Web application vulnerability assessment is a type of security test used to evaluate an application’s vulnerabilities such as, faulty coding, weak configuration management, or input validation.
Businesses in all kinds of industries can benefit from web application vulnerability assessment. It can be performed both, manually and automatically to monitor an application’s security and protecting it against all kinds of threats.
Here are the steps involved in web application vulnerability assessment.
Step 1: Information Collection
To conduct effective web application security assessments, testers first have to gather information regarding the target web application. It’s important to understand the architecture, technology, user base, and the code size of the application.
Step 2: Risk Profiling
This step falls into the planning phase of the security assessment. Considering factors such as application size, data, users and more, the tester estimates efforts and divides them for different stages such as scanning, manual testing, mapping findings, and reporting. This step requires the tester to meticulously prioritize and assign efforts to different phases accordingly.
Step 3: Define Scope and Objectives
Before running the web application vulnerability assessment, it’s important to define the objectives of the test. The tester determines what components of the application should be included in the test and which ones should be excluded. This helps the security personnel of an organization understand what sorts of results they can expect from the assessment.
Step 4: Perform the Vulnerability Scan
Before running the test, the tester chooses the security assessment tools that would work best for the target web application. Several factors can influence the choice of a security tool, which include the web application’s dynamics, the performance of the tools, their characteristics, etc.
Moreover, for a successful assessment, it’s important to create a checklist of vulnerabilities and test the web application against all of them. The list should be updated to cover the latest vulnerabilities and all sorts of potential cyber attacks.
Lastly, the scan is performed in a way that targets critical data and functionalities in the beginning to identify high-risk factors early.
Step 5: Report Creation
The last step entails creating a comprehensive report of the identified potential risks and threats. This will discuss the possible impact of the found vulnerabilities on the business and the appropriate course of action that should be taken by the organization to mitigate them.
If you’re looking for web application security testing for your business, get in touch with Lean Security!
We’ll help evaluate your web app’s security and identify potential risks by using the most comprehensive methodologies. We also offer other IT solutions, including cloud infrastructure testing and penetration testing.