The Difference Between a Penetration Test and Vulnerability Assessment - Part 2 What is the Difference Between a Penetration Test and Vulnerability Assessment? Part 2 of 2 Comparing Penetration Tests and Vulnerability Assessments In part 1 of this post, we focused on the Vulnerability Scans, Vulnerability Assessments, and Vulnerability Management in order to differentiate the 3 prior to digging into Penetration Tests. Now, let’s introduce and define Penetration Tests, explain the test itself and goals, then go through the different types of Penetration Tests. What is a Penetration Test? A Penetration test , or pen test, is the process an ethical hacker conducts on a target and the IT environment to uncover vulnerabilities by exploiting them. The goal is to gain unauthorized access through exploitation which can be used to emulate the intent of a malicious hacker. Penetration test reports may also assess potential impacts on the organization and suggest countermeasures to reduce ri
The Difference Between a Penetration Test and Vulnerability Assessment - Part 1 What is the Difference Between a Penetration Test and Vulnerability Assessment? Part 1 of 2 Comparing Penetration Tests and Vulnerability Assessments The staff here at SecureOps is consistently asked the purpose and the differences between vulnerability scans, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests – including all the variations of both such as red teaming, capture the flag exercises, bug bounty programs and more. Our goal in this blog post is to work from a high level and explain the general differences between identifying vulnerabilities to a more detailed level and ultimately walk through what the services are from an execution perspective and what benefits they offer an organization in terms of improving security. Let’s start with answering the broad question first and dig deeper from the explanation that we use here at SecureOps. Vulnerability scans search systems for known vulnerabilities u