Vulnerability Assessment vs Penetration Testing 2025: Key Differences & Best Practices

• Core difference:
  • Vulnerability Assessment VA: Broad, automated scan to detect known weaknesses.
  • Penetration Test PT: Targeted, manual simulation of real world attacks to exploit and validate risks.
• Purpose:
  • VA identifies low hanging fruit vulnerabilities for quick remediation.
  • PT measures actual exploitability and resilience of critical defenses.
• Why both matter: Combined, they provide full coverage VA for visibility, PT for validation.
• Threat context 2025: Exploitation of vulnerabilities as breach entry points surged 180% year over year.
• Best practice: Run regular vulnerability scans continuously and penetration tests periodically to stay audit ready and resilient.
• Key takeaway: Understanding the synergy between VA and PT is crucial to preventing modern, sophisticated cyberattacks.

What’s the difference between a vulnerability assessment and a penetration test? In short, a vulnerability assessment is like a routine health check for your IT systems, using mostly automated scanners to identify potential security weaknesses, missing patches, misconfigurations, outdated software, etc. across a wide range of assets.

By contrast, a penetration test or pentest is a hands on ethical hacking exercise that goes a step further. It actively exploits vulnerabilities and simulates real cyber attacks to show how an attacker could infiltrate your systems and what damage they could do. Both processes share the goal of improving security, but they differ greatly in depth, methodology, and purpose.

This topic matters now more than ever. The threat landscape of 2025 is extremely aggressive: over 30,000 new security vulnerabilities were identified in 2024, a 17% year over year increase, and attackers are quicker to weaponize these flaws. The 2024 Verizon DBIR report observed a 180% increase in breaches initiated via vulnerability exploitation, a spike fueled by high profile zero day attacks like MOVEit and Log4j.

Simply put, there are more known holes to patch and more criminals trying to punch through them. To keep up, organizations must both find vulnerabilities before attackers do and test their defenses under fire.

In this guide, we’ll break down vulnerability assessments vs penetration testing in detail definitions, key differences, use cases, methodologies, tools, and how to decide when you need each hint: probably both. Let’s dive in.

What is a Vulnerability Assessment?

A vulnerability assessment is a systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing security weaknesses in an information system. In practice, it usually involves automated scanning tools and sometimes manual techniques to sweep your networks, servers, applications, and devices for known vulnerabilities.

Think of it as using a metal detector to find known problem areas in your environment. The goal is to create an inventory of vulnerabilities such as missing patches, misconfigured settings, open ports, or outdated libraries and assign each a severity rating often using CVSS scores along with recommended fixes.

Key points about vulnerability assessments:

Broad Coverage, Shallow Depth:

• Vulnerability assessments emphasize breadth.They aim to cover as many systems as possible, providing a high level overview of your security posture by listing all detected issues.
• The process typically does not exploit or dig into each vulnerability, it identifies the what could be vulnerable but not the what if what happens if exploited.
• For example, a scan might report Server XYZ has an outdated Apache version High risk but it won’t actually attempt to hack that server.

Automated Scanning:

• Most vulnerability assessments rely heavily on automated scanners like Nessus, Qualys, or OpenVAS to rapidly detect known issues. These tools compare your systems against databases of known vulnerabilities e.g., CVEs.
• They can find things like unpatched software versions, weak passwords, exposed services, or default credentials.
• Because it’s automated, a vulnerability scan can cover large environments quickly and an enterprise can scan thousands of endpoints and IPs to pinpoint weak spots. This makes it cost effective and repeatable.

Low Intrusiveness and Safety:

• Vulnerability scanning is generally non intrusive. It’s designed to minimize impact on systems e.g., not crashing services. It doesn’t execute exploits, so the risk of causing downtime is low.
• Because of this, it usually does not require special authorization beyond normal change management approval.
• You’re essentially observing and querying systems, not breaking into them. This makes assessments safe to run regularly, even on production environments.

Reporting and Remediation Focus:

• The output of a vulnerability assessment is a detailed report listing each discovered vulnerability, often categorized by severity Critical/High/Medium/Low.
• For each issue, you’ll get a description of the finding, the affected hosts, and a recommendation for remediation like apply patch X or disable TLS 1.0. These reports help IT and security teams prioritize fixes.
• For example, you might tackle all critical vulnerabilities, say, a known remote code execution flaw immediately, while scheduling lows like informational banners for later.
• The assessment’s value is in guiding remediation it tells you where to focus your patching and hardening efforts.

Continuous Process:

• Vulnerability assessment isn’t a one time event, it’s an ongoing practice.
• New vulnerabilities emerge constantly, remember those 30,000 new ones last year, so organizations typically perform scans on a regular schedule monthly or even weekly for critical systems.
• Many companies integrate vulnerability scanning into their vulnerability management program, alongside continuous monitoring and remediation cycles. After fixes are applied, a follow up scan confirms the issues are resolved.
• This continual loop helps maintain good security hygiene, catching newly introduced weaknesses for instance, if a team misconfigures a server or an out of band patch is missed.

In summary, a vulnerability assessment is your routine security check up. It answers the question: What are all the known vulnerabilities in our environment right now? It’s broad, efficient, and forms the foundation of a strong security program by ensuring you’re aware of and fixing the common holes attackers could exploit. However, it stops short of telling you which vulnerabilities are the most dangerous in practice. That's where penetration testing comes in.

What is Penetration Testing?

Penetration testing, often simply called pentesting or ethical hacking, is a simulated cyber attack against a system, network, or application to evaluate its security.

In a penetration test, skilled security professionals, the penetration testers or ethical hackers actively attempt to exploit vulnerabilities and bypass security controls under controlled conditions.

The idea is to imitate what a real attacker would do, using the same tools, techniques, and mindset, but with authorization and without malicious intent. While a vulnerability assessment asks What could be weak?, a penetration test asks What can a hacker actually do to us if they tried?

Key points about penetration testing:

Deep, Adversarial Analysis:

• Penetration testing is all about depth. Rather than finding every flaw, testers focus on finding impactful ways to break in.
• They might start with a few vulnerabilities often identified via an initial scan or reconnaissance and then exploit them to see how far they can get.
• Importantly, pen testers think like attackers, they look for creative attack paths, chain multiple low risk issues into a serious exploit, and probe defenses in a way automated scanners cannot.
• This yields an in-depth understanding of your true security weaknesses.
• For example, a pentest might reveal that a seemingly minor bug plus a misconfiguration can be combined to steal customer data insight you’d miss from a scan alone.

