Why Every Business Needs Vulnerability Assessments
In a few decades, computing has changed the world. But inevitably, our reliance on it exposes us to the constant threat of abuse and malfunction. In our personal lives, this is often much more than just an inconvenience. In business, it can be catastrophic. Most organisations are heavily dependent on the smooth, uninterrupted and secure performance of their digital processes. Commercial operations, financial management, supply chains, communications, customer records and human resources could collapse without robust protection.
Even the most robust protection has been known to fail. That is why regular vulnerability assessments are essential in any responsible business. A vulnerability assessment allows you to define, identify, classify and prioritise any weaknesses in your computer systems, applications and networks. Armed with this knowledge, you will be fully prepared to understand, respond to and prevent any of a thousand possible threats, the impact of which could be crippling.
Every organisation, big or small, needs to take the threat seriously: cyberattacks can come from anywhere at any time. When they happen to multinationals it makes the news, but there are no businesses or institutions – even schools and hospitals – which are free from risk. Bear in mind, too, that breaches can also be accidental: with no malicious intent an employee’s innocent actions may fall foul of a gap in your protective arrangements, causing potentially significant damage to your assets, finances and reputation.
How Vulnerability Assessments Work
At Gradeon, we can devise the optimum vulnerability assessment programme for your business, using the most powerful testing tools such as network security scanners. We will root out any weaknesses that could allow hackers to access your IT systems and help you to appreciate the vulnerability of your assets, the extent of any security flaws and the overall risks you might face.
Network scans will examine your entire internal network; host scans will check the health and security of servers, ports and other network hosts; wireless scans will inspect your wi-fi network, a common point of access for criminals; application scans can detect website vulnerabilities; and database scans will find any weaknesses in your highly valuable databases and help you guard against malicious attacks.
We can also use penetration testing in conjunction with vulnerability assessment as the two are complementary. Vulnerability assessments are diagnostic and designed to identify possible weaknesses. A penetration test will simulate an attack and reveal the extent of those suspected weaknesses. Whichever programme you choose, we can give you comprehensive advice on its suitability and we would also strongly recommend that you incorporate such a security regime into your everyday routine. Keeping your systems safe and secure is an essential management duty. Even if you find your network to be well-protected today, there is no guarantee that your security won’t be breachable next week, next month or next year.
