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Cybercriminals are always on the prowl for potential vulnerabilities in applications. To combat this, organizations need to periodically scan their assets for potential vulnerabilities before a hacker tries to exploit them. This is done with the help of Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing Tools (VAPT).
In this blog, we’ll discuss all the VAPT tools, what does they do, and things to check before buying them. And at the end, we’ll mention the top 11 VAPT software you can use to conduct a vulnerability assessment and penetration testing for your IT hardware, software, networks, and applications.
11 Best VAPT Tools of 2023
Features To Look For In VAPT Tools
Commercial VAPT tools are becoming increasingly popular among businesses looking to protect their sensitive data. With so many vendors offering solutions, it can be difficult to determine which one is the best fit for your business. So, before you go ahead and buy a commercial VAPT tool/solution, make sure you check the following five things:
1. Easy to use
Simply put, the VAPT tool should be easy to use. If it isn’t, it’s not going to work efficiently for you and your dev teams. This means that it should be easy to install, easy to navigate, and other easy-to-use features it offers the business.
The VAPT tool should be able to be used by anyone in the company, including those who are not very familiar with computers or do not have much knowledge about them. The VAPT tool should be user-friendly and easy to navigate. It should be easy for the user to figure out what they need to do and accomplish it.
2. Updated with the latest vulnerabilities
The VAPT tool should have the updated vulnerabilities database or tests so that the VAPT tool doesn’t miss any serious security risk or any zero-day vulnerability.
The tool should be designed so that it can easily detect most of the security risks on the given target or scope.
3. On-time support
People buy VAPT tools because they want them to do the job they are intended to do. After that, whenever they face issues, they want the vendor to help them do that job. If they don’t get that help, they may stop using the services.
Without good support, the experience of using the product is reduced. One really can’t offer great service without great support. The quality of your VAPT tool or services is no better than your support systems.
4. Perfect VAPT report
The ideal commercial vulnerability assessment and penetration testing tool must be able to provide a comprehensive penetration testing report.
A good VAPT report contains all the findings of the penetration testing exercise, including the observations, proof of concept, proof of vulnerability, recommendations, remediation checklist, etc.
5. ROI vs. Cost of Tool
Today’s security-conscious companies use VAPT tools to understand the risks associated with the different vulnerabilities in their system. However, most companies avoid using VAPT tools because of the cost factors, but they underestimate the fact that it will help them secure their systems from hackers.
The cost of implementing a VAPT tool or solution can be quite high in some cases, but the return on investment is way much higher than that. A perfect VAPT tool or solution will help you find security risks and help you achieve compliance, generate powerful reports, etc.
Also Read: VAPT Pricing – How Much Does a Website VAPT Cost?
Top 7 VAPT tools at a Glance
| VAPT Tool | Key Features |
|---|---|
| Astra's Pentest | 8000+ tests, accurate prediction of potential damage, continuous testing, scan behind logged-in pages |
| OWASP Zap | Active and Passive scanning, works as a proxy tool |
| Nmap | Advanced GUI, easy network scanning, flexible data transfer and debugging tool |
| Metasploit | User friendly GUI, supports wide range of protocols and encodings |
| Burp Suite | 1000+ plugins for vulnerability detection |
| Wireshark | Supports TCP and UDP protocols, extensive community support |
| Nikto | Vulnerability detection, easy to use |
| Intruder | Vulnerability Scanner, Powerful testing engine designed |
| Nessus | Vulnerability Assessment, Tests for more than 65K vulnerabilities |
| Acunetix | Vulnerability Scanner, Deployable on-premise or in the cloud |
| W3af | Web Application Pentest Tool Python based tool with a great graphical interface |
11 Best VAPT Tools
1. Astra Security
Features
- Platform: Online
- Scanner Capacity: Unlimited continuous scans
- Manual pentest: Available for web app, mobile app, APIs, and cloud infrastructures
- Accuracy: Zero false positives
- Vulnerability management: Comes with dynamic vulnerability management dashboard
- Compliance: Helps you stay compliant with PCI-DSS, HIPAA, ISO27001, and SOC2
- Price: Starting at $199/month or $ 1,999/ year
Astra’s Pentest is a VAPT tool based on Astra’s extensive experience in the application security field. It is a great tool for any application to help you keep your data secure to focus on your users and your business.
