Vulnerability scanning software helps organizations monitor their networks, systems, and applications for security vulnerabilities. Security teams use vulnerability scans to identify vulnerabilities in their computer systems, networks, applications, and procedures. When a company scans for vulnerabilities, it discovers and inventories all network access points and connected devices. They can then compare the findings from the […]
Vulnerability scanning software helps organizations monitor their networks, systems, and applications for security vulnerabilities. Security teams use vulnerability scans to identify vulnerabilities in their computer systems, networks, applications, and procedures.
When a company scans for vulnerabilities, it discovers and inventories all network access points and connected devices. They can then compare the findings from the scans to known vulnerabilities in a database. These tools can also detect anomalies in packet construction and paths to exploitable programs or scripts.
Many organizations use more than one vulnerability scanner to get complete coverage of every asset. They can help detect outdated or bugged software, data breaches, and vulnerable misconfigured systems.
Vulnerability scanning software is also crucial in mitigating the growing threat of data breaches that require organizations to meet HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and GLBA regulatory standards starting with scanning, identifying, and patching vulnerabilities.
Using vulnerability scanners can help you stay ahead of attackers and save future costly headaches. However, knowing an organization’s scanning software needs is not always easy.
When looking for a vulnerability scanning tool, there are a few things a team should consider.
We’ve analyzed the top 10 vulnerability scanning software providers and their key features and benefits for businesses:
Intruder is a pro-active vulnerability scanner that helps security teams prioritize the most critical vulnerabilities to avoid exposing an organization’s systems. It monitors systems for new threats with direct integrations with cloud providers and a run of thousands of thorough checks, which makes it easy to find and fix issues such as misconfigurations, missing patches, bugs, and more.
Integrations with Slack and Jira allows development teams to be in the know when newly discovered issues arise, and AWS integration allows synchronized scanning of IP addresses. It makes vulnerability management easier for small teams and tends to be popular with startups and medium-sized businesses.
The Essential and Pro plans each have a base fee but calculate overall pricing based on the number of targets. The Essential plan costs $352/month for 100 targets. The Pro plan costs $608/month for 100 targets. Note that both of these prices are currently discounted and standard pricing may be more expensive at different times of the year. The Pro plan also offers a 14-day free trial.
Pricing for the Premium plan is available through contacting Intruder.
Rapid7 Nexpose is a top-rated open-source vulnerability scanning solution. It can scan and assess physical, cloud, and virtual infrastructures automatically. Nexpose integrates with cloud and virtual environments, too. In addition, the tool provides live and interactive dashboards, solution-based remediation, and risk scoring and prioritization. It also offers a lightweight endpoint agent for processing information, all while using minimal bandwidth.
Since the CVSS risk score scale is 1-10, the Rapid7 Nexpose vulnerability scanner developed its risk score scale of 1-1000 to provide more nuance. In addition, it considers factors like vulnerability age and public exploits and malware kits while prioritizing risks.
Rapid7 offers a free trial for Nexpose. Contact the vendor to learn more about pricing or receive a quote for your business.
Qualys Web Application Scanner is a cloud-based solution that finds official and “unofficial” apps throughout an environment. It’s designed specifically for web apps and detects OWASP’s top ten risks and other web application vulnerabilities. It catalogs all applications found in the business network. Qualys allows users to create labels and tag applications with those labels to manage access to data from scans.
The Qualys Vulnerability Management scanner operates behind the firewall in complex internal networks, can scan cloud environments, and detect vulnerabilities on geographically distributed networks at the perimeter. In addition, it monitors containers and endpoints. Its intuitive and customizable dashboard provides a unified view of all web apps and monitoring assets.
Qualys’ pricing is available upon request from the sales team. It also offers a free trial for the vulnerability scanner.
Multiple customers had problems with false positives and slow responses from support
Read more about addressing false positives.
Tenable Nessus is a widely used, open-source vulnerability assessment tool. However, Nessus may be more suitable for experienced security teams because its interface can be challenging to get used to. Nevertheless, it can be used with penetration testing tools, providing targeted areas and potentially exploitable weaknesses. The software also gives flexibility by providing a scripting language (NASL) to write specific tests for the system.
Nessus comes with pre-built policies and templates for auditing and patching various IT and mobile assets, customizable reports, and automatic offline vulnerability assessment. Nessus also comes with patching assistance and helps in suggesting the best way to mitigate the vulnerabilities found. Pen testers and security consultants in particular will want to consider Nessus, as these are two use cases for which the software is specifically designed.
The Expert plan, designed for small businesses costs $4,990 for a year license. The Professional plan has fewer features and costs $3,390/year. Note that access to advanced support, like 24/7 email and phone, is an add-on.
Learn more about penetration testing trends.
Invicti is excellent at what it does: scanning websites and web applications. But it is not designed to do anything else and lacks the range of many other products. However, using it is relatively straightforward. Invicti is a good choice for SMBs, but it may not be the best choice for larger enterprises.
The web-based security scanner has capabilities that can integrate with third-party tools. In addition, it features a proprietary proof-based scanning technique that excludes false positives and gives accurate results.
