Top 5 vulnerability scanning tools for security teams

Vulnerability scanning tools allow organizations to search for and find potential vulnerabilities in their environment.

Since their introduction 30 years ago, such devices have changed. Initially there were two basic exposure scanners. One can scan an internal network and “fingerprint” network behavior to find hosts on the network, which network ports are open, and to pinpoint each host’s operating system and operating system version. Another type of vulnerability scanning tool works on individual hosts, often with local administrator credentials, to get a broader picture of what software each host is running and what vulnerabilities exist in that software.

As the types of vulnerability scans expand and improve, so does the understanding of what vulnerabilities are and what tools are needed.

The following are five examples of high-risk scanning tools to choose from.

1. Nessus

Nessus in the year It was created in 1998 by Renaud DeRaison, who later runs Tenble, a cybersecurity company that protects Nessus to this day. Originally a free vulnerability scanner, it quickly became popular. Today, Nessus Essentials is still free. Tenable also offers Nessus Professional and Nessus Expert to address known-vulnerable software versions and weak or incorrect security configuration settings for cloud architectures and many IoT devices.

Nessus is highly customizable, with over 175,000 plugins available to enhance and customize. The capabilities.

Nessus Professional and Expert are available as licenses starting at $3,390 and $7,490 respectively.

2. Open VAS

Open the vulnerability assessment scanner (OpenVAS) is an open source vulnerability scanner supported by vulnerability management company Greenbone Networks and a community of researchers and developers.

OpenVAS was launched in 2006 with Nessus code, before Nessus transitioned from open source to a commercial tool. OpenVAS offers some of the same scanning and customization capabilities that Nessus products do today to identify vulnerabilities in individual hosts’ software.

3. Burp Suite

Burp Suite is a tool. Focusing on website and web application vulnerability scanning from PortSwigger. It supports both static and dynamic testing methods to identify potential vulnerabilities. Just as Nessus and OpenVAS are intended to run repeatedly or continuously on hosts, Burp Suite is intended to do the same for enterprise websites and web applications.

Burp Suite Community Edition is a free download. Burp Suite Professional ($449 per user per year) and Enterprise Edition (starting at $8,395 per year) are also available.

4. Snake

Snyk offers several types of vulnerability scanners for software development and supply chain risks, including:

• Snyk open source It looks for software dependencies that detect vulnerabilities.
• Snyk code It finds vulnerabilities while developing in the source code.
• Snyk cloud Scans cloud environments for vulnerable software components, security configuration errors, and other issues.

Snyk is free and paid. Product supplies; Prices vary according to organizational or developer needs.

5. Invader

Infiltrator It’s a cloud-based vulnerability scanner, but that doesn’t mean it only scans cloud-based assets. It scans networks, servers, client endpoints, cloud infrastructure and websites regardless of their location. Like the other scanners listed, it can find unpatched software, security configuration errors, and other vulnerabilities.

Hacker has pro and essential gift levels. Prices are based on the number of targets customers plan to scan.

Deploy vulnerability scanners that cover business needs

Each of these tools differs significantly from the others, but there is also overlap in their capabilities. Overlap is good — even more so, in many cases — because two devices can find more exposures than just one. The biggest concern with vulnerability scanners is that there are loopholes where no scanner checks certain hosts, networks, or applications for a type of vulnerability.

Still, it’s not wise to have multiple vulnerability scanners that do the same thing. Each scanner has an associated business cost — at least to evaluate the results and eliminate false positives and train the individuals — and commercial scanners include a license fee.

It’s good to have a set of vulnerability scanners that together provide all the scanning capabilities your company needs without having to duplicate each other too much.