Originally announced via GlobeNewswire on May 11, 2020. Source: globenewswire.com
GitLab Enters the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Security Testing
In May 2020, GitLab announced it had been positioned by Gartner in the Niche Players quadrant of the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Application Security Testing (AST). This marked GitLab’s first-ever inclusion in this report, with eleven vendors evaluated in total.
“We’re thrilled to be included in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Security Testing this year,” said David DeSanto, Director of Product for Secure and Defend at GitLab. “To us, our developer-first approach has allowed us to be a leader in DevOps and now has put us in a unique position among our fellow security-focused vendors. We believe our placement as a Niche Player affirms the importance of security within continuous integration and the value of shifting security left. We think it also validates our place as a trusted advisor within the security market.”
What Is the Application Security Testing Market?
Gartner defines the AST market as covering “the buyers and sellers of products and services designed to analyze and test applications for security vulnerabilities.” As of the 2020 report, Gartner noted that the market was evolving rapidly: “Initial examination of updated vendor results suggests the market is growing at a faster pace than originally projected.”
A key driver of this growth is the expanding role of developers as AST buyers. As organizations have increasingly adopted agile and DevOps practices, security tooling that integrates directly into developer workflows has become a higher priority — an area where GitLab’s platform approach is directly positioned.
GitLab’s Application Security Testing Capabilities
GitLab’s AST offering is built directly into its CI/CD pipeline and available as part of the GitLab Ultimate/Gold tier. It includes the following security scanning capabilities:
- Static Application Security Testing (SAST) — analyzes source code for known vulnerability patterns before code is deployed.
- Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) — tests running applications for vulnerabilities such as injection flaws and authentication weaknesses.
- Secret Detection — scans repositories for accidentally committed credentials, API keys, and tokens.
- Dependency Scanning — identifies known vulnerabilities in third-party libraries and packages.
- Container Scanning — checks Docker images for OS-level and package vulnerabilities.
- License Compliance — flags open-source licenses that may conflict with organizational policy.
All of these scanners run automatically within GitLab’s CI/CD pipelines, surfacing findings directly in merge requests. This enables developer and security teams to collaborate on vulnerabilities at the point where code is committed — before it reaches production.
Vulnerability Management and Security Dashboards
Teams using GitLab Ultimate/Gold benefit from integrated vulnerability management functionality. Security Dashboards are available at three levels:
- Project level — view and triage vulnerabilities for a single repository.
- Group level — aggregate vulnerability data across multiple projects within a group.
- Instance level — a top-down view of vulnerabilities across an entire GitLab instance.
These dashboards allow security engineers to track vulnerability status — including dismissals, confirmations, and remediation progress — without leaving the GitLab platform.
How Gartner Evaluated Vendors
The Magic Quadrant positions vendors along two axes: Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. Gartner’s evaluation criteria for each axis are outlined below.
Ability to Execute
- Product or service quality
- Overall viability
- Sales execution and pricing
- Market responsiveness and track record
- Marketing execution
- Customer experience
- Operations
Completeness of Vision
- Market understanding
- Marketing strategy
- Sales strategy
- Offering (product) strategy
- Business model
- Vertical and industry strategy
- Innovation
- Geographic strategy
Why This Placement Matters for DevOps Teams
GitLab’s inclusion in the Gartner AST Magic Quadrant — even as a Niche Player — is notable because it reflects a broader market shift: security is no longer solely the domain of dedicated AppSec tools. DevOps platforms that embed security scanning natively into development workflows are being recognized alongside traditional point-solution vendors.
For DevOps and platform engineering teams evaluating security tooling, this signals that a unified platform approach (where scanning is part of the pipeline rather than a bolt-on) is now a viable and analyst-recognized model. The “shift left” philosophy — catching vulnerabilities at code commit rather than at deployment — is core to GitLab’s positioning and increasingly expected by security-conscious engineering organizations.
Gartner Disclaimer
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Application Security Testing, Mark Horvath, Dionisio Zumerle, Dale Gardner, 29 April 2020.