The Scalable SAST Tool for Mission-Critical Software
Fit Perforce Klocwork seamlessly into your DevSecOps workflows. The static application security testing (SAST) tool provides early defense for developers by alerting them to potentially costly defects and compliance violations as soon as the code is written. It extends security analysis across the environments you already use, simplifies risk-based decision-making, and strengthens architecture and AI governance across globally distributed teams.
Identify security and reliability issues for C, C++, C#, Rust, Java, JavaScript, Python, and Kotlin programming languages — over millions of lines of code.
Increase Development Velocity and Reduce Costs Through Early Defect Detection
Teams integrating Klocwork SAST into their CI/CD pipelines catch costly defects before they spread and shorten development cycles with early remediation.
Jones, Capers. Applied Software Measurement: Global Analysis of Productivity and Quality.
Reduce Compliance Bottlenecks. Ensure Audit-Readiness.
Keep delivery moving in regulated environments with deep, inter-procedural dataflow analysis and continuous compliance focused on security and safety. Use the Perforce Validate platform to unify Klocwork analysis outcomes and enforce standards requirements that matter most. Automate compliance reporting and maintain clear, traceable proof across projects and releases, so you’re always ready for the next audit.
Secure Massive Codebases at the Speed of Modern Development
Maintain quality, performance, and accuracy across massive, complex codebases without compromising speed. Klocwork is built for managing security across large multi-branch and multi-variant codebases and build environments that span hundreds of cross-compilers. Teams can evaluate code efficiently with full-system context via incremental and differential analysis, automate security workflows through command-line access and full API support via the Validate platform, and deploy flexibility in containerized and cloud-ready environments.
Detect Security Vulnerabilities Early. Accelerate Development Velocity.
Secure development at AI speed. Receive contextual security feedback directly in the developer workflow, reducing downstream remediation cost and vulnerability exposure. Combine deep static analysis, developer-centric IDE support, differential analysis for changed code, and AI-assisted code remediation to move at the pace of AI code generation that must be reviewed, validated, and secured.
Secure, Governed Development —Aligned Across Every DevSecOps Team
Align security goals across development teams, security leaders, and CISOs. By supporting targeted scans, meaningful quality gates, and shared visibility into critical findings, Klocwork creates a more collaborative security model. Architecture governance is strengthened through integrations that connect security analysis to broader engineering controls.
Development teams receive actionable guidance in context, without requiring deep security expertise.
Security leaders gain a clearer view of posture, progress, and priorities across projects.
Fix New Defects Early. Streamline Workflows. Automate Security Governance.
Perforce Klocwork Key Features
Identify and apply fixes to security vulnerabilities as soon as they’re introduced and prove compliance to internationally recognized security standards.
- Security Standards: Comprehensive coverage of security-focused standards, including CWE, OWASP, CERT, PCI DSS, DISA STIG, and ISO/IEC TS 17961.
- Security Vulnerability Detection: SQL injection, tainted data, buffer overflow, vulnerable coding practices, and many more.
- Bug, Quality Issue, and Code Smell Detection: Null pointer dereferences/exceptions, memory/resource leaks, uncaught exceptions, and more.
Scale across branches and variants. Project Streams provides easy management of shared codebases that have multiple variants or branches by simplifying project rule configuration, issue management, defect citing, reporting, and efficient storage of analysis data. Project Streams keeps compliance synchronized across distributed teams without duplicate work; Perforce Validate centralizes outcomes, deviations, and approvals.
Creating streams provides the following benefits:
- Assign a single project rule configuration to all variants.
- Issues common to multiple variants are automatically kept in sync and only require citing once.
- Easily identify identical issues across multiple streams and issues unique to a specific stream.
- Generate reports on individual streams for compliance, functional safety, or other evidential purposes.
- More convenient organization and efficient storage of analysis data.
Prioritize coding issues based on severity of risk. Perforce Klocwork helps you target the most critical defects first using filters, suppressions, and baselines. Use Smart Rank within Validate for large-scale risk prioritization and address high-impact vulnerabilities across your organization.
