What Is Vulnerability Testing?
Vulnerability testing, also known as vulnerability analysis, is a method for discovering weaknesses in an IT system’s security that could lead to data breaches or unauthorized access. An organization’s cybersecurity posture is assessed on the surface, and the results give security professionals a list of potential weaknesses and threats.
In most cases, vulnerability testing is accompanied by penetration testing, which seeks to imitate the behaviors of both external and internal attackers. Both types of attackers are considered potential threats. The objective is to get a deeper understanding of an application’s behavior to spot security flaws that could be exploited.
How Can Vulnerability Testing Help?
Regular vulnerability assessments provide several advantages for a company, including the following:
- Consistently identifying and mitigating security issues before they can be abused by prospective attackers and costing the company’s assets and reputation enormous sums of money.
- Eliminate or minimize the hazard to a bearable level by taking immediate corrective measures.
- Maintaining compliance with the industry’s cybersecurity regulations is an effective way to prevent incurring substantial non-compliance costs.
- Access to real-time information on the health of the IT infrastructure security.
- Risk assessment for the whole network to identify potential vulnerabilities.
- Complete overview of all the systems connected to your network, along with a brief description of what they’re used for.
- Comprehensive documentation for future evaluations and preparedness for future improvements.
- Evaluating the risks and rewards of maximizing your security investments.
What Is The Process Of Vulnerability Testing?
Cybersecurity engineers often follow four fundamental phases in conducting a complete vulnerability assessment: planning, scanning, analyzing, and treating vulnerabilities.
Planning
The first step is to establish the process’s objectives and scope. This entails assessing the current status of the IT infrastructure as a whole, determining the testing endpoints, and selecting the most appropriate vulnerability scanner.
Scanning
This stage involves scanning the targets using the chosen vulnerability assessment instrument and generating a list of the vulnerabilities that have been discovered so far.
Analyzing
This stage guides you through the process of understanding the causes behind the found vulnerabilities, the potential effect of those vulnerabilities, and how they can be mitigated. Additionally, you can rank threats according to their seriousness, immediacy, and potential danger.
Treating Vulnerabilities
The next stage is to figure out how to address the issues you have detected and evaluated. It is either remediation or mitigation. Mitigation is used to lessen the possibility of a vulnerability occurring, while remediation is performed when the vulnerability can be resolved quickly.
Conclusion
Vulnerability testing can help identify problems, but it shouldn’t be a team’s sole security technique when developing an application. Identifying an application’s vulnerabilities requires regular testing and a team of experts that can review test data, go through the findings, and make choices on whether issues need further investigation.
