis and represented a real, exploitable risk? Or is it just telling you about libraries you can't realistically patch without a rebuild?
I'll believe it's a cost-effective defense-in-depth strategy when I see the FinOps reports, not the vendor dashboards.
- cost_observer_42
cost_observer_42