Klocwork tools are designed with Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery foremost in our thinking, which makes it easy to include static analysis as part of your CI/CD pipelines.
Using system context data from the Klocwork Server, it is possible to analyze only the files that changed while also providing differential analysis results as if the entire system had been analyzed. This provides you with the shortest possible analysis times.
Klocwork tools have common command-line interfaces and full API support. The Klocwork defect data can be accessed via a REST API, and all output formats use standard formats such as XML, JSON, and PDF.
Klocwork can be run within containerized and cloud build systems and supports the provisioning of machine instances as required. This provides maximum flexibility and opportunity to use internal or external cloud services for code analysis.
The Perforce Validate platform is a centralized store of analysis results from Perforce Static Analysis solutions, Klocwork and QAC. Validate provides analysis data, trends, and configurations for codebases across your organization — accessed through a web browser. It is highly customizable, enabling your team to easily define specific QA and compliance rule configurations, identify issues and deviations, and review the entirety of the code by project and section to adequately meet your team’s needs.
By seamlessly integrating static analysis with the rest of your development toolset, Klocwork will shift defect detection to the left of the SDLC and improve developer adoption as a training tool and increasing productivity.
Get out-of-the-box support for hundreds of compilers and cross-compilers, so build integration is automatic.
Plugins for popular IDEs (including Microsoft Visual Studio, Elipse, IntelliJ, and more).
Local code changes made using the connected desktop plugins provide immediate differential analysis results within IDEs.
Inter-procedural defects and coding violations are identified by severity of risk. For each defect and coding violation, you will receive detailed information of cause with rich, context-sensitive help and guidance on remediation — now with human-in-the-loop AI assistance. This allows for easily accessible opportunities for understanding and learning.
A graphical custom checker creation tool makes the implementation of project- or organization-specific rules quick and easy, further enriching learning opportunities.
Klocwork also integrates with architectural visualization and enforcement tools, which allow users to further improve the overall quality and maintainability of their codebase through clean and direct dependencies.
Reduce rework on complex defects found in your code. AI-assisted code remediation brings security directly into the developer workflow, using Klocwork to identify issues and AI to suggest targeted fixes. The result is a faster, more seamless path from finding a problem to resolving it.
Spend less time interpreting Klocwork analysis results. Klocwork passes the full contextual information of its findings and detailed documentation directly to the AI, enabling highly accurate, contextual fix suggestions that significantly reduce developer effort. As developers review and apply AI-suggested fixes, the contextual explanations help them internalize secure coding patterns over time — gradually moving security decision-making out of specialist review and into the hands of developers while they’re still writing code, where it is most cost-effective and faster to fix.
Built for flexibility, the VS Code plugin with GitHub Copilot capabilities provide broad AI compatibility with support for multiple LLMs. This lowers developer maintenance efforts while allowing developers to use Copilot’s interactive chat to clarify issues and fine-tune fixes alongside AI.
Go beyond early defect detection to intelligent resolution. Learn more about accelerating secure coding with AI-assisted code remediation by reading the datasheet.
How It Works
Follow along with this interactive demo of Klocwork to preview key features.
Achieve Coding Standards Compliance
Klocwork makes it easy to comply with coding standards. Use the following compliance taxonomies to enforce coding standards across your codebase. And you’ll get fewer false positives and false negatives in your diagnostics.
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Security
C
C++
C#
Java
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Security
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CERT
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CWE
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CWE Top 25
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OWASP
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DISA STIG
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PCI DSS
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ISO/IEC TS 17961 (C Secure)
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Safety
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MISRA C 2004
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MISRA C 2012
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MISRA C 2023
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HKMC
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MISRA C++ 2008
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AUTOSAR C++ 14
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JSF AV C++
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Quality
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NASA's 10 Rules
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Klocwork Quality
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Customize
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Create Your Own Standard
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Create Your Own Rules
Award-Winning Security
We’re known for best-in-class static analysis security — but the industry recognition speaks for itself. Klocwork earned “Best in Show” at Embedded World North America for three consecutive years, validating its ability to help teams secure critical software with confidence.
