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The difference between Vulnerability Scanning and Penetration Testing

Introduction

A vulnerability scan usually makes use of automated tools to detect known vulnerabilities, whereas a penetration test is quite a detailed method of security testing. Pentesting requires a combination of automation and manual approaches to identify the hidden vulnerabilities.

  1. Purpose of Penetration Testing:

    • Penetration testing aims to identify vulnerabilities in computer systems, networks, or web applications, providing proactive defence against potential cyber threats.

  2. Evolution of Cyber Threats:

    • The cyber threat landscape is rapidly evolving, witnessing a surge in sophisticated attacks, especially targeting endpoints like computers, smartphones, and IoT devices.

  3. Critical Role in Cyber Defence:

    • Penetration testing is a critical component in cybersecurity defence, offering insights to address vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by sophisticated threats.

  4. Economic Threat of Cybercrime:

    • The economic threat from cybercrime is significant, with the average global data breach costing millions, emphasising the need for robust defence mechanisms.

  5. Cost-Benefit Analysis:

    • Despite upfront costs, penetration testing is economically prudent compared to potential losses from breaches, ensuring compliance, protecting reputation, and maintaining trust.

  6. Case Study – Norsk Hydro:

    • Norsk Hydro’s experience demonstrates the value of penetration testing in saving millions by identifying and addressing security gaps exploited during a ransomware attack.

  7. Financial Impact:

    • Upfront investment in penetration testing pays dividends by preventing potential disasters, safeguarding against exorbitant costs, and improving overall cybersecurity posture.

Vulnerability Scanning

Vulnerability scanning is the method of trying to test the security of the network or the system by attacking the infrastructure to gain access. If you want to increase the infrastructure security of an organisation, then the exercise of performing a vulnerability scan would just be it. It is usually responsible for highlighting the weaknesses found in the infrastructure and offers a much clearer understanding of the presence of security flaws.

The job of a vulnerability scanner is to compare the details of the infrastructure attack by knowing the loopholes in the ports and services, the presence of anomalies in the packets, any harmful scripts, etc. This scanning usually exploits every discovered vulnerability present in an infrastructure.

Process of Vulnerability Scanning

Identifying the Risks: An organisation needs to understand its key infrastructures and identify its important assets. Identifying potential threats and structuring the assets systematically can help in easing the scanning process.

  1. Defining the Policies: To conduct a vulnerability scan, the policies should be defined in advance by the organisation. Therefore, all the activities or the procedures are written down before any scan.
  2. Identifying the Scan type: Depending on the requirement of the organisation, the type of vulnerability scan be defined. The different types of vulnerability scans that can be performed are Host-based scans, network scans, wireless scans, etc
  3. Designing a Scan: The vulnerability scan will be based on a list of general factors like IP addresses, ports and protocols, target IP, setting up aggressive scans, schedules of scans, etc.
  4. Performing a Scan: Once the design is ready, the scan can proceed, depending on the target of the scan.
  5. Considering Potential Risk: On performing the scan, the potential threats to the organisation can be evaluated.
  6. Remediation Plans: After the scan results are interpreted, the best mitigation plans can be put forth to secure the vulnerabilities and can have a few follow-ups.

When the interpretation of the vulnerability scan takes place, a CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) Database is usually followed to score the vulnerability depending on its intensity. The CVSS database is based on a scale of 0-10.

Cost of Vulnerability Scan

When a vulnerability scan is conducted, various factors are kept in mind, and therefore, depending on those factors, the prices usually fall under the range of £500- £2,000 for the scan.

Frequency of Vulnerability Scan

Getting a vulnerability scan in every quarter is usually suggested to keep the infrastructure secure. There can be certain situations where the scans would be required weekly or monthly.

Duration of Vulnerability Scan

An ideal vulnerability scan can take from 30 minutes to 4 hours. The scans can also last for more than 2-4 days. These scans can be scheduled and automated depending on the situation.

A vulnerability scan cannot replace what Penetration Testing has to offer. They are equally important in their ways and need to be performed according to the demand of the infrastructure.

