A vulnerability assessment is a kind of testing procedure used to detect, recognize, and assign severity ranks to the maximum number of security defects in a stipulated timeframe. A vulnerability assessment procedure employs automated and manual techniques with changeable degrees of severity with more focus on comprehensive coverage. A vulnerability assessment may target and work at different layers of technology including the host, network, and application layer assessments.
Through this platform we are trying to educate our readers about a procedure that must be followed by IT organizations for the security of their IT infrastructure.
Vulnerability Assessment - Definition and Introduction
The more technical definition of a vulnerability assessment states that it is a systematic review of security weaknesses and threats within various components of the information system. Vulnerability assessment is aimed to evaluate and assess if the information system is prone to any known vulnerabilities, allocates severity levels to identified vulnerabilities, and thereafter, proposes remediation or mitigation based on the requirement.
A vulnerability assessment is a critical and obligatory component of the vulnerability administration and IT risk management lifecycles with its potential to help protect IT systems and data from unofficial access and data breaches.
Vulnerability assessment procedure typically employs tools like vulnerability scanners to note down threats and flaws within an enterprise's IT infrastructure that correspond to future vulnerabilities or risk exposures.
Software vulnerability
Before going into more technical details of vulnerability assessments it is important to understand the meaning of software vulnerability.
A software vulnerability can be defined as -
It is a bug in code or a defect in software design that can be harmful to the system. More technically, it is a gap in security procedures or a flaw in internal systems that when conquered results in a security breach.
Vulnerability assessment can prevent the following types of threats.
- XSS, SQL injection, and other types of code injection attacks.
- Privileges escalation as a result of faulty authentication mechanisms.
- Insecure defaults –a software that allows insecure loopholes like guessable admin passwords.
Importance of Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability assessment is a mechanism that allows security engineers to apply a comprehensive, consistent, systematic and clear approach to detecting and resolving security threats and potential risks. It provides numerous benefits to an organization.
- Early identification of threats and flaws in IT infrastructure.
- Remediation actions to bridge security gaps and guard sensitive systems and data.
- Meet cybersecurity compliance and other needs.
- Protection mechanism against data infringes and other unprotected access.
Types of Vulnerability Assessment
- Host vulnerability assessment - It is the assessment of significant servers, which may be susceptible to cyber-attacks if not satisfactorily tested.
- Network vulnerability assessment It involves the evaluation of practices and rules to disallow illegal access to public or private networks and network-manageable resources.
- Database vulnerability assessment This testing procedure involves assessment of system databases or big data systems for vulnerabilities and configuration errors, recognising rogue databases or insecure test environments, and categorizing susceptible and sensitive data across an enterprise’s infrastructure.
- Application scans The identification of security threats in web applications and their source code by performing automated scans on the front-end and static or dynamic analysis procedures of source code conducted in the source code audit.
Tools Used For Vulnerability Assessment
A vulnerability scanning tool plays a significant role in vulnerability assessment. This tool is responsible for various types of scans, including -
- Credentialed and non-credentialed scans
- Internal vulnerability scans
- External vulnerability scans
- Environmental scans
While choosing the vulnerability scanning tool the following aspects are considered.
- Updates frequency.
- Quantity and quality of vulnerabilities.
- Focus on minimizing false positives and false negatives.
- Removal of false positives
- Results.
- Integrations with other security and vulnerability management tools like patch management, SIEM, etc.
While choosing the vulnerability scanning tool the following aspects are considered.
Vulnerability assessment software
- OpenVAS, maintained by Greenbone Networks
- Retina CS Community, from BeyondTrust
- Burp Suite Community Edition, from PortSwigger
- Nexpose or InsightVM (cloud-based), from Rapid7
- OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP)
- Nikto, sponsored by Netsparker
Also, the following security testing tools can simplify your vulnerability assessment task.
- Acunetix
- Intruder
- Tripwire IP360
- beSecure (AVDS)
- Comodo HackerProof
- Tenable Nessus Professional
- Netsparker
Vulnerability Assessment Framework
A well-defined framework for a vulnerability assessment task is composed of the following discrete steps.
