Network Vulnerability Assessment & Management

PROTECTION

NEVER BE CAUGHT OFF GUARD

A comprehensive Vulnerability Assessment is a valuable enhancement to your IT Security Assessment. However, time between your organization’s annual vulnerability scans can leave you at significant risk for interim attacks. With real-time security insights and solutions, our Vulnerability Management Service ensures year-round protection with an incredibly cost-effective solution.

SCANNING ON YOUR SCHEDULE

Annual assessments are important, but year-round, insights are key to thwarting emerging risks in your network security. With our Vulnerability Management Service, you can schedule your systems to be scanned at any time. And it's easy... our VMS requires no setup or employee training at all; just tell us how often you want your scans, and request additional scans whenever you need them.

BEST-IN-CLASS TOOLS, EXPERT SOLUTIONS

Using only Best-in-Class scanning tools that are independently validated and globally recognized, our VMS scans allow you to identify weaknesses that exist within your network as frequently as needed. At the conclusion of every scan, you’ll receive detailed reports listing all found vulnerabilities. Of greatest value, BAI's in-house experts will be on-hand to consult with you to address vulnerabilities immediately with recommendations for quick remediation. This is how we help you prevent costly disruption to your business and quickly restore your security posture.

SERIOUS SAVINGS

With BAI Security’s Vulnerability Management Service, you get the value of best-in-class, year-round scanning, plus consulting with our team of expert security engineers, who know your unique environment and can offer steps for fast remediation... all for less than you would pay for the scanner alone. And as if prevention of a malicious incident weren't enough, the financial savings you'll see with our VMS makes this our most cost-effective solution (and one that's hard to pass up!).

"The value of vulnerability assessment and threat intelligence can be very high, given the potential costs of failure through regulatory fines as well as reputational damage."
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Andrew Steadman
Gartner Sr. Director Analyst & Financial Technology Expert
The Why

NETWORK VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENTS

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When is IT security detective work? When you’re working in vulnerability detection. Every digital system has its pressure points, but they’re not easy to identify. It takes an in-depth investigation to find your system’s vulnerabilities and work out strategies for remediation. If you have a network, deal in sensitive data, or belong to any of the top five sectors at serious risk (government, banking, education, law, and healthcare), you have a significant potential attack surface—which means you need to know where your vulnerabilities lie.

That’s where Network Vulnerability Scanning comes in. Specially targeted and conducted by your IT security department or external assessment provider, Network Vulnerability Scanning inspects your system to detect points of potential exploitation or threat.

Conducting vulnerability scans is a critical step in the direction of crafting a more holistic, effective security program. We can break vulnerability scanning down into four different categories…

  • External vulnerability scan
  • Internal vulnerability scan
  • Intrusive and non-intrusive assessment
  • Environmental scan

And from there, we can distinguish two different approaches: unauthenticated and authenticated.

An unauthenticated approach involves “intrusive” scans, or scans without trusted access to the network. This approach is designed to point out the vulnerabilities hackers can access without a connection to the network, an important consideration in mapping your weak points… but be forewarned. Because intrusive scans are, well, intrusive, they can cause errors, reboots, and reduced productivity on the targeted machine in the process.

On the other hand, an authenticated approach involves logging into a trusted network and then conducting the scan. This approach is designed to point out the vulnerabilities hackers can access with a connection to the network.

So what should you be looking for? An ideal Network Vulnerability Scan… 

  • Must be able to conduct comprehensive scanning.
  • Should not impact your network performance.
  • Should be adaptable and scalable to your network architecture.
  • Should be able to identify critical threats to your network environment.
  • Must be able to do risk analysis, and inform you in a timely manner about remediating vulnerabilities.
  • Must be able to scan a range of assets, including but not limited to hosts, web servers, network devices, mobile devices, and virtual machine environments.

In short, you’ll want to put together a plan—or find a trusted IT security assessment provider—that can conduct scans that cover all your bases.

So what does a Network Vulnerability Assessment look like?

 

What To Expect: The Network Vulnerability Assessment

A Network Vulnerability Assessment isn’t just about identifying the weak points in your systems. A truly expert assessment will also check the vulnerabilities detected against known risks and attack fronts, then assign risk levels to those vulnerabilities, and recommend targeted remediation.

Your organization has the opportunity to prioritize and decide which solutions work best for you. For instance, if a vulnerability is low-risk, and mitigation would involve greater risk, IT security experts may leave the vulnerability untouched.

Network Vulnerability Assessments are generally sorted into four types:

  • The host assessment identifies attacks against your server and network and is designed to provide better visibility for your configuration settings.
  • The network and wireless assessment surveys your policies to prevent unauthorized access to your public and private networks.
  • The database assessment identifies weaknesses or vulnerabilities in your database or other large data networks. It also highlights insecure test environments.
  • The application assessment identifies security vulnerabilities in web applications. This assessment is fully automated and surveys the source code.

From there, we can break a Network Vulnerability Assessment into five steps:

Step 1. Vulnerability identification. A team of IT security experts conducts tests and evaluations of your servers and applications to sniff out vulnerabilities with the help of vulnerability scanners and automated tools.

Step 2. Vulnerability analysis. Once the team has collected the evidence, they identify the main cause (or “source”) of the vulnerabilities. They also check their work to filter out any “false positive” security flaws.