Manual, Human Driven Techniques:

• While tools are used in pentesting for recon, scanning, or even exploit scripts, the process heavily relies on human expertise and creativity.
• Testers use judgment to decide which findings to pursue and how. They might write custom exploits or adapt tactics on the fly.
• Automated tools can’t easily discover things like business logic flaws, conceptual mistakes, or novel attack chains but a clever human tester can.
• This is why penetration testing is often described as art and science and tends to be more time consuming and expensive.
• You're effectively hiring skilled hackers to spend days or weeks on the task.

Exploitation and Proof of Concept:

• Unlike vulnerability assessments, penetration tests don’t stop at identifying a vulnerability, they go further to exploit it in a safe manner and demonstrate the potential impact.
• For instance, if a vulnerability scan finds an open database port, a pentester might actually use default credentials to login and dump some sample data to prove the risk.
• Or if a web app has an SQL injection flaw, the tester might exploit it to extract user accounts or escalate privileges.
• This provides evidence of what a breach could do. It answers management’s question, Show me what happens if this vulnerability is leveraged.
• The result might be an eye opener: e.g., the tester was able to obtain domain admin access from a single phished user account because of chaining multiple issues. That kind of insight drives home the urgency to fix root problems.

Controlled but Realistic Attack Simulation:

• Pen tests are conducted under controlled conditions with the authorization of the organization.
• A proper penetration test begins with a clear scope and rules of engagement defined in advance what systems can be tested, during what hours, any methods off limits, etc..
• This is important legally and for safety you’re essentially hiring someone to hack you, so you set boundaries to avoid unintended damage.
• Within those bounds, testers have free rein to use any techniques attackers might use: network attacks, malware, social engineering, etc., as agreed.
• Because real exploits are attempted, there is some risk e.g., a payload might crash a service or a phishing test might trick an employee.
• Thus, management approval and coordination are mandatory before a pen test. Everyone needs to know it’s a sanctioned test.
• Often, very sensitive operations are excluded or closely monitored during testing to prevent disruptions.

Detailed Reporting with Impact Analysis:

• A pentest’s deliverable is a comprehensive report that not only lists vulnerabilities found, but also documents how they were exploited, what access or data was obtained, and how far the tester could pivot.
• The report usually includes an executive summary of overall risk rating, whether the testers got in, key findings, detailed technical findings each issue with steps taken, evidence like screenshots or output, and the impact described, and prioritized recommendations for remediation.
• For example, the report might say Through a SQL injection on the customer portal Vuln ID 001, the test team extracted 5,000 customer records including PII.
• This occurred because input validation was missing on the login form. We recommend implementing parameterized queries and conducting code review.
• Such detail is invaluable because it shows the real world risk of vulnerabilities in a way a raw scan cannot. It also tests your detection and response.
• Ideally your security team should detect the testers’ activities, if they don’t, that’s another finding.

In summary, a penetration test is a full on fire drill cyberattack carried out in a safe manner. It answers the question Can an attacker actually break into our systems, and what could they do if they did? By doing so, it provides a reality check on your security, you discover which vulnerabilities truly matter by seeing them exploited, and you gain insight into how to strengthen your defenses against real intrusions.

Penetration testing is often the only way to uncover complex attack chains or subtle weaknesses that automated tools miss, making it an essential complement to regular vulnerability scanning.

Key Differences Between Vulnerability Assessments and Penetration Tests

While both vulnerability assessments and penetration tests aim to improve security, they differ fundamentally in scope and approach. Here are the core differences, explained in plain terms:

Purpose:

• A vulnerability assessment seeks to identify and catalog as many weaknesses as possible in your environment.
• It's about breadth and coverage finding what could be vulnerable. A penetration test aims to actively exploit weaknesses to demonstrate actual risk, it’s about depth and impact showing what an attacker can do.
• In other words, assessments list potential issues, pen tests prove how those issues can lead to a breach.

Approach & Techniques:

• Vulnerability assessments rely primarily on automated scanning tools and are often performed by analysts following a checklist or using vulnerability databases.
• It’s a methodical, scanner driven approach that yields quick results with minimal human intervention.
• Penetration testing, on the other hand, is predominantly manual and creative. Testers might use scanners to get started, but the heavy lifting is in hands-on probing, custom exploits, and attacker mindset tactics.
• Pentesting is more akin to an art one that may involve social engineering, coding exploits, or chaining multiple vulnerabilities.

Scope & Coverage:

• Assessments cover wide scope but shallowly. They typically scan a large number of systems, maybe your entire IP range, all servers, all websites for known issues.
• This broad sweep ensures nothing obvious is overlooked, but it might not fully analyze each system in depth. Penetration tests focus on a narrower scope but dive deeply.
• You might target a specific application, network segment, or a set of high value systems for the test, and the testers will thoroughly examine those targets.
• For example, an assessment might scan 100 servers for hundreds of vulnerabilities each surface level, whereas a pen test might intensely target 5 critical servers to attempt actual break ins from multiple angles.

Exploitation & Validation:

• Vulnerability assessment does not exploit the findings, it’s a look but don’t touch approach. If a scanner finds a critical flaw, the assessment report will flag it, but the team won’t verify by exploiting it avoiding potential harm.
• In contrast, penetration testing explicitly involves exploitation. Testers will attempt to compromise systems using the discovered vulnerabilities in a controlled way to validate severity.
• This means pen tests can produce false negatives, they might miss something the scanner would catch if testers don’t try that path, whereas vulnerability scans can produce false positives flagging an issue that isn’t actually exploitable.
• Pen tests eliminate false positives by proving what’s real, but they might not find every theoretical issue they find the ones that count.

Intrusiveness & Risk:

• A vulnerability scan is generally low risk and non intrusive. It might slow down a server slightly or trigger some benign alerts, but it’s designed to not disrupt services. You’re typically safe to run scans in production regularly.
• Penetration testing is higher risk and intrusive by nature, because it involves actively trying to break things. Good testers are careful, but there’s always a chance an exploit attempt can crash a system or alter data.
• Therefore, pen tests require formal authorization and coordination everyone needs to be aware, and sensitive operations might be scheduled during off hours.
• Essentially, scanning is like a security guard checking doors are locked, pentesting is like hiring someone to pick the locks and maybe break a window more insight, but inherently invasive.