Astra’s VAPT scan analyzes the entire application and its underlying infrastructure, including all network devices, management systems, and other components. It’s a deep analysis that helps you find security weaknesses, so you can fix them before a hacker does.
Astra Vulnerability Scanner
The pentest software can also run 8000+ tests covering OWASP top 10 and SANS 25 vulnerabilities. The scan results are vetted by experts to ensure zero false positives.
Thanks to Astra’s login recorder plugin, the scanner can run authenticated scans behind login pages without requiring you to reauthenticate it.
The vulnerability management dashboard allows you to stay on top of the vulnerabilities throughout the scanning and remediation process.
Regular Pentests
The in-depth hacker-style penetration testing by experts reveals business logic errors and other critical vulnerabilities like payment gateway hacks.
Astra Pentest Platform can be used for web app pentest, mobile app pentest, API pentest, and cloud-configuration reviews.
Pentest Reports
The pentest reports by Astra feature video PoCs and step-by-step remediation guidelines to help you take immediate action. The best part is, that your developers can engage in contextual collaboration with Astra’s security engineers to resolve difficult issues.
Pentest Certificate
Once the vulnerabilities detected by Astra Pentest are remediated and the same is confirmed by Astra’s security experts, you get a publicly verifiable pentest certificate that stays valid for 6 months or your next major code update, whichever is earlier.
Over the past year, Astra has added names like ICICI, UN, and Dream 11, to their already impressive roster of clients which included Ford, Gillette, and GoDaddy, among others.
Pros
- Connects with your CI/CD pipeline
- Offers continuous scanning with regularly updated scanner rules
- Ensures zero false positives
- Helps with rapid prioritization and remediation of vulnerabilities
Cons
- Could have had more integration options
2. OWASP ZAP
Features:
- Platform: Windows, Linux, MacOS
- Scanner Capacity: Web application security testing, network ports, and API testing
- Manual pentest: Yes (Used by experts to carry it out)
- Accuracy: False positives possible
- Vulnerability management: No
- Price: Open-source
ZAP is one of the best versatile free VAPT tools available, and is used by developers and security professionals to test the security of web applications. It automates the process of detecting and exploiting security vulnerabilities in web applications.
The ZAP project started in mid-2012 as a fork of the popular OWASP JBroFuzz project and has become a mature, fast, and feature-rich open-source tool. ZAP is a mature tool with a very active development community, and it is used by a large number of companies and individuals.
It works by starting a web server and then interacting with the application through a proxy. This allows it to automatically and dynamically discover and scan hidden parameters and cookies, and other content that is not otherwise visible. The resulting data is then displayed in a clear and concise format so that you can see what you should be protecting. ZAP works on any platform and any technology.
Pros
- Easy-to-navigate user interface
- Maintained by OWASP and is freely available.
- Easy to learn.
- Eligible for beginner and security experts alike.
Cons
- Hard to set up the tool.
- Not convenient compared to other tools.
- Some features require extra plugins.
3. Nmap
Features
- Platform: Linux, Windows, MacOS
- Scanner Capacity: Usually scans the 1000 most popular ports of each network protocol
- Manual pentest: NMap is actively used for network mapping and port scanning. These are parts of the manual pentest effort.
- Accuracy: Occasionally shows false positives and faulty insights
- Vulnerability management: No
- Compliance: Indirectly relates to compliance reporting
- Price: Free
Nmap (Network Mapper) is a free and open-source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Well known among most network VAPT tools, many systems and network administrators also find it useful for network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime.
Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to scan large networks but works fine against single hosts rapidly.
Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and official binary packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. It offers a flexible data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool (Ncat), a utility for comparing scan results (Ndiff), and a packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping).
Pros
- NMAP is a powerful tool
- Nmap suite includes an advanced GUI and results viewer (Zenmap)
- Capability of mapping a very large network with thousands of ports connected to it.
