Vulnerability Assessment Complete Guide and Explaination.


Vulnerability Assessment Complete Guide 2O22. Explained 

Are you wondering about vulnerability assessments? We give a full explanation of what vulnerability assessments are, how they work, and how they help prevent cyberattacks. Explain....

What Is Vulnerability Assessment?

Vulnerability assessments systematically evaluate your system, looking for security weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The assessment provides information to the security team to classify, prioritize, and remediate weaknesses. 

1. Asset discovery

First, you need to decide what you want to scan, which isn’t always as simple as it sounds. One of the most common cyber security challenges facing organizations is a lack of visibility into their digital infrastructure and its connected devices. Some reasons for this include:

  1. Mobile Devices: Smartphones, laptops, and similar devices are designed to disconnect and reconnect frequently from the office, as well as employee’s homes and often other remote locations.
  2. IoT Devices: IoT devices are part of the corporate infrastructure but may be connected primarily to mobile networks.
  3. Cloud-Based Infrastructure: Cloud services providers make it easy to spin up new servers as needed without IT involvement.
We’d all love to work in an organisation that was perfectly organised, but the reality is often messier. It can be hard simply to keep track of what different teams are putting online, or changing, at any given point. This lack of visibility is problematic because it’s difficult to secure what you can’t see. Luckily, the discovery aspect of this process can be largely automated. For example, some modern vulnerability assessment tools can perform discovery on public-facing systems and connect directly to cloud providers to identify cloud-based infrastructure.

2. Prioritisation

Once you know what you’ve got, the next question is whether you can afford to run a vulnerability assessment on all of it. In a perfect world, you would be running a vulnerability assessment regularly on all of your systems. However, vendors often charge per-asset, so prioritisation can help where budgets can’t cover every asset the company owns.

Some examples of where you may wish to prioritise are:

  • Internet-facing servers
  • Customer-facing applications
  • Databases containing sensitive information

It’s worth noting that the two of the most common vectors for untargeted or mass attacks are:

  1. Internet facing systems
  2. Employee laptops (via phishing attacks)

So if you can’t afford anything else, at least try to get these covered, in the same order.

3. Vulnerability scanning

Vulnerability scanners are designed to identify known security weaknesses and provide guidance on how to fix them. Because these vulnerabilities are commonly publicly reported, there is a lot of information available about vulnerable software. Vulnerability scanners use this information to identify vulnerable devices and software in an organization’s infrastructure. The scanner initially sends probes to systems to identify:

  • Open ports & running services
  • Software versions
  • Configuration settings

Based on this information, the scanner can often identify many known vulnerabilities in the system being tested.  

In addition, the scanner sends specific probes to identify individual vulnerabilities which can only be tested by sending a safe exploit that proves the weakness is present. These types of probes may identify common vulnerabilities such as ‘Command Injection’ or ‘cross-site scripting (XSS)’, or the use of default usernames and passwords for a system.

Depending on the infrastructure that you’re scanning (and particularly how expansive any websites are), the vulnerability scan may take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.

4. Result analysis & remediation

After the vulnerability scan is complete, the scanner provides an assessment report.  When reading and developing remediation plans based on this report, you should consider the following:

  • Severity: A vulnerability scanner should label a potential vulnerability based upon its severity. When planning for remediation, focus on the most severe vulnerabilities first, but avoid ignoring the rest forever. It’s not uncommon for hackers to chain several mild vulnerabilities to create an exploit. A good vulnerability scanner will suggest timelines for when to fix each issue.
  • Vulnerability Exposure: Remembering the prioritisation above - not all vulnerabilities are on public-facing systems. Internet-facing systems are more likely to be exploited by any random attacker scanning the internet, making them a higher priority for remediation. After that, you’ll want to prioritise any employee laptops with vulnerable software installed. Additionally, any systems that host particularly sensitive data, or could adversely affect your business may need to be prioritised ahead of others.

You can read the NCSC guide for more details on triaging and prioritising vulnerabilities for fixing.

In most cases, there is a publicly released patch to correct a detected vulnerability, but it can often require a configuration change or other workaround too. After applying a fix, it’s also a good idea to rescan the system to ensure the fix was applied correctly. If it isn’t, the system may still be vulnerable to exploitation. Also, if the patch introduces any new security issues, such as security misconfigurations (although rare), this scan may uncover them and allow them to be corrected as well.

5. Continuous cyber security

A vulnerability scan provides a point in time snapshot of the vulnerabilities present in an organization’s digital infrastructure. However, new deployments, configuration changes, newly discovered vulnerabilities, and other factors can quickly make the organization vulnerable again. For this reason, you must make vulnerability management a continuous process rather than a one-time exercise.  

Since many vulnerabilities are introduced when software is developed, the most progressive software development companies integrate automated vulnerability assessments into their continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. This allows them to identify and fix vulnerabilities before software is released, avoiding the potential for exploitation and the need to develop and ship patches for vulnerable code.

To conclude

Regular vulnerability assessments are critical to a strong cyber security posture. The sheer number of vulnerabilities that exist and the complexity of the average company’s digital infrastructure mean an organization is almost guaranteed to have at least one unpatched vulnerability that places it at risk. Finding these vulnerabilities before an attacker does can mean the difference between a failed attack and a costly and embarrassing data breach or ransomware infection.

One of the great things about vulnerability assessments is you can do it yourself and even automate the process. By getting the right tools and performing regular vulnerability scans, you can dramatically decrease your cyber security risk.