Frequency & Effort:

• Vulnerability assessments are performed frequently, often monthly or quarterly, sometimes even weekly for dynamic environments.
• They are relatively quick, a scan might take a few hours to a day and can be run with in house staff or automated services.
• Penetration tests are typically done periodically, often once a year or after major changes.
• They require significant effort over multiple days or weeks by skilled professionals. Because of the time and cost, pen tests aren’t run as often.
• You might do a big external network pentest annually, with smaller tests in between if needed or use continuous testing services more on that later.
• Think of it as routine check ups assessments versus a full specialist exam or stress test pentest on occasion.

Expertise & Cost:

• Vulnerability assessments are less expensive and can be handled by internal security teams or outsourced at modest cost.
• Automated scanning tools, some even free or low cost do much of the work.
• It’s not easy, but it doesn’t require elite hacker skills to run a scan and interpret common vulnerabilities. Penetration testing is more costly because you’re paying for expertise.
• Seasoned ethical hackers command high rates, and a thorough test can take many weeks of effort.
• For perspective, a professional penetration test in 2025 can range roughly from $5,000 on the low end to $50,000+ for a complex engagement, with large enterprise projects even exceeding $100K.
• Anything priced much lower is likely just an automated scan labeled as a pentest.
• In short, scans are cheaper, pentests are an investment but they yield different value.

Deliverables:

• Both produce reports, but the content differs. A vulnerability assessment report is essentially a vulnerability list a catalog of findings with severity ratings and general remediation advice e.g., apply patch, update software, disable service.
• It’s a to do list for your IT/security team. A penetration test report includes a narrative of the attack scenarios exactly how the testers breached or attempted to breach the system, what they achieved, along with the list of exploitable vulnerabilities.
• It often contains more context, like which vulnerabilities were chained, what data was accessed, and step by step reproduction details for each exploit.
• The remediation section is more specific to prevent those attack paths e.g., code fixes, network segmentation, policy changes.
• Essentially, the pentest report tells a story I got in via X, then moved laterally to Y, and exfiltrated Z which can be more compelling to executives, whereas the vuln assessment report is more of a technical inventory.

It’s clear that vulnerability assessments and penetration tests are not interchangeable, each serves a distinct role.

Vulnerability assessments cast a wide net to keep you informed of known issues across your assets, proactive defense and hygiene, while penetration tests zoom in on what an actual intruder could do and whether your crown jewels are truly safe real world assurance.

Rather than asking which is better, recognize that they complement each other. In fact, best practice is to use them in tandem, as we’ll discuss below.

Common Use Cases for Vulnerability Assessments

When should you use a vulnerability assessment? The short answer: regularly, as part of ongoing security management. Here are common scenarios and reasons organizations rely on vulnerability assessments:

Routine Security Hygiene & Continuous Monitoring:

• Most companies schedule routine vulnerability scans e.g. weekly, monthly, or quarterly on their IT assets. This is like a continuous health check to catch new issues or regressions.
• For example, if Microsoft releases a critical patch on Patch Tuesday, a scan later that week might flag any servers that didn’t get patched. Regular assessments help ensure no known flaw lurks unnoticed for long.
• This is crucial because the longer a vulnerability remains unpatched, the higher the chance an attacker exploits it.
• Remember, one study found the average time to detect a breach is 200+ days. You don’t want a known bug sitting open that whole time.
• By integrating scans into your maintenance cycle, you maintain a tighter security posture and reduce the window of exposure.

Baseline Assessment for New Systems or Mergers:

• When you’re rolling out new infrastructure or applications, or perhaps integrating a newly acquired company’s network, a vulnerability assessment is a smart early step. It provides a baseline security snapshot.
• For a small business just starting a security program, an initial vulnerability scan can highlight obvious misconfigurations or missing patches to fix right away.
• Similarly, after a cloud migration or deployment of a new server cluster, scanning those assets verifies they’re configured securely no default passwords, all updates applied, etc. before they go live.
• It’s a low cost way to catch low hanging fruit issues early.

Large Scale Environments & Asset Coverage:

• Enterprises with thousands of devices and systems rely on automated vulnerability scanning to cover ground that would be impossible manually.
• If you have a huge network, multiple offices, cloud instances, IoT devices an automated assessment can quickly sweep across IP ranges and device inventories to pinpoint weak spots.
• For instance, a telecom with 10,000 endpoints can run nightly scans to find any that have critical vulnerabilities or are misconfigured, then task IT teams to remediate.
• Vulnerability assessments excel at this broad asset visibility.
• They ensure that even in very complex environments, you maintain awareness of known risks across all your technology.

Cost Effective Risk Identification:

• Organizations with limited security budgets often turn to vulnerability assessments as a starting point, since scanning is far cheaper than a full pentest engagement.
• If you can’t afford frequent penetration tests, doing regular scans at least helps you reduce your attack surface by fixing known problems.
• It’s not as thorough, but it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing.
• Many smaller companies use this approach run a scanner, patch what it finds, repeat to steadily improve security over time until they’re mature enough and can afford to bring in penetration testers.
• It’s an efficient way to prioritize resources: fix the easy, known stuff first.
• In fact, even big companies do this continuously between their annual pen tests.

Compliance and Routine Audit Requirements:

• A lot of industry standards and regulations explicitly require or recommend vulnerability scanning as part of security management.
• For example, PCI DSS for payment card data mandates quarterly vulnerability scans, both externally by an Approved Scanning Vendor and internally on your networks.
• Other frameworks like NIST, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 expect organizations to have a vulnerability management process, which typically includes periodic assessments.
• During audits, showing that you run regular scans and patch findings helps demonstrate due diligence.
• So, companies use vulnerability assessment to check the compliance box e.g., evidence of quarterly scans and to actually improve their security in alignment with those requirements.
• It’s often one of the first things an auditor will ask: Do you do routine vulnerability scanning?

In essence, vulnerability assessments are used whenever you need a quick, wide angle view of security weaknesses in your environment.

They are the go to choice for maintaining day to day security hygiene, ensuring new deployments don’t introduce holes, and staying compliant with baseline security practices.

If it helps, think of vulnerability assessments as your first line of defense internally find and fix the known issues proactively so attackers have a harder time finding an easy way in.

Common Use Cases for Penetration Testing

Penetration testing is more targeted and intensive, so when is it worth doing? Typically when you need a realistic evaluation of your defenses or you have specific high risk scenarios to examine. Here are the common use cases for commissioning a pen test:

Real World Attack Simulation on Critical Assets:

• One of the top reasons to do a pentest is to answer, Can someone break into our critical systems or applications? Organizations often use penetration tests to simulate real world attacks on their most important assets.
• For example, a bank might hire a team to attempt to hack into its online banking platform a web application penetration test for an e-commerce or financial site if the testers succeed, the bank learns exactly how a real attacker could steal data or funds and can fix those vulnerabilities.
• If they fail or only partially succeed, that gives assurance that the system can withstand certain attack scenarios.
• Any business segment that is high impact customer databases, financial systems, healthcare records, industrial control systems is a candidate for periodic pentesting to ensure those crown jewels are well protected against determined adversaries.

