A four-step cycle, ongoing
Discover and scan: enumerate assets and probe against known vulnerability databases. Prioritize: rank by severity, exploitability, and the business carried by the asset. Report: turn findings into an executable remediation plan with named owners. Remediate and verify: patch or mitigate, then re-scan to confirm closure.
Two things most assessments miss
First: things not in the inventory cannot be assessed. Scanners depend on the asset list — when the list is wrong, the most dangerous devices are precisely the ones not scanned. Second: the firmware layer. BMC firmware, BIOS/UEFI, and controller firmware carry serious CVEs, and standard network scanners barely see them. Key advantages: an automatically-collected complete asset inventory, firmware versions across the fleet, automatic flagging of baseline drift, and visibility into BMC/management-plane exposure.
FAQ
Vulnerability assessment is a systematic review of security weaknesses in the environment. Vulnerability assessment vs penetration testing: vulnerability assessment broadly finds and lists weaknesses; penetration testing goes deeper on fewer targets. How often to run one: continuously if possible, at least quarterly, plus on every major change.