When searching for cybersecurity tools, it often gets confusing to choose between penetration testing and vulnerability scanning.

Identifying risks in the IT network and continuously monitoring them until they are remediated is paramount for organizational safety. Attackers have the same information on risks as vendors, , and IT security admins. When searching for cybersecurity tools, it often gets confusing to choose between penetration testing and vulnerability scanning.

What is Vulnerability Scanning? Vulnerability scanning is part of a continuous vulnerability management program to assess, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities. This continuous process minimizes an attacker’s window to launch a full-fledged attack on organizations. Vulnerability scanning and assessment are crucial in strengthening an organization’s network security.

Then, what about Penetration Testing?
On the other hand, penetration testing is about simulating attackers’ methods to reach their objectives. Both methods are poles apart when it comes to protecting devices. Without cybersecurity measures, devices will be in jeopardy, and organizations could lose their resources, reputation, and customer base.

Fundamental Difference between Penetration Testing and Vulnerability Scanning

Some of the fundamental differences between penetration testing vs. vulnerability scanning are:

Vulnerability Scanning	Penetration Testing
Identifies risks irrespective of severity levels, CVSS Scores, or exploitability	Identifies vulnerabilities only if they are open for exploitation
It is both manual and automated.	Pen testing needs a physical person present.
The reports generated are comprehensive.	Reports are not detailed.
Vulnerability scanning is comparatively cost-effective.	Pen testing is costly.

How are Vulnerability Scans Different from Penetration Testing?

Vulnerability Scanning

Vulnerability scanning is a necessary process powered by vulnerability management. It aids IT and security admins in scanning, assessing, prioritizing, and remediating risks such as misconfigurations, anomalies, exposures, and other risks. Continuous vulnerability scanning minimizes the window of cyber-attacks and also removes the possibility of any lack of security controls while identifying common misconfigurations among devices.

Penetration Testing

Penetration testing is entirely different from vulnerability scanning. Though both aim to eliminate risks in an IT ecosystem, the processes are poles apart. Professional pen-testers are well-versed in handling this part of cyber protection. They curate the roadmap of how black hat hackers may leverage loopholes in devices.

Penetration testing isn’t a continuous practice like vulnerability scanning, but third-party pen testers need to repeat the process regularly. In addition to this, you’d require a wide array of tools to perform penetration testing. However, the effectiveness of any pen test depends on the skills and expertise.

Question of the hour: Vulnerability Scanning or Penetration Testing: Which is Better?

Not all organizations follow the same path or methods to safeguard their IT infrastructure. Understanding how vulnerability scanning is different from penetration testing will help you understand what you need to do to protect your devices. With vulnerability scanning, you prevent attacks even before they take place. In penetration testing, the tester has to explore several ways to find loopholes that would lead to exploiting vulnerabilities. One is continuous, while the other happens every quarter, bi-yearly, or even annually.

Both penetration testing and vulnerability scanning are important to protect devices, with vulnerability scanning being a more convenient option. Your in-house security or IT teams can easily use continuous vulnerability scanning to keep attackers away from the digital ecosystem.

SanerNow: The Utmost/best Way of Preventing Cyberattacks

SecPod’s SanerNow comes with a continuous and automated vulnerability management platform solely developed to prevent cyber-attacks before they occur. SanerNow Vulnerability Management scans vulnerabilities, exposures, anomalies, and other security risks. You can leverage the industry’s fastest vulnerability scanner, which offers fewer than 5 minutes of scan time. Vulnerability scans are powered by the world’s largest vulnerability database, the SCAP Repository, which features over 190,000+ vulnerability checks.

Assessing and prioritizing vulnerabilities can’t get more seamless than what SanerNow VM offers. With support for three major OSs—macOS, Windows, and Linux—and 550+ third-party applications.

Experience the magic of SanerNow now by scheduling a demo.