Invicti offers a free trial, the Pro plan, and the Enterprise plan. Pricing for both paid plans is available by contacting the vendor, which can be done through the “Get a demo” form.
Burp Suite is a complete set of tools for testing web apps. It includes a vulnerability scanner, which scans for dynamic content and gives security teams manual control by allowing custom modifications with automated tasks.
Burp Suite touts an advanced algorithm and time-saving abilities. It integrates with bug-tracking systems like Jira, which can save a team time generating tickets. It’s also a top choice for contract bug bounty hunters, helping them locate web app vulnerabilities.
Burp Suite’s Professional plan costs $449/year and offers a free trial. The Enterprise Edition starts at $8,395/year for 5 concurrent scans (with two other plans for more scans). Portswigger does offer a community edition of Burp Suite that’s free, but note that it won’t have enough features for a complete pen testing solution.
Acunetix only scans web-based applications. But its multi-threaded scanner rapidly crawls across hundreds of thousands of pages to identify common web server configuration issues. It is particularly good at checking WordPress.
The Acunetix scanner also includes other integration with other helpful tools, such as Jenkins, Jira, and GitHub. It also boasts an impressively low false-positive rate. It scans an organization’s web app for more than 7,000 vulnerabilities like SQL Injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and local file inclusion (LFI).
Acunetix also has the feature of a log-in sequence recorder that allows users to crawl and scan password-protected websites automatically.
Acunetix pricing is available by filling out a quote request form.
Because Acunetix only scans websites and applications, it won’t be the best choice for enterprises that need to scan their entire tech infrastructure
IBM Security QRadar is a comprehensive suite offering threat detection and response tools. QRadar Vulnerability Manager minimizes false positives because it uses a rule-based approach and prioritizes the results by security intelligence. QRadar can also scan data collected from other scanners.
After scanning a network and correlating the information with network topology and connection data, it manages risk using a policy engine with automated compliance checks. The results are shown in a single, easy-to-read, prioritized view giving complete visibility across dynamic, multi-layered networks. Note that QRadar is a full security platform and not just a standalone scanner, so make sure your security teams are prepared to support this. The Vulnerability Manager is one feature in the SIEM platform.
QRadar’s SIEM pricing page provides a rough estimate for potential buyers based on their deployment method and number of workstations and servers. However, to get an exact quote, you must contact the sales team directly.
An open source and comprehensive vulnerability scanner, OpenVAS is best for organizations on a tight budget. Greenbone, OpenVAS’s parent company, manages the vulnerability scanner solution and fixes security issues as users detect and report them.
Note that OpenVAS mainly runs on Linux and UNIX operating systems. To run it on Windows, you’ll have to create a Linux virtual machine first. OpenVAS is a good choice for smaller organizations with an experienced system admin or IT team, but it won’t be good for large enterprises. Inexperienced IT or security teams may find it challenging to install and learn since working in the source code can be complex, but experienced IT professionals will have plenty of opportunities to use their knowledge and customize OpenVAS.
OpenVAS is free.
Frontline VM is a network vulnerability management solution within the Digital Defense platform of security and automation provider Fortra. Frontline VM offers web application scanning and other vulnerability management and threat assessment technology.
Frontline VM allows users to scan the network for vulnerabilities without maintaining additional infrastructure. This feature can save an organization a lot of time, effort, and money. With its patented network scanning technology, Frontline VM boasts quick scanning, a user-friendly GUI, and easy deployment. In addition, it provides many integration options—with vulnerability prioritization, network access control, and SIEM, covering many organizational use cases.
You must fill out a form to receive a quote from Fortra. The company offers a 14-day trial of Frontline VM.
When it comes to the best vulnerability scanner features, organizations should consider one that offers multiple services and covers a wide range of security protection.
To get the best vulnerability scanning tools, security teams should consider the following three types of scanners and their features:
It can be hard to understand the impact of the findings and vulnerabilities of a scanning tool. As a result, you may come across false positives. This is especially true if a team is not specialized in security. If false positives are not filtered out, the tool does not get more intelligent and will continue to generate inaccurate results. An automated tool will not tell you what impact on different departments once a vulnerability is found.
And lastly, updates are constantly required so that the most current vulnerabilities are discovered.
Identifying weaknesses within your organization’s tech infrastructure is critical for the business to maintain overall cybersecurity. Although solutions like firewalls may identify vulnerabilities in incoming traffic, they don’t catch everything, and some weaknesses may already exist within applications. IT teams won’t have time to manually examine every program and network, so vulnerability scans fill both a time and visibility gap.
Vulnerability scanners are also beneficial for development environments: dev teams can use scanners to reveal weaknesses within their code, allowing them to solve errors before production.
Read more about vulnerability scanning trends in the security market.
Jenna Phipps contributed reporting to this article.
Jenna Phipps is a staff writer for Enterprise Storage Forum and eSecurity Planet, where she covers data storage, cybersecurity and the top software and hardware solutions in the storage industry. She’s also written about containerization and data management. Previously, she wrote for Webopedia. Jenna has a bachelor's degree in writing and lives in middle Tennessee.
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