Any shop that comes with internet access should scan the network of it and also, the systems on a regular basis for vulnerability. On the other hand, old-fangled tools made it a time-consuming and painful effort. Before we proceed to the six shortcuts for selecting the most ideal vulnerability scanner, it is important to know what vulnerability scanner is.
Vulnerability Scanner – What Is It?
A vulnerability scanner, as the name implies, is something that can be used to scan your system like computer, router or server or network. It also identifies and then reports back on the open ports, active IP addresses & log-ons. A scanner software program compares the details that it detects against the identified vulnerabilities in the database of it or to a 3rd party database like CVE, OSVDB and OVAL. A scanner usually prioritizes those identified vulnerabilities as major, critical or minor. One great thing about the vulnerability scanner is that this can detect the malicious services like Trojans which are listening in on the ports of the system.
Not all the scanners are equal, although. There are many low-end & free vulnerability scanner just scans the system or network and then renders remedial reporting. There are more feature-rich tools which add patch management & penetration testing. On the other hand, there are a lot of scanners both high-end and low-end, suffer from false-negatives and false- positives. A false-positive usually results to an administrator that chases down information regarding a problem which does not exist. A false-negative is worse while it means that the scanner has failed to report or identify something which poses a severe security risk.
You should look for software-based vulnerability scanners which offer targeted reports coming from different devices. You should shop around using the internet and these forms of scanning products usually include target profiling, configuration auditing, penetration testing as well as comprehensive vulnerability analysis.
There are cloud-based vulnerability scanners that provide consistent and on-demand monitoring. With on-demand scanner, there is no installation, maintenance or manual integration needed. All you need is to subscribe to the service and then constitute your scans. Vulnerability scanning has become a need for medium-size and enterprise environments, thinking of a huge number of network segments, servers, firewalls, routers, and other business devices that are used. The attack surface is just extremely spacious not to scan on a regular basis.
Choosing the Best Vulnerability Scanner
- Permit enough time. It is hard to test for precision within a compressed time frame. It will take time for you to feel comfortable with various configuration strategies and then compare the results. It takes more time to check and then re-check the reports for precision.
- Use real application and not a public test application.
- Find a reliable vendor.
- Choose a vulnerability scanner that offers ease of use.
- Consider vulnerability variations.
There are many programs out there that you can use to avoid the risks of vulnerability. Just be sure to choose the best. Do your research and know your options.