Initial Automatic Explore

After your basic configuration, you can run an initial Automatic Explore to see how well AppScan® covers the site at this stage.

About this task

A full scan consists of both Explore and a Test stages, but for the moment run only an Explore stage.

Site coverage based on your initial configuration may be incomplete, but seeing which parts of the site are discovered and which are not can help you improve the configuration.

Procedure

  1. Click Scan > Explore Only.

    Scan Expert is configured to run automatically before the Explore stage.

  2. If Scan Expert suggests configuration changes, follow its recommendations.
    Note: Some changes can be implemented automatically, others require input from you.
  3. Let AppScan explore the site until it stops. During the scan you can see the Application tree and data fill in as the site is crawled.
  4. Verify that the Explore stage finished successfully and did not terminate early due to AppScan being out-of-session.
    Note: If it ended early because AppScan was out-of-session, re-record and reconfigure the login procedure, paying special attention to In-session detection and session ID tracking.
  5. (Sites that use URL rewriting:) If your site uses URL rewriting, the Explore Optimization module can improve scan efficiency by eliminating unnecessary URLs from the Explore results at this stage.
    1. Click Tools > Extensions > Explore Optimization: Run
    2. If recommended by the module at the end of the process, click Scan > Re-Explore.
    Attention: Do not perform this step unless you are sure your site uses URL rewriting.