How Does Vulnerability Scanning Work?

Businesses of all sizes have some form of data that a threat actor could exploit. It is even possible for a cyber-criminal to invade a company's available network with the sole purpose of causing web security testing issues. Whether it involves patient medical histories, credit card data, available consumer transaction histories, or trade secrets, if a company uses technology to transmit or store sensitive information, it has a responsibility to protect itself against the vulnerability of cyber-attacks. Vulnerability scanning tools and testing are available, and necessary for protecting a system from attacks or threats.

Unfortunately, not all organizations do enough to scan and lock down their network security measures to prevent vulnerability. Vulnerability scanners are must-have tools to protect your valuable digital assets without depleting your IT resources.

What Are Vulnerability Scanning Applications?

Vulnerability scanners are easy-to-use tools and applications that large and small sized businesses use to provide and evaluate the efficiency and security of their systems, networks, and web applications. With vulnerability scanning tools -- also known as vulnerability assessment applications -- security teams can detect holes, flaws, or a vulnerability anywhere in the system, network, or web applications like:

firewalls
printers
fax machines
routers
a web server
operating systems
cloud-based vulnerability
open-source tool components
application security testing

A vulnerability scanner or assessment can find these web security weaknesses that can be seen as the available entry vulnerability points that unauthorized users use to infiltrate system applications, and exploit them by viewing traffic in and out of the network applications. Many can do so by releasing sensitive data (thus causing a breach), and taking control of the network applications -- effectively locking out the organization's security team, leaders, and employees.

Vulnerability scanning tools use a systematic, automated assessment process that streamlines the ability to scan for:

Causes of Security Vulnerabilities

Though hackers can infiltrate systems in a wide range of ways, businesses should consider several security weaknesses in particular. Vulnerability scanning tools alone will not be enough to address each of these flaws, but you can use many available software tools to help you prioritize the threat risks each one poses.

Account Abuse: Inadequate available security training, a lack of policies, and ill intent are the most common ways vulnerabilities develop within an organization's network and their devices. The following factors can contribute to a weakness:

server configuration issues
data leaks
a failure to follow security protocols
default credentials
failing to remove old users from systems

Web Configuration Mistakes: Misconfigured or outdated web applications can contribute to a web application vulnerability. Examples of web application misconfiguration use cases include:

expired SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certification
an incorrect HTTP configuration
insecure coding

Other use cases include third-party apps: Adding too many third-party applications or plugins into the network devices leaves them open to security gaps. Not every available application is up-to-date with its software, and many can become outdated. Threat actors will use holes within these plugins as another backdoor into your organization's systems.

Poor Network Structure: Leaving networks open by not requiring personalized passwords or user credentials may be convenient for workers and clients, but this can be disastrous for the company. Open networks have minimal security and are easy targets for unauthorized users. You can address this vulnerability by segmenting the system and only giving enough privileges to end-users to do their assigned work.

The exact procedures the vulnerability scanner software tool uses will depend on the organization's IT department and security team since many tools and functions are at its disposal. This team will choose the best vulnerability scanning tool for its organization.

Regardless of the choice, the team members will use vulnerability scanners in conjunction with other tactics to generate a response from network devices. They will match the answers they receive against well-known vulnerabilities within a database to determine the security gap's severity.

The steps for how a vulnerability scanner software tool can identify and aid IT professionals are:

Identify any vulnerabilities
Identify any valuation of risk
Treatment of any identified vulnerabilities
Reporting on vulnerabilities

Identification of Vulnerabilities

Uncovering vulnerabilities using vulnerability scanning tools relies on three factors:

The vulnerability scanner's ability to locate and identify network devices, open ports, and software
The vulnerability scanner's ability to identify and collect data from the system and known vulnerability database
The scanner's ability to correlate the data that they identify to at least one known vulnerability database

IT admins can configure the vulnerability scanner software tool to be more or less aggressive in its scans, which is sometimes necessary because it can be intrusive enough to affect the network's stability during the scanning process. The scans can also reduce bandwidth, but neither of these issues is permanent in the scans.

