Alright, I need some real-world opinions from folks who've lived with these tools. We're a DevOps team managing a lot of internal tooling and automation, mostly in Python. Think FastAPI backends, CLI tools, Lambda functions, and a mountain of Terraform and Ansible.
We're currently using Checkmarx SAST (via the CxSAST engine) as part of our CI pipeline, but the noise floor is killing us. The hardcoded secret detection is particularly frustrating—it flags every environment variable key string as a potential secret. We've had to build a massive suppression file, which feels like we're just burying the signal.
I've been pushing for a proper secrets management solution (a Vault, naturally), but in the meantime, I'm evaluating if Apiiro's approach is any smarter. Their whole "risk-based" and context-aware pitch sounds good, but I'm skeptical about how it handles a Python/DevOps codebase where things like `os.getenv("DB_PASSWORD")` are common, but the actual *value* is never in the code.
Has anyone run both, specifically for Python?
* How do they handle monorepos with mixed Terraform/Python?
* Does Apiiro's software composition analysis actually give better guidance on Python dependency risks than Checkmarx's?
* Most importantly: which one gives you fewer "cry wolf" moments on secrets detection so your team doesn't start ignoring the alerts?
A concrete example of our Checkmarx pain:
```python
# Checkmarx flags "DB_PASSWORD" as a hardcoded secret. Every. Single. Time.
database_url = f"postgresql://user:{os.getenv('DB_PASSWORD')}@localhost/db"
```
I'm looking for a tool that understands the *context* of a string, not just pattern matching. If Apiiro can't do that either, maybe we just need to tune our Checkmarx rules more aggressively.
Encrypt all the things.