Vulnerability Assessment (VA)

Vulnerability Assessment services are a series of tests performed on a system to identify the vulnerability of the system. This is a Security Assessment conducted to understand the vulnerabilities and by this process the vulnerabilities are identified and exposed to the security experts who in turn are able to quantify and priorities such vulnerabilities.

Basically a vulnerability of any system refers to the inability of the system to withstand a hostile threat to its environment and the effects that may be caused by this hostile attack.

The assessments are typically performed according to the following steps:

• Cataloguing assets and capabilities (resources) in a system
• Assigning a quantifiable value (or at least rank order) and importance to those resources
• Identifying the vulnerabilities or potential threats to each resource
• Mitigating or eliminating the most serious vulnerabilities for the most valuable resources

Penetration Test (PT)

Penetration Tests are different from vulnerability assessment services, in that they simulate an actual attack on a computer system or network as it would have been from an external or internal threat. By this method, we are able to evaluate the computer or network’s security levels based on the defined objective of the test. Thus a vulnerability penetration test can help determine whether a system is vulnerable to attack, if the defense measures were sufficient and which defense methodologies (if any) were defeated in the penetration test. Thus a vulnerability penetration test can help determine whether a system is vulnerable to attack, if the defense measures were sufficient and which defense methodologies (if any) were defeated in the penetration test.

VA-PT is required

Thus businesses that do transactions over the internet are at high risk, though other companies are also at risk when being exposed to external networks. Thus in order to take-up such challenges and address them, a robust system with appropriate security policies, adequate controls, periodic review and monitoring are to be in place to protect the organization’s information assets. Hence it is highly recommended to carry out an in-depth Network Assessment comprising of VA-PT audits in a periodic manner to ensure software compliance to controls established and the policies set in the organization and further to evaluate whether they are adequate to address all the threats.

Benefits

When it comes to security, VAPT offers excessive benefits to an organization

• Providing the organization a detailed view of potential threats faced by an application.
• Help the organization in identifying programming errors that leads to cyber attacks.
• Provide risk management
• Safeguards the business from loss of reputation and money
• Secures applications from internal and external attacks
• Protects the organizations data from malicious attacks