However, security experts mainly assume that attacks happen externally, and hence, internal pen test becomes less significant from a security perspective. But these tests can be advantageous to avoid malicious employee attacks or ex-employee attacks on your web systems. It also prevents your web applications from phishing attacks, social engineering attacks, misuse of user privileges, and unlocked terminals.
1. Vulnerability identification or testing
The main aim of this step is to formulate an all-inclusive list of an application’s vulnerabilities that can potentially affect the application. Security analysts assess and monitor the security health of applications, associated servers, and other systems by scanning them with the help of automated tools, or with the help of manual tests and evaluation. Analysts also perform tests to assess vulnerability of databases, asset management systems, vendor vulnerability announcements and threat intelligence feeds to find out security weaknesses and threats.
2. Vulnerability analysis
The purpose of this phase is to recognize the source and core cause of the vulnerabilities noticed in the previous step. This step is intended to identify system components that caused vulnerability, and the root causes behind it. For example, many times the root causes can include old versions of used libraries, etc.
3. Risk assessment
The third step of this framework prioritizes all vulnerabilities where each vulnerability is assigned with severity score or rank by security analysts. They consider the following factors while assigning the severity level.
- Affected system
- Data risk
- Affected business functions
- Business functions at risk
- The severity of an attack.
- Ease of attack
- Potential damage due to the susceptibility
4. Remediation
The final step of this framework is aimed to close security gaps. It is collaboratively performed by security staff, development teams, and operations teams. They together determine the most efficient way for remediation or mitigation of each security weakness.
Its steps include -
- Use of new security measures, procedures or tools.
- Reflecting configuration changes as per the requirement.
- Development and execution of a vulnerability patch.
For effective Vulnerability assessment, it is practiced at regular intervals and it is not assumed as a one-off activity.
Vulnerability Assessment by Dreamworth Solutions
Due to increased risks of attacks and risks to IT systems, vendors of information security services provide advanced and sophisticated ways to protect client’s IT environments and IT assets.
Dreamworth Solution’s more than 10 years’ experience in the corporate sector, skilled staff to select right ranges of tools for scanning activities, and well-defined vulnerability assessment framework makes us the top choice of customers for the vulnerability assessment task.
How we work?
Our vulnerability assessment packages involve the following IT elements that are assessed from our side at a reasonable cost.
IT infrastructure elements
- Network - Here, we perform tests to assess your network segmentation, the capacity to connect to the network distantly, network access restriction and firewall implementation.
- Email services - We gauge the receptiveness to spamming and phishing attacks.
Applications Assessment
- Web applications - We evaluate the vulnerability of a web app to different attacks by gauging it against top application security risks.
- Mobile applications - We assess the security level of a mobile app by considering the most prominent mobile risks.
- Desktop applications - We evaluate various factors like data storage, data transfer mechanism, and authentication ways.
Assessment Methods Used at Dreamworth Solutions
A vulnerability assessment process is accomplished by combining automated and manual procedures at Dreamworth Solutions.
Automated scanning
Our security engineers select the right automated tool to kick off the vulnerability assessment process. This choice depends on several factors like the client’s requirements, needs, and budget considerations. Automated scanning assures speedy vulnerability detection procedure and broad coverage of security threats underlying in a range of devices or the network.
Manual assessment
We at Dreamworth Solutions perform the manual regulation and tuning of the scanning tools, manual validation of the outcomes to reduce false positives. This type of manual screening is necessary to get reliable results and further apt remediation.
Vulnerability Assessment Services provided by us
- Managed Security Testing
- Database and Big Data Scanning
- Application Scanning
- Managed Web Application Firewall
- Network Vulnerability Scanning
Vulnerability Assessment and its business impact
- Receive an updated application-centric outlook of risk.
- Remediate and mitigate vulnerabilities immediately based on their severity and business impacts.
- Enhance responsibility for risk across the enterprise.
- Promote effective communication and interaction between security teams and app owners regarding threats and risks.
- Minimize your IT infrastructure’s exposure to risk
Here we have tried to simplify technical jargon and keep them digestible to our non-technical clients as well. For your vulnerability assessment or any other allied service, requirements get connected with our business teams. Once you choose Dreamworth Solutions as your IT or digital marketing service partner you will be a part of its worldwide proud client base forever.
