New threats are increasing daily in the era of Artificial intelligence, where hacking vulnerable devices is a very common scenario. To fight against the threats and other attack vectors, organizations need to schedule penetration testing to step ahead in identifying and mitigating the potential vulnerabilities within the server and network infrastructure.
To systematically identify the entry points and the weakness of any system vulnerability scanning plays a key role, as a part of scans this scans the network, application, and the whole infrastructure. We will try to explore the significance, best practices, and methodologies that are related to identifying the threats in penetration testing.
Vulnerability Scanning, a foundational component of Penetration testing
To assess the security threats in an infrastructure penetration is needed and to perform penetration testing ethical hackers or cybersecurity professionals do the vulnerability scanning which may involve automated or manual assessment of systems. Now we know the importance of identifying the vulnerabilities, but then the first task is to prioritize the remediation plans and reduce the weakness or the entry points as much as possible. At last, what is necessary is to take the necessary steps to defend against potential threats or attacks.
Exploring the Significance of Vulnerability Scanning
Identify Potential Risks:
Vulnerability scanning helps to identify the potential risk in any infrastructure. After the identification process, it helps to make a remediation plan according to the severity of the vulnerabilities. The more severe vulnerabilities will be on the top of the list to remediate as soon as possible and then in the priority list there will be the less severe vulnerabilities.
Required Compliance Obligations:
Due to the compliance requirements many regulatory frameworks make it mandatory to make a plan for assessing regular vulnerability scanning. This scanning helps to maintain the requirements or the obligations of the regulatory compliance of an organization.
Ensure Security and Save Costs:
A huge amount of financial loss can happen if any incident occurs due to data breaches, or any ransomware or malware attacks that might require downtime and hamper the productivity of a business. To save significant financial loss this should be a mandatory task for any organization to proactively identify the vulnerabilities on a regular basis.
Schedule Monitoring:
If any organization wants to ensure the proper cyber-secured infrastructure then the need for continuous monitoring should be maintained. This is not a one-time task rather this should be a regular task of the cybersecurity professionals of an organization if they want to stay safe from different types of attacks and threats.
Methodologies to identify the threats using Vulnerability Scanning
Network Vulnerability Scanning:
Scanning network devices such as routers, switches, firewalls, and sensitive servers for any kind of vulnerabilities is the first task to step forward in network vulnerability scanning. There are many types of network vulnerability scanners that cybersecurity professionals mostly prefer Nmap, Nessus, and OpenVAS. These are mostly used for initial network vulnerability scanning.
Web Application Vulnerability Scanning:
To identify the web application related vulnerabilities cybersecurity professionals use these tools, such as SQL injection, XSS (Cross-Site Scripting), and authentication weakness-related issues. OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, and Acunetix are also a few common tools used by cybersecurity professionals for identifying web application vulnerabilities.
Database Vulnerability Scanning:
To identify the misconfigurations (weak passwords, backdated software, or plugins) in a database, vulnerability scanning is very much necessary. SQLMap is one of the common tools for scanning and tools like DbProtect, and IBM Guardium are also utilized by cybersecurity professionals for database vulnerability scanning.
Vulnerability Scanning; Standards or Best Practices:
Defining the Scopes and Objectives:
Before initiating the scanning the main and first step is to define the scopes and objectives of the scanning. You should define which assets need to be scanned, and how will the frequency of the scans. After that, this is to mention the outcomes or the result of the scanning.
Utilizing a combination of Scanning Tools:
To ensure accuracy in identifying the weaknesses or vulnerabilities try to use a combination of vulnerability scanning tools across different layers of the infrastructure.
Priority-based Remediation Planning:
After focusing on identifying the vulnerabilities the main task is to set the priority according to the risk of exploitation. Based on their severity address the vulnerabilities as Critical, Medium, Low, etc. Also, try to make the priority according to the potential impact on the organization.
Ensure Regular updates with the latest patches:
To ensure the identification or detection by the vulnerability scanning tools this is mandatory to keep the tools up to date so that they can detect the latest threats and potential vulnerabilities.
To survive any kind of cyber attack the cybersecurity professionals of an organization need to understand the Significance of Vulnerability Scanning, adopt the Methodologies to identify the threats using Vulnerability Scanning tools and follow the best practices accordingly. This will empower the confidence of the cybersecurity team as well as ensure the proactive security of the digital infrastructure of an organization from different types of complex cyber-attacks.