A security specialist has been asked to evaluate a corporate network by performing a vulnerability
assessment. Which of the following will MOST likely be performed?
A.
Identify vulnerabilities, check applicability of vulnerabilities by passively testing security controls.
B.
Verify vulnerabilities exist, bypass security controls and exploit the vulnerabilities.
C.
Exploit security controls to determine vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
D.
Bypass security controls and identify applicability of vulnerabilities by passively testing security
controls.
Explanation:
We need to determine if vulnerabilities exist by passively testing security controls.
A vulnerability scan is the automated process of proactively identifying security vulnerabilities of
computing systems in a network in order to determine if and where a system can be exploited and/or
threatened. While public servers are important for communication and data transfer over the Internet,
they open the door to potential security breaches by threat agents, such as malicious hackers.Vulnerability scanning employs software that seeks out security flaws based on a database of known
flaws, testing systems for the occurrence of these flaws and generating a report of the findings that an
individual or an enterprise can use to tighten the network’s security.
Vulnerability scanning typically refers to the scanning of systems that are connected to the Internet but
can also refer to system audits on internal networks that are not connected to the Internet in order to
assess the threat of rogue software or malicious employees in an enterprise.
Incorrect Answers:
B: Verifying vulnerabilities exist, bypassing security controls and exploiting the vulnerabilities describes an
attack on the system or a penetration test. Penetration testing evaluates an organization’s ability to
protect its networks, applications, computers and users from attempts to circumvent its security controls
to gain unauthorized or privileged access to protected assets. A penetration test can test one method at a
time of accessing one system at a time. A vulnerability scan can scan for all vulnerabilities on multiple
systems and is therefore a better answer.
C: Exploiting security controls to determine vulnerabilities and misconfigurations would be a slow and
manual way of performing a vulnerability assessment. A vulnerability scan is an automated process of
scanning for all vulnerabilities on multiple systems and is therefore a better answer.
D: We need to first identify any vulnerabilities before we can check the applicability of the vulnerabilities.http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/V/vulnerability_scanning.html