Cons
- Need extensive knowledge to use.
- Used by malicious hackers as well as security experts.
4. Metasploit
Features
- Platform: Unix (including Linux and MacOS), Windows
- Scanner Capacity: N/A
- Manual pentest: Metasploit contains an assortment of tools that can be used for pentesting
- Accuracy: N/A
- Vulnerability management: No
- Compliance: Indirectly relates to compliance reporting
- Price: Free
The Metasploit Project is a computer security project that provides information about security vulnerabilities and aids in penetration testing and IDS signature development. It is open-source, free, and available to the public.
HD Moore created the Metasploit Project to provide the security community with a public resource for information on security vulnerabilities. The project provides information about security vulnerabilities used by penetration testers during security audits and network administrators to ensure the correct configuration of the network’s devices.
Supports all major protocols such as DNS, FTP, HTTP, ICMP, IMAP, IRC, TCP, UDP. Supports a variety of encodings, including Unicode, ASCII, binary, hex, and several others.
Pros
- Free to use and Open Source
- User-friendly GUI environment
- It is a powerful framework.
- An assortment of penetration testing capabilities.
Cons
- Has a steep learning curve
- Used by hackers
5. Burp Suite
Features:
- Platform: Windows, macOS
- Scanner Capacity: Web applications
- Manual pentest: Yes
- Accuracy: False positives possible
- Vulnerability management: No
- Compliance: PCI-DSS, OWASP Top 10, HIPAA, GDPR
- Price: $449/per user/per year
Burp Suite is an integrated platform for performing security testing of web applications. The software comprises multiple tools which are used to test applications for security vulnerabilities.
The vulnerability assessment and penetration testing software include an intercepting proxy, spider, repeater, sequencer, decoder, scanner, and comparer. Burp Suite bundles these tools together in a single package that offers a complete web security testing solution.
Numerous extensibility points allow you to tailor Burp to specific needs. Over 1000 plugins that enable you to find and exploit specific vulnerabilities
Pros
- Has both open-source and commercial editions.
- User-friendly interface.
- Best internal penetration testing tools.
Cons
- Requires better integrations.
- The commercial product is pricey.
- The free version has lesser features.
6. Wireshark
Features
- Platform: Unix, Windows. Needs libraries like Qt, GLib, & libpcap to run
- Scanner Capacity: Captures live packet data from a network interface
- Manual pentest: Useful tool for pentesting
- Accuracy: Fairly accurate
- Vulnerability management: No
- Compliance: Indirectly relates to compliance reporting
- Price: Free
Wireshark is a network traffic analyzer, monitoring software that allows you to see what traffic flows through your system network. It is open-source and is the most popular network analyzer in the world. Network administrators and professionals mainly use it to troubleshoot network and system performance issues and monitor and filter different network protocols.
WireShark is one of the best network VAPT tools allows you to capture and analyze network traffic, inspect protocols and troubleshoot network performance issues. Other features provided include decryption of protocols, capturing of live data from ethernet, LAN, USB and more. It can also export output to XML, PostScript, CSV, or plain text.
Pros
- Capture live data packet from network interfaces and analyzes it in real-time
- Available for free
- Supports both protocols, TCP and UDP
- Detailed packet information
- Extensive community support
Cons
- It does not run from outside a network
- Cannot perform packet injection
7. Nikto
Features:
- Platform: Linux
- Scanner Capacity: Web applications, servers
- Manual pentest: No
- Accuracy: False positives possible
- Vulnerability management: No
- Compliance: No
- Price: Open-source
Nikto is a free command-line vulnerability scanner that scans web servers for dangerous files/CGIs, outdated server software, and other problems.
Nikto is a web server scanner that performs comprehensive tests against web servers for multiple items, including over 3300 potentially dangerous files/CGIs, checks for outdated server versions, and version-specific problems on over 270 server-side applications.
Nikto also checks for server configuration items such as multiple index files, and HTTP server options and will attempt to identify installed web servers and software.
Pros
- It is freely available to the public for use.
