Collection vs application

This document is for Invicti Platform

This document compares Collections and Applications in Invicti Platform, helping you understand their key differences, uses, and relationships.

Overview

	Collection	Application
Purpose	Organize assets and applications for reusable, business-aligned structures and access control.	Group assets logically to represent a product, service, or environment and provide aggregated security insights.
Primary Use Case	Organizational structure and permission management.	Vulnerability tracking, reporting, and security analysis.
Entities Included	• Individual assets • Entire applications (and their assets)	• Individual assets (DAST targets, projects, APIs) • Can be part of collections
Relationship Model	Many-to-many: Assets and applications can belong to multiple collections.	Many-to-many: Assets can belong to multiple applications; applications can belong to multiple collections.
Nested Structure	Yes (collections can indirectly include assets through applications).	No (applications directly include assets).
Dashboard	No dedicated dashboard; used for filtering, organization, and access control.	Dedicated dashboard showing aggregated vulnerability stats, top risks, and affected assets.
Access Control	Used to restrict user/team access by assigning permissions to collections.	Not directly tied to access control but can be used in reporting and visibility.
Best For	Business units, regions, clients, environments, or any structure requiring permission control.	Representing a website, feature, service, or system to consolidate vulnerability data.

When to use collections

• When you need to control user access to specific assets or applications.
• For grouping assets/applications by business function, team, or location.
• To create reusable, overlapping organizational groupings.

When to use applications

• To track vulnerabilities across a specific product or service.
• When you want to aggregate reports and dashboards for a specific logical environment.
• To manage security insights for functional units (for example, a customer portal, internal service, or API layer).

Example usage scenarios

Scenario	Recommended entity
Segmenting assets by business region for reporting and access	Collection
Tracking vulnerabilities for a specific internal portal	Application
Assigning different teams access to their own environments	Collection
Aggregating scan results across related systems for vulnerability management	Application

Summary

• Use Collections for flexible organization and access management.
• Use Applications for focused vulnerability tracking and security analysis.

You can create both entities and use them together to support complex organizational and security structures.

For detailed steps on creating these entities, refer to:

• Create a Collection
• Create an Application

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