All industries spend a good amount of money on their security systems to ensure the reliability and robustness of applications. Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing helps in making the applications immune to possible threats and improving the security system. It also helps in identifying the pre-existing flaws in the network and suggesting the consequences that may occur due to these flaws.
What is VAPT?
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) delivers a more detailed and sophisticated evaluation of applications than any single test. With the VAPT approach, organizations can get a comprehensive view of the vulnerabilities and threats faced by their applications. It enables organizations to take precautionary measures to safeguard data and the underlying system of applications.
The vulnerabilities can be present in applications (inhouse and third party) due to various reasons and can create critical issues. However, most of these vulnerabilities can be fixed and threats can be minimized if identified at an early stage. VAPT focuses on classifying the threats and mitigating them before they can cause any major damages.
Vulnerability Assessment vs. Penetration Testing
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing are two different parts of the vulnerability testing process. Both these types of tests have different strengths and are carried out to achieve complete vulnerability analysis – with the same area of focus but different tasks and goals.
Vulnerability Assessment helps in identifying the flaws, but it does not differentiate between the flaws that can be harmful and the ones that aren’t. It helps in identifying the existing vulnerabilities in the code. On the other hand, Penetration Testing helps in identifying whether the vulnerability can lead to unauthorized access and/or malicious activity creating a threat to the applications. It also measures the severity of the flaws and shows how detrimental the vulnerability can be in the attack. The combination of Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing provides a comprehensive analysis of the preexisting threats and the possible damage they can bring.
Overall, it provides risk management for the threats that the applications deal with. The process happens in phases resulting in a more effective and preemptive approach to security.
The Process
- Data collection and assessment of applications
- Analysis and review of the results
- Categorizing risks based on the threat level
- Reporting vulnerabilities
- Configure/debug the weaknesses identified
Apart from identifying the existing threats in the network/system, one of the primary advantages of the VAPT process is that it provides detailed information on the level of risk associated with the identified threats.
Primary benefits of performing VAPT
- Delivers a detailed view of potential threats within the network
- Protects data from outbreaks
- Identifies configurations’ faults and ambiguities that lead to cyber attacks
- Protects applications and networks
- Defines the risk level
- Ensures reliability and robustness of applications
- Safeguards unauthorized access and prevents data loss
- Accomplishes compliance standards
One of our clients who is a well-recognized global smart home automation company had deployed a range of connected devices along with a cloud-based home automation application platform. As the number of product variants increased, the embedded software and the application code became more complex and complicated. Vulnerabilities across the technology architecture were seen to be emerging in deployed applications resulting in increased attack surface for the connected device network.
eInfochips managed end-to-end vulnerability assessment and security operations enhancements using market-leading commercial and open-source tool stacks. Manual pen-testing was done annually for overall infrastructure, and key vulnerabilities were identified. Also, the cybersecurity team worked on resolving configuration issues in code analysis and testing tools (network configuration whitelisting, API key renewal) to streamline the pipeline. Read the full case study.
Final Thoughts
The security of applications has been the most crucial factor for any organization. Even, common flaws in the application code can result in security breaches and loss of crucial data. Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing provides methods to detect any existing flaws and stop future attacks. It provides a surface-level evaluation of the application security posture, indicating weaknesses and giving appropriate mitigation procedures required to either eliminate those weaknesses or reduce them to an acceptable level of risk.
eInfochips has helped companies develop, deploy, and manage security products at a global scale by securing their connected device networks across device-connectivity-application layers using strategic, transformational, and managed operations approaches. We have 360-degree Cybersecurity expertise for threat modeling and VAPT across devices, OS/firmware, web/mobile applications, data, and cloud workloads that support security industry standards, regulations, and guidelines like NIST, ENISA, OWASP, MITRE, and IoT Security Foundation.
From strategic assessments and transformations to turnkey implementations, and managed security operations, we can be your partner for all your needs. Our cybersecurity engagements are diverse – and are in line with the prevalent security standards across the device, connectivity, and application layers.
To know more about our security testing services, talk to our experts today.