After Major Changes or Before New Launches:

• Penetration tests are commonly scheduled after significant infrastructure or software changes to make sure nothing was unintentionally left insecure.
• Examples migrating to a new cloud environment, undergoing a major network redesign, deploying a brand new application or feature, or even after major patch cycles that could disrupt configurations.
• Before a new product goes live, a pentest can catch security flaws that slipped through development.
• Think of it as a QA crash test for security. Similarly, if you’ve revamped your environment, say, implemented a new firewall or identity management system, a pentest can validate that the new setup actually holds up against attacks.
• Essentially, whenever you suspect things have changed, we should double check our security, a pentest is warranted to avoid any nasty surprises post deployment.

High Risk Industries and Sensitive Data Protection:

• Certain industries face higher stakes and more skilled threats and thus rely on penetration testing regularly.
• If you’re in finance, healthcare, government, critical infrastructure, or any sector handling sensitive personal/financial data, the cost of a breach is enormous.
• These organizations use pentests to probe for any hidden weakness that could lead to a serious breach because they cannot afford those failures.
• For instance, a hospital might conduct an internal network penetration test to see if an insider or malware could move laterally from an infected device to the medical records database.
• A utility company might do a pentest on its SCADA control network to ensure hackers can’t cause outages.
• For these scenarios, an automated scan isn’t enough you want skilled experts trying creative ways in, since that’s what your adversaries often nation states or organized cybercriminals would do.
• Penetration testing provides a higher level of assurance for protecting highly sensitive assets where the threat actors are sophisticated.

Uncovering Complex or Unknown Vulnerabilities:

• Some vulnerabilities are so complex or context specific that automated tools won’t flag them.
• These include logic flaws in applications, race conditions, privilege escalation paths, chained exploits across multiple systems, or even zero day previously unknown vulnerabilities.
• Organizations suspecting that they might have these subtle issues or simply wanting the peace of mind that nothing obvious was missed will employ penetration testers to dig deeper than scanners can.
• A classic example is a business logic flaw: say an e-commerce site that allows a negative quantity in an order to generate a refund a scanner won’t catch that, but a human tester might.
• Or combining a low privilege account with a misconfigured file share to escalate to admin again, not likely detected by a generic scan.
• Pentesting excels at finding the unknown unknowns by having humans explore the system in unconventional ways.
• This is why even if your vuln scans come up clean, a pen test can still find serious issues that were just not in the scanner’s rulebook.

Post Incident Testing and Incident Response Validation:

• After a security incident or near miss, it’s wise to conduct a penetration test to ensure the same weaknesses can’t be exploited again.
• If you were breached via a phishing email that led to ransomware, for example, a pentest can simulate that attack path and others to confirm that the holes were truly fixed e.g., no more easy phishing, no open RDP ports, proper network segmentation now in place.
• This is often called verification testing after incident response. It helps answer, Are we sure that attacker or others can’t get back in the same way? Additionally, some organizations do red team style pentests to test their blue team defenders, response.
• In these cases, the use case is to evaluate not just vulnerabilities, but how well the security team detects and reacts to an active intruder.
• It’s a way to train and assess incident response capabilities under simulated breach conditions.
• If the red team attackers can roam free without being noticed, that’s a lesson that your monitoring or response process needs improvement.

Compliance and Regulatory Requirements:

• Many regulations and security standards require or strongly encourage penetration testing.
• For instance, PCI DSS payment card industry requires annual internal and external penetration tests, HIPAA in healthcare expects periodic technical evaluations which often include pentesting to ensure ePHI safety, and frameworks like ISO 27001 and SOC 2 often imply pentesting as part of risk assessment.
• Additionally, if you’re selling to enterprise customers, they might demand proof of recent penetration tests as part of vendor due diligence.
• So a very pragmatic use case is: We need a penetration test for compliance or customer assurance.
• By conducting the test and obtaining the report/certificate, you can check the compliance box and demonstrate to stakeholders that you take security seriously.
• It’s not just about the checkbox though regulators want to see that you acted on the results.
• So companies use the pen test to drive remediation of findings, thereby both improving security and meeting the letter of the law.
• For example, under PCI DSS 11.3, you must not only do a pentest annually, but also fix the discovered vulnerabilities and retest as needed it’s part of maintaining certification.
• In summary, penetration testing is often a required exercise in regulated industries to validate security controls in a real world way.

In these scenarios, penetration testing provides insights and assurances that a vulnerability scan alone cannot.

Whenever the stakes are high, be it a critical asset at risk, a big change to your systems, or a need to prove your security to third parties, that's the time to bring out the heavy artillery of a pen test.

It’s the difference between knowing theoretically that you should be secure and verifying it under realistic conditions.

Methodology: How Each Process Works

Both vulnerability assessments and penetration tests follow structured methodologies, but the steps and effort involved differ. Let’s briefly outline how each process typically works from start to finish:

Vulnerability Assessment Process

Planning & Scope Definition:

• First, identify what assets will be assessed. This could be an IP range, a list of servers, workstations, network devices, cloud instances, applications whatever is in scope.
• Clear scoping ensures you cover all critical assets and avoid scanning anything unintended like a third party system.
• You’ll also decide on the scan type network scan, web app scan, database scan, etc. and gather any needed credentials if you plan to do credentialed scans where the scanner logs in to systems for deeper analysis.
• Planning is usually straightforward: the goal is to be comprehensive but also safe schedule scans during maintenance windows if needed, etc..

Scanning & Discovery:

• Next, run the vulnerability scanning tools across the targets.
• The scanner will typically perform host discovery finding which systems are alive, then service enumeration, what ports are open, what software versions running, and then check each service or system against known vulnerability signatures.
• For example, if it sees an Apache server version X, it will check its database if Apache X has any reported CVEs unfixed. Scanners like Nessus or Qualys have tens of thousands of checks covering operating systems, databases, web servers, network gear, etc.
• This step might include multiple tools: a network scanner for OS vulnerabilities, a web app scanner like OWASP ZAP for web specific flaws, etc.
• The output is a raw list of potential findings per host.