- Available in Kali Linux.
- Scans for most dangerous files on a webserver
Cons
- Does not have a community platform.
- Does not have a GUI.
8. Intruder
Features:
- Platform: Windows, Linux, macOS
- Scanner Capacity: Websites, servers, and cloud
- Manual pentest: No
- Accuracy: False Positive Present
- Vulnerability management: No
- Compliance: SOC2, and ISO 27001
- Price: $163/month
Intruder is an automated pentest tool that is well known among other VAPT testing tools for its efficiency in finding the loopholes and vulnerabilities that lie within web applications.
It is a great tool to find misconfigurations, encryption errors, SQL injections, and CSS, along with a wide range of CVEs.
It offers continuous vulnerability management, compliance reporting, and monitoring as well as attack surface monitoring.
Intruder is one of the scalable penetration testing applications that’s flexible enough to scan websites for vulnerabilities, no matter the size or the industry your company belongs to.
Pros
- Easy to navigate.
- Readily manageable alerts.
- Automated pentesting platform
Cons
- No zero false positive assurance.
- Only has automated penetration testing service and not manual.
- Difficult to understand reports.
9. Nessus
Features:
- Platform: Windows, macOS
- Scanner Capacity: Web applications
- Manual pentest: No
- Accuracy: False positives possible
- Vulnerability management: Yes (Additional Cost)
- Compliance: HIPAA, ISO, NIST, PCI-DSS
- Price: $5,880.20/ year
Nessus is good VAPT software aims to simplify vulnerability assessments and make remediation more efficient.
Tenable Nessus helps you extend your security assessment from traditional IT assets to cloud infrastructures. It keeps the zero false positives low while also covering a wide range of vulnerabilities.
Out of all the best automated penetration testing tools Nessus can test your systems for 65k vulnerabilities and allows efficient vulnerability assessment.
Pros
- Has a free version.
- Accurate identification of vulnerabilities.
- Good automated penetration testing tool.
Cons
- The free version does not have a lot of features.
- The commercialized version can be expensive.
10. Acunetix
Features:
- Platform: Windows, macOS
- Scanner Capacity: Web applications
- Manual pentest: No
- Accuracy: False positives possible
- Vulnerability management: Yes
- Compliance: OWASP, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, NIST
- Price: Quote on Request
Acunetix is a vulnerability scanner that was designed for efficiency promising 90% scan results by the time the scan is halfway completed. It also allows the scanning of multiple environments as well as the prioritization of vulnerabilities.
Its key features include the ability to pinpoint vulnerability locations, and optimization for script-heavy sites among others. Acunetix is a good choice among the best pentest tools for windows.
One of the best parts of its service offerings is that it shows you the exact lines of code that need to be fixed in order to get rid of a vulnerability.
Other key features include minimal false positives ensured and deployable on-premise or in the cloud.
Pros
- Time release of updates
- Can find a wide array of vulnerabilities.
- Agile testing with detailed reports
Cons
- Does not provide expert remediation assistance with professionals.
- Does not ensure zero false positives.
- Pricing is not mentioned.
- Dated user interface with scope for improvement.
11. W3af
Features:
- Platform: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
- Scanner Capacity: Web applications
- Manual pentest: No
- Accuracy: False positives possibles
- Vulnerability management: No
- Compliance: No
- Price: Open-source
W3AF is one of the best open-source VAPT tools and is a Web Application Attack and Audit Framework that is ideal for web application pentesting and auditing. The framework is extensible with modules designed to be easy to configure and extend.
The framework can either be used in a manual or automated way by using the API in the Python language. The tool can identifies nearly 200 different web app flaws.
Key features include ease of expansion, Cookie handling and Proxy support. It helps enhance any pentesting platform with its given guidelines.
Pros
- Easy-to-use for beginners
- Available freely.
- Can also scan session-protected pages
- Comes with a graphical interface
Cons
- False positives are a possibility.
- GUI can be difficult to navigate.
Best VAPT Software Comparison Table
What are VAPT Tools?
