As cybersecurity threats rise, the stakes get higher for businesses worried about continuity, reputation, profitability, and the protection of customer data. There are many layers to a good cybersecurity strategy, but identifying vulnerabilities and shoring them up before an incident occurs is far preferable to reacting to an attack. This article looks at vulnerability scanning, vulnerability assessments, and the bigger picture of vulnerability management to help explain the different approaches.
What is Vulnerability Scanning?
Vulnerability scanning is the automated detection of potential flaws, breaches, and vulnerabilities that might become threats. The process uses tools to analyze network ports and communication equipment to look for any broken authentication, cross-site scripting, security misconfiguration, or password breaches—essentially, weaknesses malicious actors can exploit for an attack.
Vulnerability scanners like Acunetix, Burp Suite, and Nexpose look for potential threats by comparing the “target” against a list of known vulnerabilities, called the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. Most of these tools collect real-time data to…
