What Does Vulnerability Scanning Tell You About Your Network Security?

How secure is my businesses’ IT infrastructure? Do I have any hidden risks that cybercriminals could exploit? If I do find security weaknesses, what’s the best way to plug those gaps?

As a small and medium-sized business, these and other questions may be top of mind given the growing incidence of cyberattacks.

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However, you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know about it. A vulnerability scan allows you to answer those questions by thoroughly checking the health and security of your network devices, personal computers, and other parts of your IT infrastructure.

In this article, we’ll examine what a vulnerability scan does and how it works. After reading this article, you’ll know what some common cyber risks are that a vulscan can help you uncover, and why they are so critical to your organization’s overall cybersecurity posture.

What Is Vulnerability Scanning And Why Is It Important?

A vulnerability scan (vulscan) is an automated examination of parts of an organization’s physical devices—such as desktops, laptops, printers, servers, routers, switches, and firewalls to check for known vulnerabilities. It can also identify and scan cloud-based technology.

Vulscans are critical to businesses for several reasons.

For starters, a vulnerability scan does what its name implies: alerts you to cybersecurity weak points within your IT network.

By doing so, it proactively warns you about hidden security red flags before they can be exploited by hackers, mitigating risks of a costly data breach or malware attack.

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Vulscans are also an important part of your security strategy because they satisfy certain regulatory cybersecurity compliance requirements.

Failing to meet these security mandates can have severe consequences, such as being hit with a sizeable fine or even possibly losing a valuable federal contracts.

A third significance of vulnerability scanning is to minimize day-to-day operational disruptions.

As an example, employees may be experiencing slow processing speeds or other networking issues, not realizing that the culprit is that they’re using a long-outdated Microsoft operating system.

Using outdated equipment and software can cause connectivity and compatibility issues with your other devices and systems.

Hackers can also see that you’re using end-of-life-technology that is no longer being supported by the manufacturer. So, they could exploit this weakness as a way to gain a foothold into your network.

Related Article: Device Management: Why You Need A Plan To Replace Your Business Tech

How Does A Vulnerability Scan Work?

The administrator of the vulnerability scan uses what’s known as an agent, or vulnerability scanning software. An agent can be deployed in one of two ways.

With the first method, the agent can be downloaded onto the specific, individual devices within your IT environment that you want scanned.

Alternatively, if a business doesn’t want the agent put on their devices, the company could hire a managed IT services provider (MSP) to perform the scan. The MSP would come onsite and plug in an ethernet cable from its own vulnerability scanning PC into the client’s network switches.

Since the switches are wired, the managed IT provider would gain an internal connection to the identified devices.

It’s important to note that before running the scan, you must confirm all of the IP addresses for each device that you want scanned. By confirming the IP range, you can exclude the devices that you don’t want to be included in the assessment.

After you’ve confirmed your perimeter for the devices you want to check, the automated vulscan can be launched with the touch of a button.

Once the vulscan agent is put on the pre-determined devices, it gains visibility into the devices to check for those known security flaws.

Scans analyze all of the data and processes on your targeted devices. It can also see any peripherals connected to the device, such as connected monitors, keyboards, mice, printers, external hard drives, or paired Bluetooth devices.

One important caveat to the vulnerability scan process is that all included devices must be turned on. Otherwise, they won’t get scanned. For offline devices, the vulscan will say, “Invalid target. The target [IP address] was not scanned because the target did not match any valid target specification.”

Also, if you have a cloud-based app installed on your device, but it isn’t open at the time of the scan, the final report will only tell you the version of the software that you’re using, but it won’t be able to determine if there are any vulnerabilities within it.

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A best practice is that vulnerability scans be completed during regular business hours while your staff is accessing files and apps as usual to produce more accurate results.

This means that you can expect some disruption to your workflow while the scans are in progress.

The duration of a vulscan varies, and can depend on different factors such as the number of devices being scanned and how many vulnerabilities are actually detected. They generally take between an hour or two to complete for a small or medium-sized business.

While this may seem like too much disruption, consider the prolonged downtime you could face if you were hit with a cyberattack or data breach.

What Security Risks Can A Vulscan Detect?

A vulscan will search each scanned device for security weaknesses categorized into four risk levels: critical, high, medium, and low. Each level represents the potential damage to your business from an uncovered security risk.

Besides the example of using outdated software above, other common cyber risks that vulscans can detect are:

1. Lack of network segmentation

• Not dividing your network into smaller segments with restricted access can leave you open to a cyber incident.

2. Weak passwords

• Using passwords that can be easily guessed, including using factory-set usernames and passwords can open the door for bad actors to steal your credentials.

3. Not using least privilege

• Like microsegmentation, least privilege access is a cornerstone of Zero Trust.
  
  
• It restricts access to authorized users based on job function. It requires employees to enter multiple forms of verification to prove their identity to gain access.
  
  
• It then requires them to continuously reverify to maintain access.

4. Lack of data encryption

• Unsecure data and network traffic, including internal and external communication between devices, apps, app workloads, and other systems, could result in it falling into the wrong hands.

5. Open ports

• Vulscans can tell if there are any open network ports on connected devices.
  
  
• Open ports can present a security risk as they allow external devices and systems to communicate with your network, allowing hackers a possible way to compromise your network.

How Are Security Risks Determined For Vulscanning?

The criteria for each risk category, sometimes called “plugins,” may be determined by either the vulscan software manufacturer or by your managed IT service provider.

The scan will show any detected cyber risks based on the pre-set criteria such as:

• its severity and potential impact
• the date the vulnerability was first published
• the algorithm used to check for the cybersecurity flaw

The vulscan report will provide a summary of the problems detected and the likely causes for each vulnerability. It will also generate recommendations for remediation.

It is a best practice to perform vulnerability scans annually to ensure the ongoing health and security of your IT environment.

The Bottom Line With Strengthening Your Cybersecurity With Vulnerability Scans

After reading this article, you now understand that a vulnerability scan allows you to uncover hidden cyber risks so that you can implement the right security controls to plug those security gaps and protect your IT infrastructure from cyber adversaries.

If you’re not running vulscans, then you don’t know what security risks may be lurking.

That being said, we don’t write these articles to convince you to work with us. Instead, we’re committed to providing information on a variety of important technology-related topics to help you make the right IT decisions for your business.

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