Frequently asked questions.
The vocabulary behind unified security testing - and how Ares plans map to your stack.
What is SAST (Static Application Security Testing)?
SAST analyzes source code, byte code, or binaries for security vulnerabilities without executing the application. It catches issues like SQL injection, XSS, hard-coded secrets, and insecure cryptography early in the development lifecycle - before code reaches production. Ares runs SAST continuously across every repository in your plan, with AI Triage filtering out false positives automatically.
What is SCA (Software Composition Analysis)?
SCA inspects the open-source libraries and third-party dependencies your application uses, matching them against known vulnerability databases (CVE, GHSA, OSV) and license registries. It surfaces vulnerable, outdated, or non-compliant components in your dependency tree - including transitive dependencies that traditional tools miss.
What is Secrets scanning?
Secrets scanning detects credentials, API keys, tokens, private certificates, and other sensitive strings accidentally committed to source code, configuration files, container images, or build artifacts. Ares scans the full git history (not just the current snapshot) so leaked secrets surface for immediate rotation even if they were later deleted.
What is Supply Chain Analysis?
Supply Chain Analysis examines the integrity of your software supply chain: package registries, build pipelines, dependency provenance, and signing artifacts. It detects typosquatting, malicious packages, dependency-confusion attacks, and tampered builds - the class of attacks responsible for incidents like SolarWinds, Log4Shell, and the recurring npm ecosystem compromises.
What is DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing)?
DAST tests a running application from the outside-in, the same way an attacker would: crawling endpoints, fuzzing inputs, and probing authentication, authorization, and session flows for real exploitable weaknesses (SQLi, XSS, SSRF, IDOR, broken access control). Unlike SAST it doesn't need the source code, and unlike a one-off scan Ares runs DAST as part of the unified pipeline so every finding is correlated with the corresponding code, dependency, and runtime evidence.
What is Network VA (Vulnerability Assessment)?
Network VA automatically discovers exposed services, ports, and protocols across your network perimeter and internal subnets, then matches them against known CVEs and misconfigurations. Unlike a one-shot pentest, Network VA runs continuously to detect new exposures as your infrastructure changes - without waiting for the next scheduled engagement.
What is Network Penetration Testing - and how does AI change it?
Penetration testing simulates a real attacker to validate that detected weaknesses are actually exploitable, not just theoretical. Traditional pentests are manual, episodic, and expensive. Ares uses AI agents trained on real attacker methodologies to autonomously chain vulnerabilities together - at machine speed, 24/7 - proving exploitability continuously instead of waiting for the next quarterly assessment.
What is AI Triage?
AI Triage automatically reviews every finding from SAST, SCA, DAST, and pentest scans to determine whether it's a true positive worth your team's time. It correlates context - code path, data flow, runtime configuration, exploitability evidence - and outputs a confidence score plus an actionable explanation. The result: a prioritized list of real risks instead of thousands of noisy findings.
What is AI Runtime Verification?
Runtime Verification confirms that a flagged vulnerability is actually exploitable in your environment, not just theoretically present. Ares' AI agent safely constructs and runs the exploit - typically using out-of-band channels like canary DNS or LDAP listeners - to produce concrete proof. Findings move from "potentially vulnerable" to "confirmed exploitable", so engineering teams know exactly what to fix first.
What's the difference between the Basic, Pro, Enterprise, and Air-Gapped plans?
Basic covers continuous code-side testing (SAST · SCA · IaC · Secrets) plus 5 DAST scans/year - suited to small teams. Pro adds Supply Chain Analysis, AI Triage, AI Runtime Verification, and bundled Network and Web App pentests. Enterprise removes scope limits, adds custom integrations and dedicated solution engineering. Air-Gapped delivers everything as a dedicated offline appliance for environments with no internet egress.
Is Ares available as SaaS or self-hosted?
Basic, Pro, and Enterprise are all available either as a managed SaaS (fastest onboarding) or self-hosted inside your own infrastructure. The Air-Gapped plan goes further: it ships as dedicated hardware running offline AI, built for critical infrastructure, defense, and classified workloads where outbound connectivity is not permitted.
What does "X included" mean - and can I run more scans?
Annual quantities (e.g. "DAST 10 included") are bundled with your plan at no extra cost. If you need additional scans during the year, they're available on request and quoted separately. You can pre-declare expected extras when filling out the contact form so we ship a quote tailored to your real workload.
How is Ares billed?
All plans are billed on an annual basis. The price shown (e.g. €289 / month for Basic) is the per-month equivalent of the annual subscription. Enterprise and Air-Gapped pricing is quoted based on scope, integrations, and required scans.