Analysis & Prioritization:

• After scanning, you’ll have a trove of data often too much, including some false positives.
• Now a security analyst or the scanning tool itself will analyze results to remove obvious false positives e.g., a known safe banner that was mis-flagged.
• The vulnerabilities are then assessed for relevance and severity.
• Commonly, each finding is rated Critical/High/Medium/Low based on CVSS score or vendor severity.
• But context matters too: a medium on a critical server might be higher priority than a high on a trivial system.
• The assessor considers the environment e.g., a missing patch on an internet facing server is urgent, whereas the same on an isolated test system might be lower priority.
• The result of this phase is a prioritized list of valid vulnerabilities that need attention.

Reporting:

• The validated findings are compiled into a vulnerability assessment report.
• This report usually includes an executive summary number of findings, overall risk posture, and a detailed section listing each vulnerability with its description, affected assets, severity, and remediation steps.
• For example: Vuln ID 123: Windows Server 2016 KB <patch> missing allows remote code execution. Affected: Server01, Server02. Severity: High.
• Recommendation Apply Microsoft patch MSXX XXX. Good reports might also group issues e.g., 10 servers missing the same patch can be one line item with 10 hosts listed.
• The report is basically your action plan for patching and fixes.
• It’s delivered to the security/IT team and often to management to show where the risks lie.

Remediation & Follow Up:

• With the report in hand, your IT and security teams work to remediate the vulnerabilities.
• That means applying patches, changing configurations, updating software, improving firewall rules, etc., as per the recommendations.
• Critical issues might be fixed immediately emergency patching, whereas lower issues go into the normal backlog.
• Once fixes are in place, it’s common to re-scan the environment either the whole thing or just the systems that had critical findings to verify that the vulnerabilities have been eliminated.
• This closes the loop, ensuring that the effort indeed reduced the risk. Vulnerability assessment is then repeated at the next interval, it’s a continuous cycle.
• Mature organizations will track metrics like vulnerability closure rate and time to remediate to measure how quickly they address issues found by these assessments, aiming to improve those over time.

Modern vulnerability management might integrate scanning into automation pipelines as well, for example, scanning new VMs the moment they’re created, or scanning application code dependencies during development.

But at its core, the methodology remains: scan, find, fix, repeat. It’s a cyclical quality improvement process for security.

Penetration Testing Process

Penetration testing follows a more elaborate, multi phase methodology. Different firms and standards name the phases slightly differently, but a common breakdown is: Planning , Reconnaissance , Scanning/Enumeration , Exploitation , Post Exploitation , Reporting. Here’s how a typical pentest engagement unfolds:

Pre Engagement Planning:

• This is a crucial first step. The organization and the penetration testing team meet to define the scope, objectives, timeline, and rules for the test.
• Scope answers what’s being tested e.g., a range of IPs, certain applications, internal network vs external, social engineering allowed or not, etc.
• Objectives clarify what the org wants out of it is it to obtain customer data, to test if domain admin can be achieved, or just to generally find as many issues as possible?
• Rules of engagement cover things like testing hours, any prohibited techniques maybe don’t DOS our production, how to handle sensitive data if found, and crucially, legal authorization.
• A contract is signed giving the testers permission to attack the in scope systems without that, the activities would be illegal hacking.
• If the test is black box testers have no prior info vs gray vs white box full knowledge that’s agreed here as well.
• Everyone IT teams, SOC, etc. is made aware that a test will occur, except in some cases the client may opt for an element of surprise to test detection.
• Solid planning ensures the pentest runs smoothly with no misunderstandings.

Reconnaissance Information Gathering:

• Now the testers operate like spies doing recon on the target. They gather as much information as possible from public and private sources.
• Passive recon might include OSINT open source intelligence searching for company info, data leaks, employee emails for phishing targets, finding subdomains, cloud buckets, or previous breach data.
• They might scour sites like LinkedIn for tech stack clues we see they hire AWS engineers, so likely on AWS cloud, or find an old GitHub repo with hardcoded credentials.
• Active recon overlaps with scanning: pinging network ranges to find live hosts, querying DNS for domain info, using tools like Nmap in light modes to map out the environment.
• The goal is to build a map of the attack surface, all the potential entry points and useful info about the target.
• In a web app test, recon might involve studying the application, pages, inputs, and even reading documentation.
• In a network test, it might involve identifying all servers, their OS, and open ports.
• This phase is absolutely critical, the more thorough the recon, the more options the tester will have when trying exploits.

Scanning & Enumeration:

• This phase often overlaps with recon, but it’s where testers more actively probe the target systems for weaknesses.
• They may use vulnerability scanners here too, essentially performing a focused vulnerability assessment as part of the pentest to get a list of known flaws to exploit. However, enumeration goes further, testers will manually interact with services to discover things like user accounts, shares, software configurations, etc.
• For example, they might connect to a web server and enumerate directories, or use Nmap scripts to pull detailed info from a service like SNMP or SMB enumeration to list users.
• They could also run tools to brute force common passwords or check for default creds on services.
• The output of this phase is a set of potential vulnerabilities or entry points.
• Maybe the scan shows a SQL Injection vulnerability on a website, or an outdated Windows server vulnerable to a known exploit, or an open FTP share with sensitive data.
• The testers at this point prioritize which avenues seem most promising to actually break in.

Exploitation Attack Phase:

• Here’s where the fun begins the testers start launching real attacks to exploit the identified weaknesses.
• This could involve using an exploit toolkit like Metasploit to target a specific CVE on a server, or writing a custom script to exploit a SQL injection and dump a database.
• They might send phishing emails to employees if social engineering is in scope to capture credentials, then use those creds to VPN into the network.
• If a weak password is found, they’ll try it to log in. If an unsecured Wi Fi network is in scope, they might attempt to crack it.
• Essentially, testers pivot through whatever means necessary to achieve the test objectives.
• If initial access is gained, say they pop a shell on a web server, they’ll then attempt to escalate privileges e.g., exploit a local privilege escalation bug to get root/admin.
• From there, they move laterally use the compromised host to reach other systems in the network, a technique known as pivoting.
• This phase is dynamic and iterative: if an exploit fails, they try another path.
• If one succeeds, it may reveal new information to exploit further e.g., credentials found on one box to reuse on another.
• The testers carefully document each step and outcome as they go.
• Importantly, they maintain a degree of caution while they push the envelope, they also try to avoid causing unplanned outages or damage for example, not deleting data, and stopping an exploit if it risks crashing a critical system.
• This is where their skill and experience really matter.

