Many customers ask us, "What is the difference between penetration testing and vulnerability assessment?" While both services are essential to a robust and mature security program, they have stark differences in execution and purpose.
Imagine you’re about to buy a new car. Before you commit, you want a thorough inspection, right? Now, there are two ways to do this.
One is a simple checklist: Are the tires inflated? Is the oil level okay? That’s your vulnerability assessment, which is a surface-level review to see what might be wrong.
The other is getting a mechanic to push the car to its limits, testing its brakes on a steep hill and seeing if it stalls under pressure. That’s your penetration test, which is an active attempt to find weaknesses by exploiting them.
Now, let’s take that analogy to cybersecurity, where the stakes are much higher than a roadside breakdown. What should you know about these two services? How do they differ, and why might your organization need one (or both)? Follow along to understand the differences and make more informed choices about the types of security assessment and penetration testing services you receive.
Vulnerability Assessments: The Security Check-In
Regular vulnerability assessments are required by many regulatory frameworks to ensure a responsible baseline of constant vulnerability monitoring and remediation activity. These assessments are often fulfilled by automated (corporate) testing platforms or by individual hackers utilizing an evolving set of state-of-the-art tools.
Let’s break down why we conduct vulnerability assessments and what our expectations should be for the outcomes:
- Big-Picture, Point-in-Time View: Regularly performing thorough vulnerability assessments against your assets gives you a full view of your environment.
- Public Exploit Resilience: Stay assured that you are patched and ready for any disclosed vulnerabilities seen in the wild.
- Discover Threats: The results of your assessment will include all potential issues that were discovered.
- Predict Impact: Using the knowledge of your existing threats, you can estimate levels of impact to business functions given areas of high potential vulnerability concentration.
When working with a security partner for your vulnerability assessment needs, you should expect a certain level of care and consideration that automated scans won’t provide:
- Find What’s Hidden: Vulnerability assessments scour your network, applications, and systems to find as many assets and potential issues as possible. Automated scanners require you to know upfront what you own. While that sounds easy on the surface, it isn’t reality. Having real, experienced hackers using their deep insight and creativity allows for more comprehensive discovery and more accurate vulnerability results.
- Custom Toolkits: If you’ve got real hackers working for you, they come prepared with a bag full of tricks. Having a real, caring human being performing your vulnerability assessment means you get the most modern tools and data available.
- Hands-On Remediation Guidance: A scan can only tell you that it found something it knows to tell you about, and the advice it gives you is unhelpful at best. Working with trusted hackers means you get remediation guidance specific to your environment and limitations.
- Vulnerability Management Advisory: At the center of it all, managing your vulnerabilities is the purpose of the service. The hackers you trust with your most sensitive information should be invested in your success and help you build the vulnerability management program you deserve.
Penetration Testing: The Real-World Attack
A penetration test (also called pentest or pen test) includes everything that occurs during a vulnerability assessment, but with a different goal in mind. Penetration testing, like vulnerability assessments, is often required as part of complying with various regulatory frameworks. Requirements differ, however, in cadence and test methodology.
The goal of penetration testing is to identify and understand the vulnerabilities you have, as well as the calculable impact to business caused by successful exploitation of the issues identified.
Penetration testing involves hackers executing a wide range of tactics, techniques, and procedures varied for the assets that could be tested. Things you should expect from your penetration tests include:
- Attack Surface Analysis: The first step to a proper penetration test starts with understanding the asset’s attack surface. This includes any interface, input, output, widget, or feature that handles data.
- High-Level Threat Modeling: With a firm understanding of the attack surface, a high-level threat model is designed informally to direct the testing efforts to areas that would be the most attractive to threat actors.
- Creative, Exploratory Testing: Beyond the automated scans, real hackers pour blood, sweat, and tears into finding anything that could be leveraged for system compromise.
- Attack-Chaining: Think a vulnerability rated “Low” impact should be ignored? See what can happen when a truly experienced hacker has access to chainable “Low” impact vulnerabilities.
- Impact-Driven Analysis: No. Report. Padding. Full Stop. A penetration test is there to inform you of what is verified exploitable and impactful to your business operations and continuity. Reported vulnerabilities without real impact directly increase the cost of the penetration test by way of your own wasted resources and time “remediating” non-issues.
Penetration testing is much more involved and labor-intensive on the provider's part than a vulnerability assessment, so you should expect a noticeable difference in either cost or frequency of services performed. Both of these services have a similar (marginal) effort requirement from clients. Customer effort typically consists of provisioning test accounts and granting access to test environments. With long-term security partners, this effort can be minimized with the route that makes the most sense for you and your environment.
Why Should You Care?
Vulnerability assessments and penetration tests aren’t interchangeable. They’re complementary. Including both in your vulnerability management program sets you up for the best possible outcomes when dealing with real-life adversaries. The goal can’t be perfection. The best defenses against attackers increase the difficulty of being compromised. Get ahead of the attacker and take their options away.
Real-World Example
We once worked with a company that relied solely on vulnerability assessments. Their tools flagged a critical vulnerability in their web application but labeled it as "low risk" because it required multiple steps to exploit. During a pentest, our team was able to chain that vulnerability with another overlooked issue. Within hours, we had admin-level access to that system. That "low-risk" flaw? It could’ve been catastrophic.
So, Which One Do You Need?
If you’re new to cybersecurity, start with a vulnerability assessment to get a lay of the land. Once you’ve patched the basics, simulate an attack and test your defenses with penetration testing to uncover deeper issues.
At BMP Security, we believe in giving you the full picture. That’s why we don’t stop at vulnerability assessments. Our penetration tests are designed to uncover deeper vulnerabilities and shed light on where to efficiently allocate resources. Our team of elite hackers ensures you’re not just compliant but genuinely secure.
Take Action Now
Cyber threats don’t wait. Stay ahead by:
- Educating yourself on cybersecurity basics.
- Subscribing to our blog for more information and trends.
Remember, it’s not just about fixing vulnerabilities. It’s about understanding your risks and staying one step ahead. That’s the kind of security you deserve.