A VAPT tool (vulnerability assessment and penetration tool) is an automated tool that is used to scan for vulnerabilities by performing a vulnerability assessment and then leveraging those vulnerabilities to gain access to a network.
VAPT tools can help you save time on your pentest by combining the two processes into one and save you money by buying a one-off tool rather than a separate vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. VAPT tools are designed to be used by security professionals to demonstrate the security posture of an organization.
Automated VAPT tools are designed to automate the process of conducting a VA and PT. Manual VAPT tools help security professionals quickly perform vulnerability assessments and penetration tests within their organizations.
Understanding VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing)
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT), or VAPT for short, is a security testing method used by organizations to test their applications, software, or IT networks. It’s a method that combines the two main approaches to security testing:
VAPT uses vulnerability assessment to identify potential vulnerabilities in an IT infrastructure and penetration testing to exploit those vulnerabilities. It’s a risk-focused approach that looks for a weakness in a system and tries to exploit it.
This, in turn, helps discover and mitigate vulnerabilities in a system before a cyber-attack occurs. VAPT is a very effective method of testing used by organizations that want to assess their security and the effectiveness of their existing security measures.
A VAPT shows how vulnerable a business is to hacking attempts, and it allows a business to prioritize the order in which it fixes the vulnerabilities. It is a very useful method for a business to ensure that its systems are as secure as possible.
What is a Vulnerability Assessment?
A vulnerability assessment (or vulnerability scan) is an information security process used to identify weaknesses or vulnerabilities in a computer system or network.
A vulnerability assessment can be performed as a standalone activity or as a step in a more comprehensive risk management program. Vulnerability assessment is commonly used to gauge the security of a network, system, or organization.
The vulnerability assessment process includes scanning and enumeration of the target and is followed by determining the risk level of the vulnerabilities. This information is then reported to the client, who can decide to remediate or accept the risk.
The purpose of a vulnerability assessment is to provide a security professional with a prioritized list of security issues that require immediate correction.
What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing or pen testing is an authorized simulated attack on a computer system to evaluate the system’s security. Penetration testing is an important security assessment technique for validating the security posture of an organization.
Penetration tests are normally carried out by security professionals called penetration testers who are certified and experienced in the art of discovering security vulnerabilities.
Penetration testing will typically try to find security holes in the following areas: Access controls, Firewalls, Intrusion detection systems, Patch management, Web application security, and Cloud security.
Also Read: 7 Best API Penetration Testing Tools And Everything Related
Why is performing VAPT important?
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) is a must regardless of any type of industry your organization belongs to. This is because the number of cyberattacks against organizations of all sizes across all industries is rising.
The attackers that cause these cyberattacks can target virtually any device, application, or network that supports online activities. These include workstations, servers, databases, Wi-Fi networks, mobile devices, etc.
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) is an important exercise conducted to check the security posture of the organization and its information assets.
A VAPT allows a company to discover vulnerabilities within the company’s network and deliver a full report on those vulnerabilities that will allow companies to prioritize what needs to be fixed immediately and those that can be fixed later.
VAPT also confirms whether or not a company’s current security protocols are providing adequate protection. If a company is not performing VAPT, then the company is not aware of all the potential problems and holes in the company’s software/network and cannot fix them.
Organizations are required to follow compliance standards to secure their systems and data. VAPT helps in discovering vulnerabilities and helps in achieving compliance standards such as PCI-DSS, NIST, HIPAA, SOX, and FISMA.
It is one of the most important exercises anyone can conduct, ranging from a skilled ethical hacker to security professional. The only thing that is needed for this procedure to conduct effectively is a strong and reliable set of VAPT tools.
Also Read: Top 6 Web Pentest Tools
Conclusion
A Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) tool is a special scanner that automatically detects and helps fix security vulnerabilities that hackers and malicious programs can take advantage of. VAPT tools are different from other types of security scanners in that they also show you how and where a hacker could break into your system and steal your data. With Astra’s pocket-friendly VAPT solution, you don’t need to worry about anything. Astra’s VAPT solution is one go-to place for all your security needs.
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Kanishk Tagade
