Difference Between Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing.
- stephen james
- Mar 24, 2021
- 2 min read
While many professionals claim to be aware of the Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration test, they often misinterpret both the terms and use them interchangeably. Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration testing are two different terms but form an integral part of the cyber security management programs. People fail to understand the differences and with this misconception miss out on vital components in their overall network security profile.
To set the records clear, both are different vulnerability assessment processes that cannot be replaced by one another or cannot be used as a standalone process to secure the entire network. Both are important at their respective levels and essential for cyber security and risk analysis. They are two different processes combined (VAPT analysis test) to achieve optimum network security. These are processes required by various information security standards like PCI PIN, PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC2, ISO 27001 to name a few, for organizations to secure the environment and to be compliant to various information security standards.
In today’s post, we intend to clear the common misconception and highlight the differences between Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing. The article details when and where each of the security assessment processes is used and applicable to organizations. However, before we move on to learn the differences, let us first understand both terms.

What is Vulnerability Assessment?
Vulnerability Assessment is a technique or process that helps identify security vulnerabilities in a given environment or network. The assessment helps determine the level of susceptibility to different vulnerabilities the system is exposed to. It is a comprehensive assessment process that involves using automated security scanning tools to find and measure the severity and level of exposure to vulnerabilities in an environment. Tools like NESSUS, Rapid Nexpose, Web-scan, CISCO Secure Scanner, SQL Diet, etc. are used for analyzing the network/application and yielding a list of vulnerabilities that are prioritized (low, medium, high) based on its severity. The findings of the assessment are typically analyzed and escalated to the security and operational team with appropriate remediation to mitigate or reduce the potential risk. The Assessments is an in-depth evaluation of an organization’s network or system security posture that uncovers weak areas.
What is a Penetration test?
Completely in contrast to Vulnerability Assessment, the Penetration Test which is also known as the Pen Test is a practice of testing systems/networks to determine security vulnerabilities in a system by ethically hacking into it. The practice involves attempting an exploit by simulating a real-life attack in the form of ethical hacking into systems to test the defense and determine weak areas. The test identifies potential paths an attacker could route through into the systems and orchestrate an attack and breach defense systems. Similar to Vulnerability Assessment, Penetration testing also involves using automated Vulnerability tools and scanners to determine vulnerabilities. However, in addition to the automated tools, other manual Pen test tools are utilized to scan and test web applications and network infrastructure.
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