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Topscan.me – a new security platform with a new approach to scanning

Article news.ycombinator.com

Topscan.me – a new security platform with a new approach to scanning

Topscan.me is a security scanning platform for companies where security is somebody's second job, usually a CTO or a DevOps lead. It covers what is normally bought from three vendors: code analysis, scanning of running web applications and monitoring of the external perimeter, all in one workspace with a deadline on every finding. What distinguishes it is a handful of decisions about how scanning should behave, described below.

What it covers

- Code. GitHub or GitLab repositories, self-managed included, connected with a read-only token: risky patterns, exposed secrets, vulnerable dependencies. The clone is deleted when the scan ends; only the finding and a snippet of the affected lines remain.

- Running web applications. External scanning, with an optional deep mode that crawls the app and runs active OWASP Top 10 tests.

- The perimeter. Open ports, service versions, known vulnerabilities, certificates, and any host that appears where none was before, rescanned on a schedule.

- AWS. Discovery of EC2 and Route 53 resources through keys the customer issues. Nothing is installed on the customer's servers.

Discovery first, scanning only with consent

Adding a domain triggers discovery: Certificate Transparency logs, DNS, and one ordinary HTTP request per host, the same request a browser sends. No ports are touched. Within five to ten minutes the result is a map of what faces the internet.

Nothing else runs until the user confirms a target. Port scans and active checks are limited to confirmed hosts, and confirming a target is how the user asserts authorisation to scan it. The documentation is direct about why: in some jurisdictions an unauthorised port scan is a criminal matter. Hosts discovered and then dismissed are never scanned and use no licence.

One finding per vulnerability, status per host

The same vulnerability on five hosts is one entry in the issue list, so the list stays as long as the problem is. Status, though, is kept per host and port. Mark a finding as a false positive on one host and the other four keep their deadline. When status is stored on the vulnerability itself, as a lot of tools do, one click can quietly hide a real problem on forty other machines. Topscan keys status to target, issue type, port and protocol, and a triage mode expands any grouped entry into its individual occurrences.

A score built on deadlines, not counts

Every finding gets a deadline from the day it was first detected: 7 days for critical, 30 for high, 60 for medium, 90 for low. The Security Score starts at 100 and loses points only when a finding passes its deadline. A workspace that scans more and finds more does not score worse for having looked. Snoozing pauses the clock and resumes it where it stopped. A deferred fix stays visible. A separate, cumulative SLA compliance rate covers the whole history of the workspace for auditors.

Evidence on every finding

Each finding carries what produced it: hostname, status code, response banner or certificate date, and the time of the check, so it can be verified in seconds without trusting the label. The engines are open source and named: naabu for ports, OpenVAS for infrastructure vulnerabilities, Nuclei for web checks, OWASP ZAP for the deep stage. The engine is not the product; the inventory, the deadlines, the evidence and the history are.

Pricing without a sales call

- Two plans, $129 and $269 a month; 14-day trial of the full plan, no card.

- Per target: $4 an infrastructure host, $45 a web application, $9 a repository, the same add-on rate on every plan.

- Users unlimited, scans never billed, read-only seats for auditors free.

- AWS discovery and Slack and Jira routing are on the higher plan.

Getting started

Discovery produces the first perimeter map within five to ten minutes of starting the trial, before anything is scanned.

Discussion 0 comments · 1 points · darius88 · 2h
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