The Intruder vulnerability assessment tool

Intruder is a fully automated vulnerability assessment tool designed to check your infrastructure for upwards of 16,000 known weaknesses. It’s designed to save you time by proactively running security scans, monitoring network changes, synchronizing cloud systems and more. Intruder generates a report outlining the issues and offering actionable remediation advice – so you can find and fix your vulnerabilities before hackers reach them.



Assessments go beyond what you’d find in a typical vulnerability scan, usually involving a dedicated team or a group of outsourced, ethical hackers to perform the evaluation. 

What Kinds of Threats Do Vulnerability Assessments Find?

A vulnerability assessment can uncover vulnerabilities with varying degrees of severity. It can also confirm that your IT environment complies with industry and government standards. Below are a few common vulnerabilities found during a typical assessment.

  • Easily guessed or brute-forced weak passwords
  • Code injection vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit via SQL injection or XSS attacks
  • Unpatched applications or operating systems
  • Misconfigurations, such as unchanged default settings or vulnerable, open ports

The Four Steps of a Vulnerability Assessment

DEFINE THE SCOPE

Before an assessment can begin, the network’s owner must set the scope to determine what networks, systems, and applications to test. The scope is usually further defined and separated by different domains or subdomains.

The scope can also include exactly how to test vulnerabilities and may specify other parameters. For example, some organizations may state that testing email vulnerabilities cannot include phishing attacks against their staff and must use a specific email address.

REVIEW SYSTEM FUNCTIONS

Before running the vulnerability assessment, the security team will review different scope systems and applications. The review phase helps determine how an exploited vulnerability would impact business functions. 

PERFORM THE VULNERABILITY SCAN

Hackers can use various tools and techniques to test a system’s integrity. Testers often start with automated scans that first look for the most common vulnerabilities, including applications, network infrastructure, and host machines.

Testers move forward with a manual testing approach that uses custom code to identify vulnerabilities. Manual coding can be time-consuming, but it is critical in identifying application-specific bugs and zero-day vulnerabilities.

CREATE THE VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT REPORT

The assessment report outlines identified scan vulnerabilities and highlights remediation steps. These recommendations are paired with a severity rating, allowing the security team to determine which vulnerabilities they will patch first.

Most vulnerability disclosure reports include the following:

  • Name of the vulnerability and time of discovery
  • The vulnerabilities’ risk score based on CVE databases
  • What systems the vulnerability impacts
  • Proof of concept exploits or a demonstration of how a bad actor could use the vulnerabilities
  • Remediation steps

Types of Vulnerability Assessments

Security teams can target assessments to particular systems or the entire organization. There are four different types of tests:

NETWORK ASSESSMENTS 

Network assessments target network resources on the public or private network and test the security policies on the network level.

APPLICATION ASSESSMENTS

Application assessments test for vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting attacks and unsecure cryptographic storage.

DATABASE ASSESSMENTS

During a database assessment, hackers test for vulnerabilities like SQL injections or misconfigurations. These tests can identify issues such as unsecure testing environments and improper storage of database files.

HOST ASSESSMENTS

Host assessments examine servers on the network for vulnerabilities and exploits, including LDAP injections, privilege escalation, or accounts with weak default credentials.

Vulnerability Assessment Tools

Hackers use a variety of tools to find vulnerabilities in different systems and parts of a network.

OPENVAS 

OpenVAS is a vulnerability scanner that tests internet protocols and includes its internal programming language, allowing testers to customize their assessments further.

NMAP

Nmap is a widely used network mapping tool that discovers open ports, vulnerable services, and the layout of internal networks. Nmap works well in conjunction with other probing tools early in vulnerability assessments.

BURP SUITE

Burp Suite provides hackers with automated vulnerability scanning tools for internal and external testing. It is popular among new and veteran hackers because of its comprehensive toolkits.

NESSUS

Nessus is open-source software that offers in-depth vulnerability scanning through a subscription-based service. Hackers use Nessus to identify misconfigurations, quickly uncover default passwords, and perform vulnerability assessments.

Vulnerability Assessment vs. Penetration Testing

Vulnerability assessments identify vulnerabilities but do not exploit these flaws. Many vulnerability assessments use a scanning tool that ranks the vulnerabilities allowing security professionals to prioritize the vulnerabilities for remediation.

Penetration testing is a different security testing option starting with a vulnerability scan that uses human testers to exploit vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized system access. 

Organizations use penetration testing to simulate how much damage an attacker could do if they comprehensively exploited vulnerabilities. Vulnerability assessments, typically automated, can complement penetration testing by providing frequent insights between penetration tests.

Bug Bounty vs. Vulnerability Assessment

Bug bounty programs use human testers to hunt for bugs, discover vulnerabilities, and rank their severity. Bug bounties incentivize hackers for successfully discovering and reporting vulnerabilities or bugs and are a way for companies to leverage the hacker community to improve their systems’ security posture over time.

If your goal is more comprehensive vulnerability disclosure and security testing, bug bounty programs are a better choice but don’t rule out vulnerability assessments. 

The two types of testing complement each other. While bug bounties harness hacker-powered security to discover more complex vulnerabilities, vulnerability assessments deliver consistency and convenience allowing security teams to get ahead of focused, time-constrained security testing for major initiatives such as product and feature releases. A combination of these approaches allows security teams to better address all vulnerabilities, improve their security profiles, and minimize exploits.

How Can Help

Assessments provides on-demand, continuous security testing for your organization. The platform allows you to track progress through the kickoff, discovery, testing, retesting, and remediation phases of an engagement. Whether you’re looking to meet regulatory standards, launch a product, or prove compliance, we’ll help your security teams find and close flaws before cybercriminals exploit them.

Mr, Princeson delivers access to the world’s largest and most diverse community of hackers in the world. Contact us to learn how you can start leveraging hacker-powered security today.

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