The process is often automated, and in many organizations, can ultimately identify hundreds, if not thousands, of vulnerabilities.Ī penetration test, meanwhile, is an authorized attack on your own systems - a form of ethical hacking - that exploits vulnerabilities so that a pen tester can attempt to gain access to systems and data. This applies to everything from compromised IoT devices to applications with glitches in their source code. In the former, the key goal is to identify, quantify and analyze vulnerabilities within IT infrastructure, enumerating all of the hypothetical routes to a cyberattack. Vulnerability assessments and penetration tests both look for weaknesses in your network.

There are important, fundamental differences that actually allow these two tactics to be used in tandem.

While similar - and sometimes confused for each other - penetration tests and vulnerability assessments are decidedly not the same thing. Penetration tests and vulnerability assessments make for an excellent tandem approach to cybersecurity.

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