What is the difference between DAST and ZAP?

DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing) is a general approach used to identify vulnerabilities in a running application by simulating attacks. It tests the application from the outside, interacting with it as a user or attacker would, to find security flaws like injection attacks, authentication issues, and configuration errors.

OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is a specific tool that performs DAST. It is an open-source security scanner designed to identify vulnerabilities in web applications throughout the development and testing stages. ZAP automates many aspects of DAST, such as crawling web pages, sending requests, and analyzing responses, simplifying the process for developers and security professionals to detect and resolve security issues.