Step 3. Risk assessment. This step is all about quantification: ranking each vulnerability based on risk level, severity, ease of attack, and potential damage. The goal is to answer: How severe are the vulnerabilities detected? What impact could they have?

Step 4. Remediation. To close security gaps, the assessment team determines the most effective method of mitigation for each vulnerability, which can involve introducing all-new security policies and tools. They’ll recommend fixing the most pressing vulnerabilities and—if the risk outweighs the reward—letting some low-level vulnerabilities lie.

Step 5. Repeat. In the world of IT security, once-through is never enough. Schedule future Network Vulnerability Assessments and plan for periodic vulnerability scanning to address emerging threats.

With an effective, seasoned, trustworthy team at the helm, there are no downsides to a good Network Vulnerability Assessment that identifies the weak points in your network, gives you a complete portrait of your security architecture, and prioritize the most urgent risks.

 

Keep Cyber-Threats In Mind

An important part of vulnerability remediation is surveying for cyber-risks—in other words, the work of an IT Security Assessment. Having a complete understanding of all the attack fronts you face will assist your IT security team in developing effective risk responses.

You’ll always want to keep an eye out for these risk factors:

√  Malware
√  Ransomware
√  Unpatched security vulnerabilities
√  Hidden backdoor programs
√  Admin account privilege
√  Automated running of scripts without virus checks
√  Unknown security bugs in software
√  Phishing
√  Insider threats
√  IoT devices

IT Security Assessments are generally sorted into three types:

  1. The hardware assessment evaluates application development, unused ports, unwanted protocols, and how encrypted data is transmitted. Hackers love to target vulnerabilities in old or obsolete equipment, but this assessment doesn’t give them the chance.
  2. The software assessment evaluates weaknesses in your software code. It can test for vulnerability types like SQL injection, integer overflow, buffer overflow, or OS command injection.
  3. The procedure assessment evaluates how you use your hardware and software. It’s designed to build strategies for how to improve integrity, resolve step-specific vulnerabilities, and mitigate human error.

IT Security Assessments should be conducted as regularly as Network Vulnerability Assessments. Don’t believe us? Consider these benefits, according to the experts:

  • You’ll reduce long-term costs. Security incidents are costly, and if you’re always on top of identifying and remediating vulnerabilities, you won’t incur those pesky fees.
  • You’ll have a plan for future assessments. Good IT security assessments are a team effort. If you know what you want to prioritize and have a history of your vulnerabilities on file, you can work with your team to conduct faster, more effective assessments.
  • You’ll be compliant. IT Security and Network Vulnerability Assessments are compliant with HIPAA, PCI DSS, and APRA CPS 234.
  • You’ll keep your data under wraps. Data breaches remain one of the most insidious and costly cyberattacks across all sectors, and protecting your information will keep your business—and your reputation—well above board.

 

Partner Wisely To Reduce Risk

To work with an assessment provider your industry peers trust, consider BAI Security. We’re proud to be one of 2022’s Most Trusted Cybersecurity Solution Providers, offering industry-leading IT security assessments for every budget. Our Network Vulnerability Assessment is a cost-effective enhancement to your IT Security Assessment. Using only best-in-breed tools, we additionally offer year-round on-demand scanning as part of our ongoing Vulnerability Management Service, as well as consultations with BAI’s in-house experts for quick and effective recommendations for remediation.

For more information, contact us today to discuss options.


READ LESS

Vulnerability assessments are an evaluation of an organization’s hardware, software, and procedures against a list of known vulnerabilities and best practices. The assessment may expose network vulnerabilities and holes in your security that could leave an open door for hackers. A Network Vulnerability Assessment should also be performed on an ongoing basis as new threats arise and hackers find additional ways to break into systems. Network Vulnerability Assessments aren’t always just a “nice to have” type of resource. Depending on your industry, you may be required to perform vulnerability assessments to remain compliant. For example, PCI and HIPAA require assessments to ensure that you are protecting your customers’ information and sensitive data.

Depending on your network’s unique vulnerabilities, the results of your scan and process may look different. However, you can ask our team to focus on some of these tasks to get started:

  • Identifying and prioritizing network threats
  • Analyzing router and WiFi passwords for vulnerabilities
  • Reviewing your organization’s network strength against common attacks including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), Man-in-the-Middle attack (MITM), and Network Intrusion
  • Analyzing your routers, switches, and computers for device security

Although vulnerability assessment tools can help identify security flaws, they can’t determine which loopholes can cause damage and which can’t. That’s why penetration tests are crucial to purposefully, but ethically, exploit vulnerabilities and identify which ones are threats.

A penetration test may involve:

  • Using social engineering techniques such as impersonating a manager and asking an employee for a password in order to gain access to a database or other system
  • Intercepting and using unencrypted passwords sent over the network
  • Sending phishing emails to users to gain access to accounts

Network Vulnerability Assessment testing and reporting is not a one-time process. Your company should establish a culture of security that focuses on the ongoing safety of your business.

Although a Network Vulnerability Assessment takes some time and resources, Network Vulnerability Management is ultra cost-effective and will alleviate the financial burden of dealing with a hack that could have been prevented simply by knowing your network’s weaknesses.