Penetration Testing vs Vulnerability assessment | CyberNcrypt

Businesses often mistake vulnerability assessment with penetration testing. This viewpoint is incorrect. A company concerned with cybersecurity must include both of these operations into its business processes and ensure that they operate in tandem. For both web application security and network security, omitting any one of them substantially reduces the security posture. Additionally, penetration testing and vulnerability scans are seen as different compliance needs (for example, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and HIPAA compliance).

Let’s examine the major distinctions between penetration testing and vulnerability scanning, as well as their respective roles in the cybersecurity ecosystem.

What is penetration testing?

Penetration Tests are intended to accomplish a certain objective. A typical objective may be to compromise the application under test by exploiting any vulnerability. The security team and client will agree on this final goal. The security team will continue in accordance with the predetermined objective. A penetration test’s deliverable is a report detailing how security was penetrated to achieve the mutually agreed-upon objective.

During a penetration test, a trusted expert imitates the actions of a real-world black-hat hacker and employs manual testing to search for possible vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, exploit holes, and penetrate corporate assets. These tests are meant to function identically to cyberattacks but are meticulously constructed to not compromise information security. This trusted specialist, known as a pentester, maybe a member of the internal security team or an outside contractor. If the penetration test reveals a security weakness, the security expert delivers a full vulnerability assessment and penetration testing reports so that the organization may eradicate the vulnerability that led to the security breach.

Businesses often prefer to outsource penetration testing for a variety of reasons. First, an external party has a more objective view of the systems being examined. Second, few organizations can recruit security specialists who specialize in pen testing, hire them full-time, and supply them with sufficient work on a consistent basis. Thirdly, a company that offers full security services, including risk assessment and penetration testing, has far more experience and expertise.

The task of penetration testers cannot be automated. Utilizing security techniques such as manual vulnerability assessment and penetration testing instruments, they conduct assaults (for example, Metasploit). They may also employ social engineering techniques (such as phishing) to assess the security posture of the company’s employees.

Sometimes penetration tests are thought to be more comprehensive than vulnerability assessments, although, they cover a distinct set of weaknesses. Pen testing focuses on weaknesses that cannot be identified automatically, such as business logic and novel vulnerabilities (zero-day). You cannot anticipate a vulnerability scan to be included in a penetration test.

What is vulnerability scanning?

During Vulnerability Assessments, we detect and rank all vulnerabilities inside an application depending on the risk associated with each vulnerability. The primary outcome of the evaluation is a prioritized list of vulnerabilities uncovered.

A vulnerability scan is an automated process that requires little human intervention. Scans for vulnerabilities should be scheduled and done automatically as part of the software development lifecycle. A security scan is intended to identify known vulnerabilities. The testing scope is highly dependent on the vulnerability scanning technology employed.

A vulnerability scanner identifies the structure of the scanned item (some professional programs even identify existing assets) and then performs a series of automated tests on each component of that structure. Simple tools rely only on signature-based scanning, but more sophisticated tools try assaults comparable to those used during penetration testing. This kind of vulnerability scanning is often known as automated penetration testing.

In addition to vulnerability assessment and vulnerability management capabilities, professional tools are compatible with early mitigation solutions such as web application firewalls. You may determine which vulnerabilities must be addressed first and track the repair procedures using such tools. Thus, you can be certain that the most significant security threats are addressed efficiently and swiftly.

Final Note: Penetration Tests are goal-oriented and mostly unconcerned with the existence of other vulnerabilities.