“With Perforce Klocwork, our productivity has dramatically increased, leaving us with more time to mitigate potential problems leveraging the ‘what if’ testing. As a result, our end product is stronger, and Raytheon can get the end product to our customers more quickly than before.”
Klocwork Professional Services: Continuous, Reliable Support
Get onboarding and ongoing support with Perforce Klocwork. You’ll start with an onboarding package for a successful experience. You may also use the Klocwork help documentation for easy-to-follow instructions — whether setting up your workflow or finding answers to specific questions.
Learn More About Onboarding PackagesVisit Klocwork Help Documentation
Mission-Critical Industries Rely on Klocwork SAST
Teams working in mission-critical industries trust Klocwork to accelerate project velocity while maintaining software quality and compliance.
Embedded Development
Efficiently manage software development when designing increasingly complex embedded systems.
Automotive
Simplify development and visualize branching and merging for project status across the organization. Implement cybersecurity safeguards early for vehicles. Easily meet and prove compliance to essential automotive safety standards like ISO 26262, and coding standards like MISRA and AUTOSAR with a TÜV-SÜD certified tool.
Aerospace and Defense
Defend your codebase, prioritize risk early, and deliver security reports for DoD standards like DISA STIG. Klocwork helps enforce strict coding standards so you can achieve certification faster for DO-178C, ensuring the safety of your airborne systems.
Medical Technology
The quality of the code embedded in medical devices and other health software systems can mean the difference between life or death. By using Klocwork, you’ll meet ever-changing government regulations and verify that your medical technology is safe, reliable, and efficient.
Industrial Automation
Identify and fix errors in critical infrastructure of robotics, IoT, or energy technology management before they become costly vulnerabilities. Integrate Klocwork into your workflows for streamlined visibility into code compliance and ensure full visibility and traceability of analysis, improving productivity while strengthening safety and reliability.
Strengthen Confidence in Safety-Critical Software
Reduce certification risk and simplify compliance and reporting for safety-critical regulations. Klocwork is independently certified for TÜV-SÜD, ISO 9001, and ISO 27001.
TÜV-SÜD Certified
TÜV-certified qualification materials support functional safety processes in highly regulated industries. Perforce Klocwork is TÜV-SÜD certified for compliance with key functional safety standards:
- ISO 26262 (automotive) up to ASIL D.
- IEC 61508 (general industry) up to SIL 4.
- EN 50716 (railways) up to SW-SIL 4.
- IEC 62304 (medical devices) up to Software Safety Class C.
ISO 9001 Certified
Perforce Klocwork is also certified in ISO 9001.
ISO 9001 is one of the most widely adopted standards. It ensures that organizations are striving to meet and exceed customers’ requirements and satisfaction through continuous improvement.
ISO 27001 Certified
Perforce Klocwork is also certified in ISO 27001.
ISO 27001 gives specific requirements that an organization must meet in order to be certified by an accredited certification body following the successful completion of an audit.
Test Klocwork in Your Dev Environment
Request your free trial of Klocwork today.
See Klocwork Live
Start with your custom demo, or access our on-demand Klocwork demo to get an immediate look at Klocwork’s key features.
Frequently Asked Questions
Perforce Klocwork is a static application security testing (SAST) and static code analysis solution that helps organizations identify security vulnerabilities, quality issues, and compliance violations early in the software development lifecycle. It uses a symbolic execution algorithm that evaluates program paths and states relevant to specific issues, including deep interprocedural analysis. It supports C, C++, C#, Rust, Java, JavaScript, Python, and Kotlin and is designed to scale across large, complex codebases in security- and safety-critical environments.
Spirent Communications uses Klocwork to “identify problems that would have been missed, and discover errors more quickly than through traditional manual analysis and testing. That’s allowing us to deliver the high-quality software we pride ourselves on and that our customers expect.”
