What is VAPT?

Mole in the hole

You are searching underground to find something you know is underground hence you have to dig deeper to uncover or find what you are looking for. Take for instance someone is leaking out confidential information about an organization, but you don’t know who, however you need to find that person (mole) leaking out these secrets before things gets out of hand.

vulnerability assessment is uncovering and analyzing loopholes (vulnerabilities) and penetration testing is the test to use/exploit/manipulate these vulnerabilities to come up with various ways or countermeasures for these techniques.

Even though these two terms mean different things there are related and should be considered together. In the IT world, vulnerability assessment is the first step for penetration testing process. Vulnerabilities may be discovered but not mitigated due to lack of funds or incompatibilities with patching, hence these vulnerabilities or loopholes must be managed until it is mitigated.

PENETRATION TESTING AND VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT. (VAPT)

Pentesting is more or less a consulting work, after a pentester does his role he leaves after the test, however the vulnerabilities are discovered but not countered or mitigated and mitigating them is another role for the vulnerability management to take, so you found the mole but still can’t exterminate it, hence you call an exterminator.
A vulnerability management team is responsible for defending the expiated system over time, this team is often different from pentesters, some of their roles include: System administrators, cybersecurity analyst, network administrators etc., their job roles vary depending on the organization, however when a defender takes over this process he or she must continue to work with the pentester over time as new vulnerabilities are found every day. Penetration testing and vulnerability assessment must be a continuous loop if not, systems will get even more vulnerable and affect other systems exposing them to high risk.

NEED FOR VAPT

Nothing is 100% safe. cyber criminals come up with more evolved tools, procedures and tactics to breach networks therefore it is very important to routinely check your organization’s cybersecurity with vapt organizations that can see your security weaknesses and proffer solutions on how to mitigate them

VAPT SERVICES

These services include:

• penetration testing
• vulnerability assessment
• Red team operation

VAPT addresses cybersecurity vulnerabilities across organizations. Its meaning varies based on geographical location. These have a broad range of security assessment services that identifies these vulnerabilities. Organizations should keep in mind that before choosing any VAPT security testing, they should have done a thorough research on what each security assessment could include. In short, VAPT however different but when combined one can achieve a more complete vulnerability analysis.