Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing

In today’s digital landscape, cybersecurity has become a top priority for organizations. Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) are two critical components of a comprehensive security strategy.

To get the best of each approach, it’s important to understand the concepts of VAPT, their differences, and how they work together to strengthen an organization’s security posture.

A Tale of Two Vulnerability Management Programs

Imagine the maturity of each of these two security programs:

• Scenario 1: An organization develops an application and immediately deploys it without any testing. The same is true for the rest of its technical infrastructure – they are not worried about vulnerabilities or loopholes in its systems. Instead, they believe in waiting for an attack to happen so that they only spend time on resolving the issues which lead to an incident.
• Scenario 2: An organization believes in the principles of DevSecOps and has implemented them adequately. As a result, vulnerability assessments and penetration testing, or VAPT, activities are performed regularly during the development as well as after the completion of development and deployment.

Out of these scenarios, some people will tend to follow the good-old first approach, while many people will incline towards the second scenario as an organization now needs to be proactive while dealing with the intricacies of cyberspace. Today’s modern security program should be one of the highest priorities within an organization and an individual responsible for an organization’s information security must get a seat on the board.

The more important question is –
Why should an organization wait for attackers to exploit a vulnerability when they can address it beforehand?

Comparing a Vulnerability Assessment to Penetration Testing

A vulnerability assessment and a penetration test are both two types of security testing activities. They each have their own set of strengths, and in order to achieve a thorough vulnerability analysis of the systems under the scope of testing, they are typically combined together. Although with a similar area of focus for both, they perform a different set of tasks while expecting an altogether different set of results.

What is Vulnerability Assessment?

A vulnerability assessment is a systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing vulnerabilities in a system, network, or application. This process helps organizations understand their security weaknesses and take appropriate measures to mitigate the risks associated with these vulnerabilities. A Vulnerability Assessment typically involves the following steps:

• Asset Identification: The first step is to identify and categorize the assets that need to be assessed. This includes hardware, software, and network components.
• Vulnerability Scanning: Next, various tools and techniques are used to scan the identified assets for known vulnerabilities. This can be done using automated tools, manual testing, or a combination of both.
• Vulnerability Analysis: Once the vulnerabilities are identified, they are analyzed to determine their potential impact on the organization’s security.
• Risk Assessment: Based on the analysis, the vulnerabilities are prioritized according to their risk level. This helps organizations focus their resources on addressing the most critical vulnerabilities first.
• Remediation and Reporting: Finally, a detailed report is prepared, outlining the identified vulnerabilities, their risk levels, and recommended remediation steps.

What is Penetration Testing?

Penetration Testing, also known as ethical hacking, is a simulated cyber attack on a system, network, or application to identify security weaknesses that could be exploited by a real attacker. The primary goal of Penetration Testing is to uncover vulnerabilities that may not be detected during a Vulnerability Assessment.

Penetration Testing typically follows these steps:

1. Planning and Reconnaissance: The first step involves defining the scope and objectives of the test, gathering information about the target system, and identifying potential attack vectors.
2. Scanning and Enumeration: Next, various tools and techniques are used to scan the target system for vulnerabilities and gather additional information about the system’s configuration and services.
3. Exploitation: Once vulnerabilities are identified, the tester attempts to exploit them to gain unauthorized access to the system or disrupt its normal functioning.
4. Post-Exploitation: After gaining access, the tester may attempt to escalate privileges, maintain persistence, or exfiltrate sensitive data to demonstrate the potential impact of the vulnerabilities.
5. Reporting: Finally, a detailed report is prepared, outlining the vulnerabilities discovered, the methods used to exploit them, and recommended remediation steps.

Differences between Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing

Generally, vulnerability assessment tools only help you find the existing vulnerabilities in your systems, applications, or infrastructure. They are not capable of differentiating between questions such as which vulnerabilities can cause damage and which cannot, which vulnerabilities are exploitable, and which are not, etc. In plain words, the most basic job for a vulnerability assessment is to find pre-existing vulnerabilities, loopholes, and slides and alert the system administrator along with the line of codes where a vulnerability resides. In addition, vulnerabilities found can also be presented in the form of a list made based on their severity.

On the other hand, penetration testing goes beyond merely identifying a vulnerability. In a penetration test, an attacker attempts to find vulnerabilities in the given code, and he then checks how many of these vulnerabilities can be exploited. Based on the test results, the tester decides whether there is a possibility of unauthorized access or malicious code. If there exist such chances, the testers explore the potential damage that can be done to an organization if a particular attack vector could be realized fully.

The fine difference between a vulnerability assessment and penetration testing can be understood in the sense that penetration testing results demonstrate how damaging a flaw could be in a real-life attack, instead of finding all the flaws in an assessment. When both are combined into VAPT, such tools first perform a thorough vulnerability scan and then show the risks associated and possible damages if a particular vulnerability is exploited successfully.

Vulnerability Assessment vs Penetration Testing – Which one is better?

As we saw in our last post on DAST v. SAST, both methodologies have to be implemented in order to address the security issues in an application comprehensively. Similarly, it cannot be stated that a vulnerability assessment is better than penetration testing or vice versa.

An organization must perform a vulnerability assessment and penetration testing together to get the best results possible. Also called VAPT, the combined approach supports information security teams to gain immediate risk reduction and improve security maturity over time. When considering the original use cases in the introduction of this article, this solution works best in the second scenario, not under the first scenario.

How VAPT Works

Conducting a vulnerability assessment and conducting a penetration testing with a VAPT provider to combine the advantages of both to get a comprehensive evaluation of an organization’s security posture. While a vulnerability assessment will focus on identifying known vulnerabilities, penetration testing goes a step further by attempting to exploit these vulnerabilities to simulate a real-world attack.

With VAPT, organizations can gain a deeper understanding of their security weaknesses and take appropriate measures to address them. This holistic approach helps organizations stay ahead of emerging threats and maintain a robust security posture in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Essential components of a comprehensive security strategy, VAPT offers teams the context they need to understand remediation and how to use VAPT findings to better protect their assets and minimize the risk of a successful cyber attack.

Protect and Defend Your Organization with VAPT Capabilities

Looking to safeguard your organization against cyber attacks? Consider working with BreachLock to build a Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) program today. Our expert team will identify vulnerabilities in your IT infrastructure and work with your teams to implement the remediation recommendations for improvement, preventing potential cyber threats or security breach. Contact us now to schedule your VAPT demonstration.