To reduce or eliminate this issue, security teams can schedule vulnerability scanning tools to operate after hours. The team must make sure they scan every company laptop and any other devices that connect to the network.

To ensure that IT experts scan all devices simultaneously and achieve optimal results, a team can identify and use endpoint agents to run the tools on the company's equipment or use adaptive vulnerability scanning services. These types of vulnerability assessment services detect new device connections as it patches into systems for the first time. Because new vulnerabilities are possible within networks, web servers, or operating systems, the tool will automatically run a scan whenever a new device connects to them.

Watch a Demo of Fortra Vulnerability Management >

Evaluation of Risk

Vulnerability scanning services will often use a generated extensive list of identified vulnerabilities. Attempting to mitigate the entire list, if it is too long, can take up too many IT resources, and it is not practical. Mitigating some network vulnerabilities will cost businesses more than to do nothing and allow a threat actor to exploit the flaws.

Evaluating the risks of all the vulnerabilities will alert security teams to those that pose the highest threats and the one that is least problematic. During this stage, IT professionals can determine:

The severity of the security holes and how they could impact the organization if manipulated successfully
The ease with which an attacker could exploit the vulnerability, including whether or not they could do it from the internet or if they must be physically present to access a network device directly connected to the system
Whether they can reconfigure current security controls to reduce the available risk of exploitation
If the vulnerabilities are false positives

Through risk evaluation, the team can determine which weaknesses need the most urgent attention and which is one they can ignore.

Treatment of Any Identified Vulnerabilities

The ultimate goal of vulnerability assessment services is to patch or fix a known network vulnerability and eliminate its available risks to the business. Unfortunately, not all security vulnerabilities have immediate fixes, so IT admins generally mitigate the vulnerability by adding more protections to make it more difficult for a threat actor to exploit. Mitigation is not a permanent fix, but it is an effective way to reduce a potential threat until a viable patch can secure the gap in network security.

During this stage, the organization may accept the vulnerability and do nothing to prevent an attack. This option is usually the best vulnerability option, as it is important to make sure the risk of danger to the company is low, and the costs to remedy the problem are greater than the damage it could cause.

Reporting on Vulnerabilities

After the IT team addresses all the identified vulnerabilities, it must comply with any regulations governing the organization by documenting what they find and treat.

A vulnerability scanner’s software tool can generate and provide customizable reports, which help the team understand which treatments work best for specific vulnerabilities without requiring too many resources. The reports also allow the IT department to monitor the ebb and flow of vulnerability trends over time. The more knowledge it has about specific vulnerabilities, the more successfully it will guard the systems.

Vulnerability Management Techniques

Using a vulnerability scanner software tool on your systems and networks will provide IT departments and organization admins with valuable information about their infrastructure's strengths and vulnerabilities. Including additional vulnerability management techniques into the business's strategy will give further network insights:

Penetration Testing: Penetration testing and vulnerability scanners work together to allow vulnerability management security personnel to view the network from a hacker's perspective. Penetration testing is a management procedure in which security experts simulate a hack on a network on behalf of a company. Penetration testing allows you to use well-known hacking methods to identify the wide range of ways an attack or threat actor could sneak into the system. Penetration testing can provide an overview of real-world consequences the vulnerabilities might have on the company if one should successfully exploit the flaw.
Internet or web Application Scanning: Web applications need as much protection as internal networks, but businesses often overlook web application security testing. A web application vulnerability security scanner is similar to vulnerability scanners, and can check for weaknesses inside web-based apps for web-based vulnerability. Internet or Web application vulnerability scanners are tools that help catch various online issues, like SQL injection, command injection, insecure server configuration issues, cross-site scripting, and more. As such, they ensure web application security by testing and catching these configurations, SQL injection, and cross-site scripting.
Configuration Management: Management Misconfigurations and a lack of patch management are some of the most common reasons for vulnerabilities. Application security testing and scans can bring these management risks to light, even though they could have gone unnoticed for months or years until the scan revealed them. Addressing these configuration issues through scans will often create consistency throughout your network and increase its security.

These additional vulnerability management techniques will give network insight into the business's vulnerability mitigation strategy.