Penetration Testing

Penetration testing is a method of assessing the security of systems and networks by performing simulated attacks to find the vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an attacker. It is a method where real-world attacks are taken into consideration to enhance the security of the infrastructure. The main goal of penetration testing is to uphold the vulnerabilities that were identified during vulnerability scanning.

Performing pen-testing usually brings out the threats in your security model and helps you patch them before they can be exploited.

Pen-testing will identify the vulnerabilities and also define the criticality of the attack with a detailed report. It should be only performed with the permission of the required authority, which should be given in writing to the pen-tester. Otherwise, it might result in crime even though it was performed with the right intentions.

Assessing ones’ business’s risk to cyber-attacks by performing a cyber risk assessment. That specialises in cyber risk assessment will assist you in identifying weak spots, or vulnerabilities, that require to be worked upon.

Compliance, another huge factor for a penetration test, is the requirements certain certifications and standards have that qualify your company to work legally. These standards are usually industry-specific.

Most companies have a fluid environment and sometimes make changes to critical infrastructure, software, and policies. Counting on the change, a replacement penetration test may have to be performed to reassess your network’s security and ensure unintended vulnerabilities are identified and resolved.

Process of Penetration Testing

  1. Planning: This includes defining the scope and the goal of the pen test to be performed.
  2. Reconnaissance: It usually involves gathering all the available information on the target to perform the pen test.
  3. Threat Modelling: This step usually involves identifying threats.
  4. Vulnerability Assessment: After the identification of threats, vulnerability is assessed based on their criticalities.
  5. Exploitation: It involves exploiting the vulnerabilities obtained in the previous steps.
  6. Post Exploitation: This step involves the ideas and methods to fix the exploited vulnerability.
  7. Reporting: This step involves generating a report after penetration testing is completed.

Advantages of Penetration Testing

  • Pen-testing enables a systematic security approach for securing organisations.
  • It assists in identifying and selecting high-risk weaknesses that exist in combination with smaller vulnerabilities.
  • It tests and improves the strength and responsibility of network or system protection.
  • It helps determine the likelihood of a variety of attack vectors based on your system’s existing infrastructure.
  • It assists in investigating data breaches or network intrusions to get any results in the leakage of knowledge or theft of property.
  • It allows the gathering of data about the tested system to find out the maximum amount as possible about it and maybe even encounter some internal information on the attackers.
  • It gives way to the real-life testing of the company’s policies and procedures and employee assurance and readiness by applying not only the tools but also employing techniques like social engineering and phishing.
  • It gives the likelihood to check any system with attacks that are as close as possible to real-world incidents because of the work of execs that think and strike as most malicious hackers would.

Types of Penetration Testing

  • White-box Testing: This type of testing is performed when detailed information about the systems and network is given to the pen tester. This is usually referred to as complete-knowledge testing, as the pen tester knows the resources.
  • Black-box Testing: This type of testing is usually referred to as zero-knowledge testing as it is performed without any prior information about the systems and network to the pen-tester. The tester can apply any method of his choice to perform pen-testing to find out the vulnerabilities. This process might consume a lot of time and may turn expensive.
  • Grey-box Testing: This type is a combination of white and black box testing and is also referred to a partial knowledge testing. It can be defined as a simulated attack that can be performed by a pen-tester posing as an attacker who has limited privileges.

Duration of Penetration Testing

According to the type of penetration test that is being performed, the number of systems to be tested, and the possible constraints, it takes 1-3 weeks to finish a penetration test. Individual testing of the processes, applications, or systems it can take longer. 

It is usually recommended that one can perform a penetration test nearly one or two times a year. However, it also depends on your business needs, the sort of data you store, and compliance factors.

Cost of Penetration Testing

Penetration testing can range from £1,000-£10,000 depending on the type of system that is to be tested, the network complexity, the number of resources that are required, etc.

Conclusion

If we are to compare vulnerability scanning and penetration testing both play one significant role each; One assist you in spotting weaknesses in your network before the attacker does whereas the other remains very evident that penetration testing is more aggressive, detailed a  bit more expensive in nature of the security scan.

Depending on the availability of the resources it is recommended equally to perform continious vulnerability scans and penetration tests.

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