Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) are both different types of software security testing performed to identify and quantify the security vulnerabilities in the network, server, and software applications.
In Vulnerability Assessment which is the first stage to perform security testing, identifies vulnerabilities such as security loopholes, risks, threats in an application or network.
But to differentiate which vulnerabilities are exploitable and non-exploitable, Penetration Testing comes into the picture in the second stage, performed to identify the exploitable vulnerabilities and attempts to exploit them, focused to find possible routes of an attacker or hacker would gain unauthorized access.
Both testings help organizations to examine their present security vulnerabilities, the amount of impact on them and provide detailed recommendations to prevent future attacks.
In other words, vulnerability assessment can be considered as a first step to improve the security of your system, as it allows the company to see the drawbacks in it.
However, in order to find out whether and how these drawbacks can be exploited by hackers with evil intent, penetration testing should be conducted. It provides the company with a list of vulnerabilities in their security protection that they should pay special attention to.
These two operations – Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing – are the activities that definitely should be carried out on a regular basis in any company that is interested in protecting their network from malicious access.
Now, let’s go into a detailed description of both of the methods.
Vulnerability Assessment (VA):
It is a type of security testing to discover the vulnerabilities and to evaluate the security risks in the network of software systems. This testing is performed by running a vulnerability scanner application on the target system.
Further, it provides the security loopholes which are categorized based on their severity and provides proper remediation measures.
Once the report is generated with various data related to the vulnerabilities in it needs to be analyzed those are really exploitable and how many levels of threat and damage to the IT environment.
So, this report is used for the next step i.e. Penetration Testing to find out the vulnerability is the right one or not.
Penetration Testing (PT):
It is a type of security testing which is also called ethical hacking which is performed to exploit the vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure as a real-world hacker.
In addition to the vulnerabilities, it also identifies the damage and remediation advice to reduce the impact of the further shortcomings being exploited.
The generated report of Penetration Testing will be the structured details of the pentest after exploitation is completed, evidence in the form of screenshots, business risk of it, and severity level how wide it’s affected which is useful towards remediation and strengthen the cybersecurity.
Read Must | How to Perform Vulnerability Assessment & Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) | Click Here – Vulnerability Assessment & Management Procedure
Stages of VAPT:
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing process can be divided into multiple phases:
- Information Gathering – In this phase, pen tester gather and collect different kinds of information as much as possible about IT environment such as existing resources, systems, applications, networks, etc. involved with the target. It is the most critical step of a security test as pentester spend maximum time in it because the more information gathered about the target, the more possibility to obtain relevant results when attack is launched.
- Vulnerability Scanning – In this second step, pen tester scanned the target application for detection of vulnerabilities using a set of tools and understands the response of a target to several intrusion attacks in both static and running condition of the code. This assessment provides initial knowledge and identify any security weaknesses, threats which could allow a hacker to gain access to the environment.
- Vulnerability exploitation (Penetration Testing) – In this step, pen tester exploit the vulnerabilities with an aim to gain access to the target in a controlled environment to understand the extent to which an attacker can compromise a vulnerable system. Once any vulnerability is exploited, the tester attempts to elevate network privileges by intercepting traffic, mapping the internal network to gain the maximum level of access to the system including sensitive information in applications and file servers.
- Report Generation – Once the penetration testing is done, final reporting is to be done by collecting the proof of exploited vulnerabilities for review and action. It also includes the scope of the assessment, testing methodologies, summary of findings with risk severity, details of each finding with their impact and recommendations for corrections.
Why VAPT needed:
The evolving hacking attempts, tactics, and procedures used by cybercriminals to compromise the IT security defenses mean that it’s important to regularly test your organization’s cybersecurity defenses.
This crime causes loss of customer loyalties, financial losses, and a negative impact on an organization.
So, to keep the data secure and implement effective cybersecurity to the organization, the VAPT approach gives a broad picture of the risks and threats facing its application, making the business protect better to its systems and data from the attacks and also strengthen the security policy compliance of an organization.
Found this article interesting? Follow DefenseLead on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content.
Please mention the set of tools used for PenTest and sample report with findings.