Black Duck Polaris

Polaris is Black Duck's cloud-native SaaS platform that consolidates the AppSec analysis-engine surface into a single console. The platform integrates Coverity Static (SAST), Black Duck SCA, fAST Dynamic (DAST), Infrastructure-as-Code scanning, and secrets detection. The architecture runs concurrent scan engines rather than sequential, with intelligent orchestration triggering scans by technology stack, criticality, and policy.

Automated SCM integration covers GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, and Bitbucket. Repositories onboard automatically and synchronize continuously without manual configuration. Pull-request scanning runs at PR creation, update, or pre-merge, with findings posted as comments inside the developer review workflow. Code Sight extends coverage into VS Code, IntelliJ, Eclipse, and Visual Studio for authoring-time findings before the build-gate scan.

Black Duck Assist provides AI-driven remediation guidance against the customer's findings. Polaris also supplies a unified risk score combining environmental, business, and application context across SAST, SCA, and DAST findings. One policy engine governs every scan type so AppSec policy lives in one place rather than across multiple consoles. Saudi Arabia in-region SaaS hosting (July 2025) extends coverage for regulated workloads.

Polaris is the right starting point for AppSec programs without entrenched standalone Coverity Server or Black Duck Hub deployments. Mature programs already running Coverity or Black Duck SCA at scale are usually better off keeping those products in production and adopting Polaris only for additional scan types. Merito makes the call during MAPS Assessment based on the customer's existing stack.

Merito recommends Polaris specifically when the customer is starting fresh, when they want SaaS rather than on-prem, or when they have a multi-vendor AppSec stack and want consolidation under one policy engine. Greenfield programs get the most value because Polaris arrives configured for the unified workflow rather than retrofitted onto existing parallel pipelines.

Mature programs already running Coverity Server or Black Duck Hub at scale typically need a delta justification before adopting Polaris. The migration is six to twelve months of operating-model work even when the engines are equivalent. Merito's MAPS Assessment scopes the migration cost honestly and recommends staying on the standalone products if the delta does not justify the operational disturbance.

Black Duck Assist matters more than vendor copy implies once the customer has policy authored. AI-driven remediation grounded in the customer's findings and policy reduces analyst toil materially. Programs that buy Polaris without authoring policy first get less from Assist because the AI guidance lacks customer-specific context to ground in.