Post Exploitation & Lateral Movement:

• Often considered part of exploitation, but worth separate mention. If the testers achieve a foothold, they explore how far they can go with that access.
• For instance, from a user workstation compromised via phishing, can they move to an internal file server? Can that lead to domain controller access the keys to the kingdom? Post exploitation activities include dumping passwords/hashes, installing web shells or backdoors in a safe manner to simulate persistence, and attempting to access sensitive data like files shares, databases, emails.
• The idea is to demonstrate the impact: it’s one thing to say we got a low priv user account, it’s another to show using that account, we accessed 10,000 patient records from the database.
• Testers might also test how stealthy they can be and whether the blue team detects them. In some engagements, especially red team style, they’ll actually stop short of certain actions if it risks too much like they might prove they could delete a database by demonstrating the level of access, without actually doing it.
• By the end of this phase, the testers should have a clear picture of what they could compromise and how far a malicious actor could have penetrated.

Reporting & Debrief:

• Finally, the testers compile everything into a penetration test report. This document is often lengthy and detailed.
• It typically starts with an Executive Summary that outlines whether the engagement was able to breach the systems and highlights the most critical findings in non technical language for the execs.
• Then a Methodology section that explains what was tested and how useful for auditors or to repeat the test later.
• Then the Findings: each vulnerability or security issue discovered is detailed, including the steps the testers took to exploit it, evidence screenshots, output logs, etc., and the impact of the issue.
• For example: Finding 3: SQL Injection in ‘search’ parameter of web app. Exploitation: Gained admin credentials from database.
• Impact: Full compromise of customer data. Each finding comes with Remediation Recommendations specific advice to fix the issue patch software, sanitize inputs, implement multi factor auth, etc..
• The report may also include general observations about security controls, and positives what was done well or negatives about the overall security posture.
• Once delivered, there’s usually a debrief meeting where the testers walk through the findings with the client’s technical team, so they understand exactly what happened and can ask questions.
• This is an important knowledge transfer to ensure the client can effectively remediate the issues.
• Often, after some time for fixes, a re-test may be done on critical findings to confirm they are resolved.

Throughout this process, established frameworks like NIST SP 800 115 or the Penetration Testing Execution Standard PTES provide guidance and structure. 

For example, NIST 800 115 outlines a similar 4 phase approach: Planning, Discovery, Attack, Reporting. Testers might also follow the OWASP Testing Guide for web apps or other industry best practices to ensure a thorough coverage.

Every step is documented, both for the report and to maintain a log so that if something goes awry, they know what actions were taken.

In essence, the pentest methodology is about mimicking a real attacker’s lifecycle: from recon, to initial compromise, to expanding that compromise, and then reporting back everything found.

It’s a labor intensive but immensely valuable process, as it reveals not just vulnerabilities, but how those vulnerabilities play out in an attack scenario.

Tools of the Trade: Scanners vs Hackers’ Toolkits

The tools used for vulnerability assessments versus penetration tests reflect their different approaches:

Vulnerability Assessment Tools Automated Scanners: These are often specialized software platforms designed to catalog known vulnerabilities efficiently. Some popular examples include:

• Nessus: A widely used commercial vulnerability scanner by Tenable. Nessus can scan networks, servers, databases, etc., against a vast library of known issues. It’s known for comprehensive coverage and regularly updated plugins. Many vulnerability assessment programs use Nessus or similar tools as a backbone for network scanning.
• QualysGuard: A cloud based vulnerability management platform. Qualys can perform external and internal scans and is often used in enterprises for continuous scanning. It’s also an approved scanning vendor ASV for PCI DSS compliance scans. Qualys provides a web dashboard to track vulnerabilities over time and across large environments.
• OpenVAS Greenbone: An open source vulnerability scanner, which is essentially the free counterpart of Nessus’s early days. OpenVAS has a large plugin set for finding known CVEs and config issues. While not as polished as commercial options, it’s a powerful free tool for network vulnerability assessments.
• OWASP ZAP Zed Attack Proxy: An open source web application scanner. ZAP acts as a proxy and can automatically crawl and test web applications for common vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, insecure cookies, etc.. It’s widely used for baseline web app assessments and can be scripted into CI/CD pipelines for developers to catch issues early.
• Vendor Specific and Others: There are many others for instance, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has vulnerability management built in for Windows hosts, Rapid7 InsightVM Nexpose is another enterprise scanner, Nikto is a simple web server scanner, etc. The unifying theme is these tools are largely automated and focus on detection of known patterns. They typically generate lists of findings with CVEs.

These scanners often integrate with dashboards or management systems to track remediation. Modern cloud environments even have their own scanners e.g., AWS Inspector, Azure Security Center which basically do vulnerability assessment on cloud resources.

In use, a security analyst sets up scans either scheduled or on demand, the tool runs and finds issues, and then the results are reviewed and handed off for fixing.

Many scanners also have features to avoid duplicates, scan incrementally, and even suggest patches.

Penetration Testing Tools Hacker’s Arsenal: Pen testers use a combination of automated tools, custom scripts, and manual techniques. Some staple tools and their uses:

Nmap:

• The classic network mapper. Pen testers use Nmap for port scanning, service identification, and even vulnerability detection with its NSE scripts.
• Nmap is often the first tool run in the discovery phase to map out the targets which hosts alive, which ports open, what services/versions. It’s fast and flexible.

Metasploit Framework:

• A powerful exploitation framework. Metasploit contains a database of exploits for known vulnerabilities and makes it easier to run them and manage payloads like establishing a reverse shell.
• A tester might use Metasploit to, say, exploit an unpatched MS17 010 EternalBlue vulnerability on a Windows server and get a shell.
• It also has post exploitation modules to escalate privileges or move laterally. Metasploit is like a Swiss army knife for launching and managing exploits.

Burp Suite:

• The go to tool for web application penetration testing. Burp Suite is a proxy that lets testers intercept and modify web traffic.
• It also has scanners and intruder tools for automating attacks like fuzzing parameters, as well as a repeater to manually craft requests.
• With Burp, a tester can find and exploit things like XSS, SQL injection, broken access controls in web apps systematically.
• It’s an indispensable tool for any web pentest.

Wireshark:

• A network protocol analyzer sniffer.
• During a pentest, Wireshark might be used to capture and inspect network traffic, either to find sensitive data being transmitted like passwords in cleartext or to analyze the behavior of certain network protocols.
• For example, if testing a proprietary network protocol, a tester might sniff traffic to reverse engineer credentials or tokens.
• It’s also handy for debugging failed exploits or just understanding network topology.

