Top 10 vulnerability scanners
Before discussing the top vulnerability scanners that organizations are using, we will first discuss why vulnerability scanners are required to any organization, which vulnerability scanner suits their requirements?
A vulnerability scanner is an automated tool that allows an organization to identify if its public-facing applications, network, systems pose any security risk that could expose them to attack. It is common practice that an organization should follow and often required by industry guidelines and government regulations to enhance the organization’s security posture.
The vulnerability scanner uses a database of known vulnerabilities, coding bugs, flawed default configuration, potential paths to sensitive data and uses it to compare the target attack surface. After performing automated web application vulnerability scan, network scan, and identifying possible vulnerabilities in any devices within the scope of the engagement, the scan generates a report. The findings in the report can then be analyzed and interpreted to identify opportunities for an organization to improve security posture.
Most trusted and highly used software by more than 13000 organizations worldwide and personal favorite tool of pen testers. Burp Suite is a centralized toolset for web application penetration testing. It acts as a middle entity between client and server to intercept traffic and allows to modify and automate changes to webpage requests. It has the great feature of scanning, identify vulnerabilities using extensions, decoding hashes, brute-forcing.
Probely
Probely is a developer-friendly vulnerability scanning tool, it allows to scan source code of web application in the early stage of development. It scans web applications to identify vulnerabilities, reports real vulnerabilities, and provides tailored instructions on how to fix vulnerabilities. It also provides solutions for microservices and standalone APIs, also achieves compliance by showing specific reports with requirements for PCI-DSS, ISO27001, HIPAA, and GDPR.
UpGuard
UpGuard provides security solutions using a combination of third-party security ratings, vendor questionnaires, and threat intelligence scanning to help organizations reduce their risk. Understand security posture of an organization, discover web application vulnerabilities, check for third party misconfiguration, identifies if there was any security breach or data exposure to unauthorized parties, provides remediation for risks, represent risks with severity graphically using a template, save time by proactively and securely sharing security information in one place.
Tenable Nessus
Tenable Nessus is trusted by more than 30,000 organizations worldwide and ranks first in vulnerability assessment for accuracy and coverage. Works in a real-time environment, plugins are automatically updated, new CVEs are added to the database. Provides comprehensive solutions for malware detection, network scan, compliance and audit, rich reporting feature i.e., customize by the host or by the plugin. Focuses on more comprehensive assessments and less time required to research, validate, and prioritize issues.
Detectify
Detectify deeply scans web applications and monitors assets in infrastructure. Not only focuses on well-known vulnerabilities, third-party misconfigurations, DNS flaws but also focuses on undocumented flaws. Organizations integrate this tool at the very first phase of SDLC. Monitors the application throughout the SDLC, give an alert when vulnerabilities are detected.
Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner
Acunetix offers vulnerability assessment and management for a web application, integration of third-party issue trackers such as Jira, GitLab, GitHub, TFS, Bugzilla, and Mantis. In addition to web application vulnerability scan, Acunetix provides network security solutions, protection to key assets, discover malware, misconfigurations in the webserver.
Netsparker
Netsparker comprehensively craws and scans the application to identify vulnerabilities in web applications and services such as API, dedicated JavaScript engines for a single page, and also capable of performing database servers that may pose threat to the security of an organization. Vulnerabilities are reported in a testing environment to reduce the count of false positives and identify only real threats. Organizations can schedule future scans, integrate with the current system such as GitHub, Jenkins, okta, slack, GitLab, circleci.
Qualys Web Application Scanner
Qualys is a cloud-based, on-premises solution, easy to deploy and manage.Capable of performing web application penetration testing and API security testing, provide a fix for them. Performs deep scan to identify OWASP TOP 10 risks, test IoT services, and mobile apps, detect malware. Hardens web application security with integrated web application firewall.
InsightAppSec is a comprehensive vulnerability assessment tool by Rapid7. Understands application’s component, formats, protocols, and development technologies, test for more than 95 attacks including OWASP TOP 10 and an attack replay that developers can use to reproduce a scan to confirm vulnerabilities are real. Export findings in interactive HTML formats, compliance-specific report templates provide immediate understanding of the compliance risk. Schedule scans, cloud and on-premises scans are the key features.
HCL AppScan
HCL AppScan, previously known as IBM AppScan. AppScan offers DAST solutions to effectively identify, remediate web application vulnerability, and achieve regulatory compliance. Provide collaboration to developer and security team, powerful analytics prioritize scan results to minimize false positives. Effective Reporting with CVSS score, providing remediation to high severity vulnerabilities are the key features.
