Cybersecurity testing often centers around two very different approaches, vulnerability assessments and penetration testing:
You understand that you need cybersecurity to keep your organization safe. But what type of test do you need to find your company’s vulnerabilities? Two of the most well-known approaches are vulnerability assessments and penetration testing, known as pentesting.
A vulnerability assessment is an automated process that tests for known weaknesses, indicators for common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) and misconfigurations.
This assessment can be useful to get establish a baseline of how robust your company’s security posture is at a specific time. If the assessment identifies a vulnerability, you’ll know there could be a problem that exposes your business to high risk from cyber threats.
What you won’t know is whether those weaknesses translate to meaningful business risks in the real world. It often falls on your cybersecurity team to validate whether these vulnerabilities exist and if they truly pose a risk.
Pentesting is a controlled cybersecurity assessment that simulates the tactics, techniques and procedures used by real-world attackers.
The goal is to validate risk, measure the effectiveness of security controls and provide actionable recommendations for remediation. This assessment may be required by regulatory frameworks, cyber insurance providers, industry standards and customer contracts.
Pentesting validates risk through manual testing and controlled attempts to exploit weaknesses. Some providers use the terms interchangeably or can be intentionally misleading as to which service they’re offering. That can leave you unclear about the kind of testing you’re getting for your cybersecurity investment.
You may believe your company has completed a pentest when you have instead received a more basic vulnerability assessment. The result is a false sense of security that prevents remediation and leaves the organization at increased exposure to cyber risk.
The two tests differ in important ways.
A vulnerability assessment identifies potential known vulnerabilities (CVEs) through common indicators (such as version information and configurations).
This type of assessment does not validate that the vulnerability is exploitable or poses a risk. For example, you may have an outdated web application library with known CVEs that the assessment identifies. This tooling is unable to identify if these conditions are truly exploitable, only those indicators suggest the CVEs exist.
Pentesting shows how a weakness can be exploited in practice.
By combining automated tools with manual testing and expert analysis, testers can emulate threat actor behavior to uncover attack paths (the steps an attacker could take to move through your system), validate findings and assess the impact of a breach. A pentest report should include a detailed narrative of how the vulnerability was exploited and how the organization can remediate the issue.
Pentesting includes a vulnerability assessment. The key difference is that a pentest will also stack different methods of attack and perform hands-on testing to confirm whether a weakness can be exploited.
If your organization has never completed a pentest and doesn’t know where to start, a good first step may be a baseline vulnerability assessment. This assessment identifies potential vulnerabilities in your system security, like missing patches and misconfigurations, without attempting to exploit them. This test focuses on detecting and mitigating risks associated with patching and configuration management to provide a starting point for future testing and additional remediation efforts.
However, if you’re looking for something more thorough or are planning to or have had a recent major organizational change, a vulnerability assessment will not uncover all potential security weaknesses or provide a full picture of your security posture.
For example, a vulnerability assessment might not be able to answer questions such as these:
Those and other more technical, quantitative questions aren’t something that can be answered through a vulnerability assessment. Without understanding the real-world business impact, exploitability context or risk-based recommendations, you may be left with a list of findings but limited guidance on what to fix first.
Pentesting offers a deeper level of analysis that allows you to prioritize your remediation efforts.
There are many different types of pentests:
There are other simulations such as red team or purple team assessments, but these are often reserved for an organization with experience with pentesting.
An internal network test, sometimes referred to as an assumed breach penetration test, attacks your system infrastructure and mimics an insider threat. It operates on the premise that a hacker already has access to your internal systems and assesses the scale and scope of your internal vulnerabilities.
An internal pentest also reinforces the need to secure your internal network, not just your perimeter. For example, if a disgruntled employee had access to the network, what damage could they do? If an employee was infected by a virus or ransomware, how far could it spread?
An external network test simulates an external attack against your network. This type of testing involves assessing and “attacking” an organization’s public-facing infrastructure, such as firewalls, websites and email systems. Often, this assessment looks for open-source intelligence (OSINT), breached credential data and other public-facing knowledge about your organization to identify attack paths.
Web application/API pentesting focuses specifically on identifying vulnerabilities in your web applications or API infrastructure. Targeted to SaaS organizations, web application pentesting harnesses specialized expertise to evaluate the resilience of your unique web or SaaS platforms.
Through web application pentesting, you can:
For organizations that run corporate and production environments in the cloud, a cloud pentest can uncover potential security vulnerabilities specific to your environment. With a cloud pentest, you can:
A mobile application pentest takes an in-depth look at your mobile applications across multiple platforms. Similar to web application testing, it targets many of the same vulnerability methodologies in line with OWASP Mobile Top 10.
Before accepting a pentest from a provider, it’s essential to clarify whether you’ll be receiving a vulnerability assessment or a pentest. These questions can help you determine what the engagement will include:
Once you’ve clarified the type of test you’re receiving, the process of discovering your cybersecurity strengths and weaknesses can begin.
Cybersecurity threats evolve quickly. Even your experienced IT department can benefit from independent testing to uncover hidden vulnerabilities. Our cybersecurity consulting team can help you take control of your operations to stay profitable and sustainable.
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