Password Crackers Hashcat/John:

• If testers obtain password hashes from a Windows SAM database, for instance, or an /etc/shadow file on Linux, or from sniffing an NTLM challenge response, they will use tools like Hashcat or John the Ripper to attempt offline password cracking.
• These tools try common passwords or use dictionaries and brute force often accelerated with GPUs to recover plaintext passwords.
• Cracked passwords can then be used to login or pivot further.

Custom Scripts & Others:

• Experienced testers often write small scripts on the fly in Python, PowerShell, Bash to automate tasks or exploit unique vulnerabilities.
• There are also numerous other tools SQLmap for automating SQL injection exploitation, Responder for poisoning network name resolution in a Windows environment, Hydra for password brute force on services, BloodHound for mapping Active Directory attack paths, and the list goes on.
• Many testers use specialized Linux distros like Kali Linux or Parrot OS, which come pre loaded with hundreds of these tools.

Social Engineering and Physical Tools:

• If included, testers might use tools like GoPhish to manage phishing campaigns sending emails that capture credentials or deploy payloads.
• They might have USB drops, malicious USB sticks or even physical lock picking tools if the engagement includes physical security testing.

It’s worth noting that tools are just aids a penetration tester’s most important tool is their brain and experience.

Tools can find the low hanging fruit and automate repetitive tasks, but the creative, subtle exploits come from understanding the system and perhaps writing a new exploit or trying something unorthodox.

Comparing the two toolsets, you see the philosophy difference: vulnerability assessment tools are about breadth and automation they have a vulnerability knowledge base and systematically check for each one.

Pentesting tools are about depth and exploitation giving the tester the capability to actually break in and maneuver through the environment.

There is some crossover e.g., a pentester might use a vulnerability scanner to save time, and a security team might use Metasploit in a controlled way to validate a critical vulnerability.

But generally, if you’re running Nessus and Qualys, you’re doing vulnerability assessment, if you’re firing up Metasploit and Burp Suite, you’re in penetration test territory.

When to Use Which and Why Not Both?

At this point, it should be clear that vulnerability assessments and penetration tests serve different needs but they work best in tandem. Here’s how to decide on using each approach:

Use Vulnerability Assessments for Ongoing Security Hygiene:

• If your goal is to maintain a strong baseline security posture day in and day out, frequent vulnerability assessments are the way to go.
• Use them when you need regular, proactive checks for known issues. For example, if you want to ensure all your systems are patched and configured correctly on a continual basis, implement monthly vuln scanning.
• It’s a cost effective early warning system for weaknesses. Also use assessments when you have made minor changes or additions e.g., you added 50 new VMs, run a scan to catch any setup mistakes. Essentially, whenever you want to quickly identify what’s wrong here across a broad set of assets, do a vulnerability assessment.
• They are also great for compliance monitoring. Many standards say you should have a vulnerability management process in place.
• Scans give you the artifacts reports to show you’re doing that. Just remember, by themselves, vulnerability assessments only tell you what to fix, you still need to actually fix those issues for the benefit to be realized.
• The big why for vulnerability assessments is efficiency and coverage. In the constant race to plug holes before attackers exploit them, automated scanning significantly tilts things in your favor for all the known/common vulnerabilities.

Use Penetration Testing for Periodic Deep Assurance and Simulated Attack:

• Pen tests should be employed when you need a realistic evaluation of your security and a demonstration of impact.
• A common strategy is to conduct a full scale penetration test annually, or more often if your risk profile is high or things change frequently some do every 6 months, or different scopes throughout the year.
• You’d also do a pen test whenever major changes occur new data center, big app launch, etc. as a sanity check.
• The rationale for a pen test is when you find yourself asking, Okay, we’ve done the basic security upkeep... but can someone still hack us? or We think this system is secure, but let’s get an outside perspective and be sure.
• Pen tests are invaluable for catching the critical issues that slipped through and for giving you a clear sense of what a determined adversary might achieve.
• Also, if you have to satisfy a regulatory requirement or a client’s demand for one, obviously schedule a penetration test accordingly e.g.,PCI DSS requires annual pentesting, HIPAA might require it after big system changes under its risk management provisions, etc..
• The why for pen testing is validation and realism. It measures your defenses against real attack techniques and shows the consequences if something isn’t fixed.
• It can also validate your detection/response if your SOC catches the testers, that’s a good sign, if not, you learn where to improve.

Use Both Together They Complement Each Other:

• It’s not actually Vulnerability Assessment vs Penetration Testing as either/or the best practice is both.
• They address different layers of security management. In fact, running regular vulnerability scans will make your penetration tests more effective by the time testers come in, you’ve hopefully removed easy targets patched the easy stuff, so they can spend time on deeper issues.
• Conversely, the results of a penetration test feed back into your vulnerability management showing you which vulnerabilities were most dangerous so you can prioritize those in future scans and patches.
• Many security frameworks advocate a continuous cycle of assessment and testing. For example, a cycle could be: monthly vuln scans + immediate patching of highs, then an annual pen test that finds a couple of criticals that scanning missed, you fix those, then continue scanning and so on.
• This one two punch dramatically reduces risk: scanning takes care of the common, known problems, and pentesting uncovers the uncommon, more complex problems.
• Together, they provide a more complete view of your security. You catch the majority of issues through assessments and the most impactful issues through occasional pen tests.

In an ideal modern scenario, organizations are even moving toward continuous security testing. This might involve services or platforms that combine automated scanning with human led testing on an ongoing basis sometimes called Continuous Penetration Testing or Penetration Testing as a Service PTaaS.

In this model, you don’t wait 12 months for the next big test, instead, you have rolling assessments and targeted mini pentests throughout the year, integrated with your development cycles. This can catch issues faster and keep the pressure on attackers year round.

For example, DeepStrike’s own platform might offer continuous scanning plus on demand expert verification giving you the best of both worlds in near real time. This is one way to interpret PTaaS.

The driving idea: given how fast threats evolve, quarterly scans and annual tests may no longer be sufficient. A blended, continuous approach ensures new vulnerabilities or attack techniques are caught and challenged as soon as possible.

To sum up, use vulnerability assessments like your regular exercise to stay healthy, and use penetration tests like a thorough medical exam or stress test to diagnose deeper issues. They are complementary tools in a robust cybersecurity program.

Skipping one or the other leaves you with blind spots, only scanning means you might miss how bad something could be, and only pentesting occasionally means you might be leaving many known issues in place for attackers to find.

In 2025’s threat environment, you truly need both the broad net and the sharp spear to keep attackers at bay.

