Knowing Your Weaknesses: Vulnerability Assessment vs Penetration Testing

These days, companies have a lot of sensitive data, which makes them vulnerable to cyberattacks. To improve their security, many use security testing measures, including penetration testing and vulnerability assessments. What distinguishes these two approaches, though, and which is best for you? This article explains their main differences and gives you advice on how to protect your digital assets. So, when and where is it better to use vulnerability assessment vs penetration testing? Let's find out!

What is Vulnerability Assessment?

Often starting with a thorough vulnerability scan, a vulnerability assessment, or VA, is a process to identify weaknesses and potential security risks in a computer system, network, web application, or cloud environment. Vulnerability scanning helps evaluate how secure these systems are by systematically testing them for weaknesses.

Process

The assessment begins with a vulnerability scan, where automated scanners are used to compare your systems against databases of known weaknesses. This vulnerability scanner can detect several problems, including misconfigured software or network devices, outdated software with known vulnerabilities, weak passwords or security settings, and unpatched operating system or application weaknesses.

Key Benefits

Vulnerability assessment offers several advantages:

• A vulnerability scan provides a broad overview of your security posture without requiring extensive manual effort.

• Vulnerability assessment helps prioritize security efforts by highlighting the most critical weaknesses that must be addressed first.

• These assessments can help meet regulatory compliance requirements that mandate security assessments and improve the organization's security posture.

Limitations

Among the limitations of vulnerability assessments, you can find the following:

• They don't exploit vulnerabilities; they only identify their existence.

• They might miss newly discovered vulnerabilities that have yet to be documented in the scanner databases.

• They can sometimes generate false positives, alarming for vulnerabilities that don't exist. Security teams might spend their time on issues that were never there.

• A vulnerability scanner can be great at detecting known issues but can miss complex weaknesses in an advanced web application because it relies on predefined rules. While useful, it does not replace thorough, expert-level testing and analysis.

What is Penetration Testing?

Penetration or pen testing simulates a cyberattack on your IT infrastructure, including computer systems, networks, or web applications. Unlike vulnerability scans that passively scan for weaknesses, pen testing actively attempts to exploit them.

Process

Pen testers, also called ethical hackers, use techniques commonly used by real attackers to test network security. These techniques that help improve companies' security posture may include:

• Finding exposures and configuration issues in systems and networks.

• Persuading employees to disclose sensitive information or click malicious links.

• Trying to guess or hack into user accounts.

• Using known weak places in software or systems to gain unauthorized access.

Key Benefits

Penetration tests provide a deeper understanding of your IT infrastructure's security posture by:

• Confirming whether attackers can actively exploit identified vulnerabilities.

• Evaluating the potential consequences of a successful cyberattack.

• Identifying additional vulnerabilities that might have been overlooked in basic vulnerability assessments.

Limitations

Penetration tests have some drawbacks you might want to consider:

• Pen tests are typically more expensive and time-consuming than vulnerability assessments.

• They require thorough planning and coordination between pen testers and your IT team.

• Pen tests usually focus on specific systems or applications, not a complete security evaluation.

Vulnerability Assessment vs Penetration Testing: What is the Difference?

Both vulnerability assessments and penetration testing are tools for improving your cybersecurity resilience, but they serve different purposes.

The best approach often involves a combination of vulnerability scanning and penetration testing. Vulnerability assessments can be used regularly to identify potential weak spots, while penetration testing can be conducted periodically to validate the effectiveness of your security controls and identify exploitable vulnerabilities.

When Do You Need Vulnerability Testing and Penetration Testing?

You should consider vulnerability and penetration testing at various stages throughout your cybersecurity journey. So when do you need each of them?

Vulnerability Testing

• Regular security checkups: A good practice is to conduct a regular vulnerability scan through assessments, ideally quarterly or even more frequently, depending on your risk profile. This allows you to monitor your security posture and continuously find newly discovered vulnerabilities.

• System deployments and updates: Whenever you deploy new systems, applications, or updates to existing ones, a vulnerability assessment can help find any potential security weaknesses introduced during the deployment process.

