Vulnerability Assessment Solutions and Tools

Since vulnerability assessment systems find all possible security flaws before an attacker can take advantage of them, they are crucial tools for information security management. There are various methods and tools available for carrying out a vulnerability assessment. Selecting an appropriate assessment approach plays a major role in mitigating the threats that an organization faces.

COMPARING DIFFERENT APPROACHES

Product-Based Solutions

Produt-based solutions are installed in the organization's internal network. They are installed in private or non-routable space or the Internet-addressable portion of an organization's network. If they are installed on a private network or, in other words, behind the firewall, they cannot always detect outside attacks.

Service-Based Solutions

Third parties, such as auditing or security consulting businesses, provide service-based solutions. While certain solutions are hosted outside the network, others are hosted inside it. The fact that attackers can audit the network from the outside is a disadvantage of this system.

Tree-Based Assessment

Using a tree-based examination, the auditor chose distinct approaches for every device or information system component. For instance, the administrator chooses one scanner for Windows, database, and web service servers and another for Linux servers.

Inference-Based Assessment

The first step in scanning an inference-based evaluation is creating a list of all the protocols that are present in the system. The scanning procedure begins to identify which ports are connected to services, like email servers, web servers, or database servers, after identifying a protocol. Once services have been identified, it goes through each machine's vulnerabilities and only runs the pertinent tests.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD SOLUTION

To identify, evaluate, and safeguard vital information technology assets against a range of internal and external threats, organisations must choose an appropriate and effective vulnerability assessment solution. The characteristics of a good vulnerability assessment solution are as follows:

Ensures correct outcomes by testing the network, network resources, ports, protocols, and operating systems.
Uses a well-organized inference-based approach for testing.
Automatically scans against continuously updated databases.
Creates brief, actionable, and customizable reports, including vulnerabilities, severity level, and trend analysis.
Supports multiple networks
Suggests appropriate remedies and workarounds to correct vulnerabilities
Imitates the outside view of attackers.

WORKING

To conduct business, any organisation must manage and process massive amounts of data. These enormous data sets include confidential information belonging to that specific organisation. Risk-prone locations within the organisational network are analysed and found through vulnerability analysis. Several tools and information on the network's vulnerabilities are used in this investigation. Testing for vulnerabilities through penetration takes three steps:

Locating Nodes: The first step in vulnerability scanning is to locate live hosts in the target network using various scanning techniques.
Performing service and OS discovery on them: After detecting the live hosts in the target network, the next step is to enumerate the open ports and services along with the operating system on the target systems.
Testing those services and OS for known vulnerabilities: Finally, after identifying the open services and the operating system running on the target nodes, they are tested for known vulnerabilities.

TYPES OF TOOLS

Host-Based Vulnerability Assessment Tools

These host-based vulnerability scanners can identify a large number of vulnerabilities and offer the necessary details regarding the patches. Locate, identify, and test the operating system (OS) running on a certain host computer for known flaws.

Depth Assessment Tools

Tools for depth assessment are used to find and classify vulnerabilities in a system that were previously undiscovered. To determine if a product is resistant to a known vulnerability or not, many of these technologies employ a collection of vulnerability signatures. Among these kinds of tools are "fuzzers".

Application-Layer Vulnerability Assessment Tools

These kinds of tools are directed towards web servers or databases.

Scope Assessment Tools

Scope Assessment tools provide an assessment of the security by testing vulnerabilities in the applications and operating system. These tools provide standard controls and a reporting interface that allows the user to select a suitable scan.

Active and Passive Tools

Active scanners examine network functions that use resources on the network for vulnerabilities. Since this scanner requires system resources that impact how another task is processed, it cannot be utilised with critical operating systems.

Passive scanners are those that do not considerably affect system resources, as they only observe system data and perform data processing on a separate analysis machine.

Location and Data Examination Tools

Network-Based Scanner
Agent-Based Scanner
Proxy Scanner
Cluster Scanner

CHECKLIST FOR CHOOSING "THE ONE"

Can test from dozens to more than 30,000 different vulnerabilities, depending on the product.
Contains several hundred different attack signatures
Matches your environment and expertise
Has accurate network, application mapping, and penetration tests
Has several regularly updated vulnerability scripts for the platforms that you are scanning
Generates reports
Check different levels of penetration to prevent lockups.
Verify that the tools can understand and analyze the network topology to perform the assessment.
Have logging capabilities for each computer scan.

TOOLS

Vulnerability assessment tools can be utilised by security analysts to detect weaknesses in the security posture of the organisation and address those vulnerabilities before an attacker takes advantage of them. By recommending different remediation strategies, these tools also help to overcome network weaknesses. The following are some effective tools:

Qualys Vulnerability Management: It is a cloud-based service that gives immediate, global visibility into when IT systems might be vulnerable to Internet threats and how to protect them.
Nessus Professional: An assessment solution for identifying the vulnerabilities, configuration issues, and malware.
GFI LanGuard: Scans, detects, assesses, and rectifies security vulnerabilities in a network and connected devices
OpenVAS: A framework of several services and tools offering a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution.
Nikto: A web server assessment tool that examines a web server to discover potential problems and security vulnerabilities.
Qualys FreeScan (freescan.qualys.com)
Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner (acunetix.com)
Nexpose (rapid7.com)
Network Security Scanner (beyondtrust.com)
SAINT (saintcorporation.com)
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) (microsoft.com)
beSECURE (AVDS) (beyondsecurity.com)
Core Impact Pro (coresecurity.com)
N-Stalker Web Application Security Scanner (nstalker.com)
ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus (manageengine.com)
For Mobile:

Vulners Scanner: An Android app that performs passive vulnerability detection based on the fingerprint of the software version.
Security Metrics Mobile: An Android app that complies with PCI SSC guidelines to generate a scan report.

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