Perforce Klocwork uses a symbolic execution algorithm that evaluates program paths and states relevant to specific issues, including deep interprocedural analysis, without executing source code. Klocwork is built to analyze millions of lines of code across complex codebases efficiently, detecting security vulnerabilities, coding defects, and compliance issues. It works across files, functions, and modules while integrating directly into IDEs, CI/CD pipelines, code review workflows, and DevSecOps processes.
It also includes AI-assisted code remediation that’s accurate, context-aware, and developer-approved, helping teams find and fix issues earlier, when they are less costly to resolve. Instead of spending hours researching a resolution, the integrated AI assistant analyzes each found defect using deep contextual data from Klocwork and suggests highly accurate, compliant code corrections that are grounded in a precise understanding of how your code actually behaves.
You can watch a demo of Klocwork here.
Klocwork helps reduce security risks by identifying vulnerabilities early in development before they reach testing or production environments. It detects common security weaknesses such as tainted data usage, buffer overflows, injection vulnerabilities, memory management issues, and insecure coding practices.
Klocwork supports testing against CERT C, CERT C++, CWE, CWE Top 25, HKMC Secure C, HKMC Secure C++, AUTOSAR C++14, MISRA, and ISO/IEC TS 17961.
You can try Klocwork for yourself by signing up for our free trial.
Perforce Klocwork provides comprehensive support for the SEI CERT C, CERT C++, and CERT Java Secure Coding Standards, helping organizations identify coding practices that can lead to security vulnerabilities, reliability issues, and compliance concerns. Klocwork includes CERT coverage in its compliance taxonomies and security reporting capabilities, allowing teams to continuously enforce secure coding practices across their codebases.
For detailed rule mappings and coverage information, contact Perforce or review the Klocwork documentation.
Klocwork provides highly accurate diagnostics through deep static analysis and contextual understanding of the codebase. Teams can further manage reported findings using filters, suppressions, baselines, and SmartRank risk prioritization capabilities. This helps developers focus on the most important issues while reducing the effort spent reviewing low-value or previously accepted findings.
Klocwork integrates security testing directly into existing development and CI/CD workflows, enabling organizations to shift security earlier in the software development lifecycle. Developers receive security feedback while coding, automated analyses can run as part of build and deployment pipelines, and teams can establish quality gates to prevent high-risk vulnerabilities from progressing downstream. This helps organizations scale security practices without slowing development velocity.
Yes. Klocwork is designed to scale across large, multi-million-line codebases and complex development environments. Incremental and differential analysis capabilities allow teams to analyze only changed code while maintaining full-system context, reducing analysis times and supporting rapid development cycles. Klocwork also supports hundreds of compilers and cross-compilers, making it well-suited for enterprise-scale and embedded software projects.
To learn more about Klocwork’s large codebase support, contact Perforce
Klocwork Project Streams help teams scale static analysis across multiple variants, branches, and releases of a shared codebase without creating separate projects for each version. Instead, teams can organize related codebases within a single project structure while maintaining visibility into variant-specific findings and compliance status. Shared issues are automatically synchronized across related streams, reducing duplicate analysis and remediation effort, while allowing teams to identify findings that are unique to a specific variant or release.
For more information, see the Project Streams documentation.
Yes. Klocwork allows organizations to establish and enforce consistent coding, security, and compliance standards across multiple projects through centralized rule configurations and the Perforce Validate platform. Teams can define standardized policies, monitor compliance status across the organization, and generate reporting that helps demonstrate adherence to security and quality requirements across distributed development teams.
To learn more about Klocwork’s coding standards support, contact Perforce.
Perforce Klocwork licensing is tailored to an organization's development environment, team size, deployment model, and security requirements. Licensing options can vary based on factors such as developer usage, CI/CD integration, centralized reporting needs, and organizational scale.
For information about licensing models, pricing, evaluation options, and deployment recommendations, contact Perforce.