We hear you; vulnerability assessment and pen testing sound erringly similar. To be honest, the two security assessment methodologies even confuse established vendors and experienced cybersecurity professionals. But the fact is vulnerability assessment and pen testing are very different from each other, and today in this post, we’ll be explaining this difference.   

The Difference Between Vulnerability Assessment and Pen Testing

Vulnerability assessment is testing a system, network, app or other computing resource for “known” vulnerabilities and finding out which vulnerabilities apply to the resource.

You might ask:

What are known vulnerabilities?

Known vulnerabilities are those vulnerabilities that are already out there in the domain of public knowledge. They might be listed in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), reported on the internet, stored in open databases, or available on the dark web.

So during vulnerability assessment, your testing team will basically have a list of known vulnerabilities, and they’ll check your system for each of them to find out if they apply to your case.

Vulnerability assessment is conducted using automated scanning tools.  

Pen testing, on the other hand, involves testing a system, network, app or other computing resource for both known and unknown vulnerabilities and exploiting those vulnerabilities to evaluate the severity of the risk at hand.

During pen testing, the testing team executes a simulated attack on your resource that mimics the strategies and actions of hackers.

It must be mentioned here that vulnerabilities that don’t lead to anywhere valuable are typically ignored in a pen test.

So, for example, let’s say you have a landing page that has minimal user engagement. A pen test would not focus on that page because the testers would know that the page is of little value. In contrast a vulnerability assessment would treat that page with equal significance as any high converting landing page.

Pen testing is conducted using both automated tools and manual penetration.  

To summarize the difference between vulnerability and pen testing:

A vulnerability assessment helps you identify if the doors in your office building are unlocked. A pen test helps you identify which doors in your office building are unlocked and what criminals would do once they are inside your office building.   

We hope now you are clear about the difference between vulnerability assessment and pen testing.  

For further reading: 3 Major Pen Testing Techniques