What Is Vulnerability Scanning?
George Grimshaw BSc (Hons) Cert CII
Protecting Digital Futures: Cyber & Technology Insurance Specialist | Risk Management Strategist | Safeguarding Tomorrow's Technology Today ??
In this week’s article and in keeping with Cybersecurity Awareness month, I am continuing with my articles on aspects of cyber risk management and how it can help form part of a robust risk management strategy and protect your business against cyber threats! - This week we are focusing on vulnerability scanning
Vulnerability scanning is a crucial tool in cybersecurity that involves the detection and assessment of security weaknesses, vulnerabilities, or misconfigurations within a network, system, or application. These weaknesses could potentially be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorised access, disrupt operations, or steal sensitive information.
We are seeing these a lot more, not only through external cybersecurity organisations but also used as a risk gathering tool by insurers and MGAs looking to provide cyber insurance solutions to their clients.
But how do Vulnerability Scans works and how do they help in protecting businesses against cyber threats?
How Do Vulnerability Scans Work?
Vulnerability scans help businesses by performing automated assessments on IT infrastructure on a regular schedule such as daily, weekly or monthly as well as ad hoc when a business needs it. They scan all elements of the infrastructure including networks, systems and application for any weaknesses that could be taken advantage of by threat actors in order to gain unauthorised access to systems, steal information or indeed cause chaos resulting in a huge disruption for the business.
Scans provide analysis of everything within the business’s IT infrastructure not only general vulnerabilities themselves but misconfigurations, software or application vulnerabilities and outdated security patches.
After performing the scan, the programs then usually provide an extensive report on the vulnerabilities, usually listed in order of severity and along with remediation recommendations for internal or external IT teams to address.
How Do Vulnerability Scans Assist Business Owners?
Vulnerability scans can provide multiple areas of assistance to businesses more than just the obvious in pointing out vulnerabilities in IT Infrastructures and come of these include:
Identifying Weaknesses – This is the obvious answer, vulnerability scans helps business understand where vulnerabilities are in their IT infrastructure and helps them to fox them in order to have a more robust risk management strategy in the face of cyber threat actors.
Focusing Remediation & IT Resources – By having vulnerability scans, it helps to focus the manpower in the IT teams and prioritises what areas of the infrastructure needs to be worked on in order of their severity. Not only does this make remediation efforts more focused but provides efficiency in respect of IT spend for a business.
Regulatory Compliance – Whilst vulnerability scanning isn’t mandatory when it comes to compliance of various organisations, it can illustrate that the business is taken cyber and data risk seriously and can go a long way with organisations such as the ICO when looking at risk management of a company in the event of a breach.
Minimising Business Interruption – Vulnerability scanning helps businesses understand where their weaknesses are and therefore is a step towards preventing future cyber attacks and breaches. In doing so it helps business prevent any downtime and in turn, any financial losses associated with it!
Ongoing Risk Assessment – Many firms undertake risk assessments on a yearly basis potentially leaving vulnerabilities going undetected for long periods of time. By having regular vulnerability scans a business is able to continuously monitor their cyber health and take action as and when it is needed to protect the business.
In conclusion, vulnerability scanning is a proactive defence mechanism that helps businesses strengthen their cybersecurity posture by identifying and addressing potential security gaps before they can be exploited by attackers. Regular scanning is a vital part of an organisation's broader cybersecurity strategy.
Get in touch to see how the Jensten Technology, Media & Cyber team can help you with your Cyber Risk Management strategy!
George Grimshaw
Senior Account Executive (Cyber & Technology)
Jensten Insurance Brokers
07900 598771
Leading a specialist cyber business development team focussed on supporting U.K. brokers protect more of their clients from digital risk with Active Insurance
1 个月Nicely written article George and you make the argument for the effectiveness and of vulnerability scanning well. Two points of additional clarity I would add: Not all insurance providers solely use vulnerability scanning as a risk gathering tool. Coalition, Inc. uses this technology (our own), as an on-going key support mechanism for our policyholders as a policy benefit, many businesses would not expect an insurance policy to provide such services but some do! This enable us to work with IT teams of businesses and/or their vendors collaboratively to identify and remediate key findings that leave the business exposed - often with no additional cost required. I wanted to also highlight that it's different from penetration testing. Vulnerability scanning is not intrusive whereas a penetration test is. Vulnerability scanning is looking for the equivalent of open doors and windows on a building allowing easy access for anyone with good or bad intent. This technology is utilised by criminals to look for common vulnerabilities that can be exploited quickly and with significant consequence for the victim, making any business that has these issues an easy target, no matter their size if left unresolved.