Vulnerability assessments and penetration testing each play a vital role in a mature cybersecurity strategy one isn’t better than the other, because they accomplish different things. A vulnerability assessment is like a routine wellness check for your IT environment: it identifies the known issues the symptoms or risk factors so you can remediate them before they lead to illness a breach. It’s about staying on top of your security hygiene continuously. A penetration test is more like a simulated emergency or stress test it shows how your security holds up under an actual attack scenario, revealing any hidden weaknesses that attackers could exploit. It provides a deeper, experience driven understanding of your true security posture by demonstrating what could happen in a worst case scenario.

In practice, combining both gives you a one two punch that significantly strengthens your defenses.

The vulnerability assessment covers the breadth, catching the common flaws across all your systems so you can slam those easy doors shut.

The penetration test covers the depth, challenging your defenses in ways automated scans can’t so you discover if any unlocked window or clever bypass still exists and how severe it would be.

Together, they help ensure that when not if attackers come knocking, there are as few opportunities as possible for them to get in and even if they try, you’ve already tested those scenarios and fortified your critical assets accordingly.

Remember that cybersecurity in 2025 is not a one and done exercise but an ongoing process. Threats evolve, new vulnerabilities are disclosed daily, and your IT environment constantly changes with updates and new deployments.

That’s why you should integrate vulnerability scanning into your regular operations and treat penetration tests as a regular e.g., yearly validation step not just a compliance checkbox, but a learning opportunity to continually refine your security.

As one strategy, many organizations are moving toward continuous penetration testing and continuous vulnerability management, blending automation and human expertise throughout the year to keep pace with threats. This proactive stance will put you in the best position to prevent breaches.

Ready to Strengthen Your Defenses? The threats of 2025 demand more than just awareness, they require readiness. If you’re looking to validate your security posture, identify hidden risks, or build a resilient defense strategy, DeepStrike is here to help.

Our team of practitioners provides clear, actionable guidance to protect your business. Explore our penetration testing services to see how we can uncover vulnerabilities before attackers do. Drop us a line we’re always ready to dive in and bolster your security before the bad guys do.

About the Author

Mohammed Khalil is a Cybersecurity Architect at DeepStrike, specializing in advanced penetration testing and offensive security operations. With certifications including CISSP, OSCP, and OSWE, he has led numerous red team engagements for Fortune 500 companies, focusing on cloud security, application vulnerabilities, and adversary emulation. His work involves dissecting complex attack chains and developing resilient defense strategies for clients in the finance, healthcare, and technology sectors.

FAQs

What is the main difference between a vulnerability assessment and a penetration test?

• A vulnerability assessment is primarily an automated scan that identifies and lists potential security weaknesses but does not exploit them, whereas a penetration test is a simulated attack by ethical hackers that actively exploits vulnerabilities to determine what an attacker could actually do.
• In other words, vulnerability assessments find the doors and windows left open, and penetration tests attempt to break in through those openings and measure the real impact.
• Both are security evaluation methods, but one is breadth focused detection and the other is depth focused exploitation.

Which should come first, a vulnerability assessment or a penetration test?

• Typically, you perform a vulnerability assessment first as part of routine security upkeep, then conduct a penetration test later for a deeper evaluation.
• The vulnerability assessment will clean up the easy to find issues, patches, misconfigurations .
• It's wise to fix those before bringing in pen testers, so they can focus on more advanced holes.
• Think of it like fixing the known leaks in a boat assessment before hiring someone to aggressively hose it down pentest to see if it still leaks.
• However, in ongoing security programs, these processes complement each other continuously, you scan regularly and pen test periodically in a repeating cycle.

How often should we do vulnerability assessments vs penetration tests?

• Vulnerability assessments should be done frequently at least quarterly, and many organizations do them monthly or even weekly on critical systems.
• Automated scanning makes it feasible to run them often, ensuring new vulnerabilities are caught promptly.
• Penetration tests are typically done annually as a best practice, or more often if risk warrants for example, twice a year, or whenever major systems change.
• High security environments might have rolling pen tests targeting different areas throughout the year. In short: scan all the time, pen test occasionally.
• Additionally, after significant security incidents or major changes, ad hoc pentests are recommended to validate security.

Can a vulnerability assessment replace a penetration test or vice versa?

• No, they serve different purposes, and one cannot fully replace the other.
• A vulnerability assessment might find dozens of potential issues but can’t tell you which ones actually lead to a breach, a penetration test can reveal how a breach happens but won’t find every minor flaw in your network.
• They are complementary. Relying only on vulnerability scanning could give a false sense of security you might think everything critical is patched, yet a logic flaw goes unnoticed and exploitable.
• Conversely, doing only a yearly pentest but no regular scanning means you leave many known holes open for months.
• For robust security, you need the broad coverage of assessments and the realistic attack insight from pentests.
• Most standards and experts recommend using both in tandem.

What tools are used for vulnerability assessments vs penetration tests?

• Vulnerability assessments use automated scanners like Nessus, Qualys, OpenVAS, or OWASP ZAP for web apps to find known vulnerabilities.
• These tools systematically scan systems and output lists of issues e.g., missing patches, misconfigurations.
• Penetration testers, on the other hand, use a variety of hacking tools and manual techniques, for example, Nmap for network mapping, Metasploit for exploiting known vulnerabilities, Burp Suite for attacking web applications, Wireshark for sniffing traffic, and custom scripts for specialized tasks.
• They might also use password cracking tools Hashcat/John if they obtain password hashes, and even social engineering toolkits for phishing.
• In short, assessment tools are about automated discovery, while pentest tools are about manual exploitation and deeper analysis.

How much does a penetration test cost, compared to a vulnerability assessment?

• Vulnerability assessments are relatively inexpensive, often just the cost of scanner licenses or a service fee and can even be done with free tools internally.
• A small business might spend a few hundred to a few thousand dollars on scanning software or managed scan services annually.
• Penetration tests are more costly because of the human expertise involved.
• On average in 2025, a professional penetration test can cost anywhere from around $5,000 up to $50,000 for a typical engagement, depending on scope and complexity, with large enterprise tests exceeding $100K in some cases.
• The wide range comes from factors like the number of targets, difficulty, and the reputation of the testing firm.
• Essentially, scanning might be covered under your IT budget as a recurring tool cost, whereas a pen test is a project you budget for separately.
• Despite the cost, pen tests provide value by potentially saving you from much larger breach costs consider that the average data breach costs millions of dollars, so spending tens of thousands on a thorough pentest is usually a smart investment in comparison.