What is the purpose of vulnerability assessment?

 The security weaknesses in a network infrastructure, information system or application are systematically reviewed by the vulnerability assessment platform. The system is evaluated to know whether it is susceptible to any known vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities ranging from simple misconfigurations to crucial design flaws are identified. In this article, you will get to know about the relevance and process of vulnerability assessment.

What is a Vulnerability assessment?

A vulnerability assessment helps in identifying, prioritizing and classifying vulnerabilities in applications, computer systems and network infrastructure. Vulnerability is known to be a security weakness that might help the organization uncover security risks and cyber threats. Vulnerability assessments often incorporate automated testing tools such as network security scanners, so that results can be displayed in a vulnerability assessment report.

 

Following are the steps involved that define the process of a vulnerability assessment:

1. Defining the scope: In this step, the following points are pondered and worked upon by the team:

·         The equipment and protected assets need to be identified and all endpoints should be mapped out

·         The asset’s business value needs to be ascertained to know the level of impact if it is attacked

·         Access controls are identified along with the security requirements of each system

·         A baseline of processes, services and open ports on protected assets is recorded

·         Operating systems are ascertained and deployment of software takes place on assets.

 

2. Carrying out vulnerability assessment testing:

Automated vulnerability scans are run by a team on environments and target devices. If the security posture of the system needs to be investigated then manual tools can be used. If this stage needs to be automated and made more efficient, teams will have to rely on threat intelligence feeds, vendor security advisories and vulnerability databases.

It may take a minute to several hours to carry out a single test. It depends upon the target’s system size and the type of scan.

 

3. Vulnerabilities need to be prioritized: False positives are removed from vulnerability scanning results and vulnerabilities are prioritized according to several factors such as:

·         The vulnerability database provides the severity score

·         The risk of sensitive data

·         The vulnerability can be exploited with ease

·         A lateral movement that needs to be performed from this system to other sensitive systems

·         The patch availability and the specific effort needed to deploy it.

 

4. A vulnerability assessment report needs to be created: A unified report is created by the team that shows all the vulnerabilities in the protected assets. A proper plan should also be developed for remediating them.

For medium to high-risk vulnerabilities, information about the vulnerability, which system it affects, when it was discovered, the potential damage that can be done if attackers exploit it and the strategic effort and plan required to remediate it should be included in the plan.

A Proof of Concept (PoC) should also be provided by the team demonstrating how the exploitation of each crucial vulnerability can happen.

 

The strategic importance of vulnerability assessment:

Crucial information about the security weaknesses in the IT environment/infrastructure of an organization is provided by vulnerability assessment. Tactical direction is provided on how to mitigate or remediate the security issues before they can be exploited.

The process of vulnerability assessment provides you with a better understanding of your security flaws, IT infrastructure and overall risk. This greatly improves application security standards and information security, while reducing the likelihood that a cyber-intruder can access the organization’s information in an unauthorized manner.

 

Conclusion:  If you are looking forward to implementing vulnerability assessment for your specific project, then do get connected with a reputed software testing services company that will provide you with methodical testing solutions that are in line with your project specific requirements.

About the author: I am a technical content writer focused on writing technology specific articles. I strive to provide well-researched information on the leading market savvy technologies