• Compliance requirements: Many regulations and compliance standards mandate regular security assessments, and vulnerability assessments are a common requirement.

• Prioritizing remediation efforts: Vulnerability assessments provide valuable information for prioritizing security efforts. They highlight the most critical vulnerabilities that must be addressed first based on factors like exploitability and potential impact.

Pen Testing

• In-depth security validation: When you need a deeper understanding of your security posture and want to validate the effectiveness of your security controls, penetration testing is crucial. It simulates real-world attacks and helps find exploitable vulnerabilities.

• High-risk systems and data: Pen testing is highly recommended for systems and applications that store sensitive data or are critical to your operations. It helps ensure these high-risk assets are adequately protected against sophisticated attacks.

• Following a security incident: After experiencing a security incident, a penetration test can be valuable in identifying the root cause of the breach and uncovering any remaining vulnerabilities attackers might exploit.

• Mergers and acquisitions: During mergers and acquisitions, penetration testing can help assess the security posture of the acquired entity and discover any potential integration vulnerabilities.

By strategically using vulnerability assessments and penetration testing—key activities in security testing—at the right times, you can proactively find and address security weaknesses, significantly reducing your cyberattack risk.

Way To Identify Vulnerabilities

Security vulnerabilities can be identified through various methods, each offering different benefits and best suited for specific situations. Among them are the following:

Automated Tools

These automated scans compare your systems to databases of known vulnerabilities. They efficiently find many weak spots, such as outdated software, misconfigurations, and weak passwords.

Penetration Testing

While not strictly automated, pen testers use specialized tools, including a vulnerability scanner, to identify potential vulnerabilities. However, they go beyond simple scans by attempting to exploit identified weak places. This helps assess if vulnerabilities can be actively used in an attack and their potential impact.

Human Expertise

Developers can identify vulnerabilities by manually reviewing code before applications are deployed. This helps catch weaknesses early in the development lifecycle and prevent them from reaching production.

Organizations reward external security researchers who find system vulnerabilities. This taps into a global talent pool and can uncover vulnerabilities internal testing might miss.

Staying Informed

By tracking the latest cyber threats and vulnerabilities, you can prioritize your security efforts and focus on patching vulnerabilities attackers exploit. This proactive approach helps you stay ahead of emerging threats.

Adopting a multi-pronged approach can create a robust vulnerability management strategy that identifies and addresses security weak spots in your systems.

Vulnerability Scans and Penetration Testing with Agile Security Platform

EPAM offers an Agile Security Platform, a modern alternative to traditional yearly pen tests based on Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS). PTaaS integrates seamlessly with your development process, enabling continuous security monitoring. This approach identifies security vulnerabilities much sooner, often in near real-time. By catching them early, engineers can fix them quickly, leading to faster development of more secure software.

Statistics on Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing in 2024

Let's have a look at the most relevant and current statistics regarding vulnerability assessment and penetration testing in 2024:

Penetration Testing Market Size and Growth

• The global penetration testing market size was valued at USD 2.20 billion in 2023. The market is projected to grow from USD 2.45 billion in 2024 to USD 6.35 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 12.6% during the forecast period (2024-2032).

• The US pen testing market was estimated at US$325.8 million in 2020. China, the world's second-largest economy, will reach a market size of $705.9 million by 2027.

Vulnerability Statistics

• The National Vulnerability Database had 206,059 entries in 2022, and 8,051 vulnerabilities were listed in the first quarter of 2022 alone.

• 80% of exploits are published before the CVEs are released. The average gap between the publication of an exploit and the corresponding CVE is 23 days.

• 60% of data breaches are caused by failing to apply patches.

• SQL Injection was the leading web application critical vulnerability found globally in 2022, with 33%.

Penetration Testing Trends

• The integration of AI in cybersecurity has led to advancements in risk mitigation. Pen testing has become more automated by utilizing AI and ML.

• With the widespread adoption of 5G technology, pen testing has become crucial for ensuring the security of these networks.

• Physical pen testing involves assessing an organization's physical security measures, including buildings, data centers, and access controls.