What is vulnerability scanning?
Vulnerability scanning is the automated process of detecting and identifying potential vulnerabilities and threats in the systems, networks, applications, and managed IT assets. Organizations regularly perform vulnerability scanning to strengthen their security posture and mitigate vulnerabilities in the network before they are exploited by threat actors.
With vulnerabilities rising exponentially over the years, implementing vulnerability scanning within the organization forms a crucial part of the vulnerability management process. To automate the process, organizations can leverage vulnerability scanners to periodically scan and assess the network for vulnerabilities and threats.
Table of contents:
Why is vulnerability scanning important?
Implementing a periodic vulnerability scanning process offers manifold benefits to organizations in securing their IT environments. Some of the benefits include:
- Early detection of threats in the systems and the network before they can be exploited by the threat actors. This is especially useful to thwart zero-day exploits or attacks due to system misconfigurations.
- Adherence to regulatory compliances like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001. Additionally, effective vulnerability scanning, as a part of the vulnerability management process proves how serious the organization is in terms of cybersecurity, and is often seen as a source of assurance by prospects, users, and regulatory bodies.
- Reduced breach risks due to continued visibility into the network, and timely mitigation of the vulnerabilities and other threats. Furthermore, it also drastically reduces the risk of compliance fines and sensitive data leakage due to breaches.
- Improved asset visibility by monitoring the managed assets periodically. The automated detection ensures that the unmanned devices aren't forgotten and keeps shadow IT and rogue devices within the network in check.
- Efficient prioritization of threats by prioritizing the vulnerabilities based on several factors such as CVSS, risk-based prioritization, and likeability of exploits. This allows IT teams to better prioritize the vulnerabilities that need to be remediated immediately.
How does vulnerability scanning work?
The vulnerability scanning process differs across organizations, based on the various types of devices managed and the priorities and decisions of the IT and security teams. These teams choose one or more vulnerability scanners to carry out the process. The steps can be broken down below:
- Defining the scope, i.e. the assets, applications, and environments to be scanned.
- Scanning, Detection, and Analysis of the vulnerabilities detected by tallying the findings against databases such as the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE).
- Generating reports that consist of the list of vulnerabilities detected within the network and the managed assets. These in-depth reports contain multiple insights that help in prioritization, such as severity ratings, the likeability of exploits, and mitigations or workarounds.
- Remediation and mitigation forms the next step in the vulnerability scanning process. Once the vulnerabilities have been prioritized, they are mitigated via patching and other vendor-suggested workarounds. In case of unavailability of patches, they can be remediated using vendor-suggested workarounds.
- Rescanning the network at a later schedule, once the vulnerabilities have been mitigated or remediated, to ensure that there are no active ones. The network is scanned automatically and at fixed intervals to maintain continual monitoring.
What are the types of vulnerability scanning?
Based on the targets to be scanned and the methods used, vulnerability scanning can be broken down into the following types:
Based on the target:
- Network-based scans that detect open ports, insecure protocols, misconfigured or weak passwords, and so on.
- Host-Based Scans to scan and inspect the operating system, files, and configurations on individual systems.
- Web Application Scans to identify different types of attack techniques such as SQL injection, Cross Site Scripting (XSS), and other threats.
- Database Scans to scan for outdated database software or exposed credentials.
- Cloud Scans to detect and assess vulnerabilities in cloud platforms like AWS, and Azure.
- API Scans to analyze and identify weaknesses in APIs such as information disclosure, protection of sensitive data, and other authentication flaws.
Based on the method:
- Authenticated scanning also known as credentialed scanning offers greater coverage and more in-depth assessments for deeper and more accurate results.
- Unauthenticated scanning simulates attacks from the perspective of external attackers without the need for credentials, to identify the vulnerabilities available to the external attackers.
- Active scanning directly interacts with and probes the network and the systems to identify exposed vulnerabilities, open ports, and other misconfigurations.
- Passive scanning monitors the traffic flow to collect information about the systems, such as looking for rogue WiFi access points, or the latest TLS version.
What are the challenges in vulnerability scanning?
Vulnerability scanning, despite being a crucial part of the vulnerability management program can pose significant challenges to organizations. Some of the most common challenges have been listed below:
- Inaccurate results or false positives in the detected vulnerabilities and reports can make the mitigation process much more complex. Hence, it is recommended to tally the data with other vulnerability databases and sources.
- A huge volume of results from frequent scanning can make it difficult for the teams to prioritize the vulnerabilities. This can induce alert fatigue. One of the methods to simplify this is to have periodic scans to allow time for mitigation, and perform on-demand scans, only in the case of zero-days or critical vulnerabilities.
- Scalability is another common challenge, when it comes to vulnerability scanning in large networks that have remote endpoints as well are split on the cloud and on-premises. In such instances, it becomes difficult to scan and discover the assets for streamlined scanning.
Robust vulnerability scanning with ManageEngine
With the need for continual vulnerability scanning being already established, the next question is how to choose one?
ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus is a reputed vulnerability management and scanning solution that offers continual detection, assessment, and mitigation of vulnerabilities, threats, and misconfigurations in the network.
This tool lets admins scan and detect vulnerabilities in laptops, servers, workstations, as well as network devices. Additionally, its built-in patching capability lets you deploy patches for operating systems and 1000+ third-party applications and stay compliant with CIS benchmarks.
You can try out a 30-day free trial of the tool today to understand the plethora of capabilities first-hand.
