Vulnerability Assessment

Identify Network Vulnerabilities Before They Can Be Exploited

Dell SecureWorks’ Network Vulnerability Assessment service is designed to identify critical flaws in your network that an attacker could exploit. Our testing methodology is an iterative, multi-phase process by which we assess the security of your network and systems. We use a combination of commercial and publically available tools, as well as custom scripts and applications we have developed. Our testing may include firewalls, routers or other network infrastructure devices, intrusion detection and prevention systems, web servers, email systems, virtual private networking (VPN) systems, etc.

We use a combination of automated and manual testing. Automated tools can greatly assist in reducing work effort and costs associated with repetitive and time consuming tasks. Manual techniques and analysis also are performed in each step to achieve the greatest understanding of your environment. Manual validation of findings reduces false positives; manual vulnerability testing reduces false negatives. False positives on a report lead to wasted effort in remediation. False negatives can expose an organization to risk of intrusion.

A Network Vulnerability Assessment helps you:

Obtain a true understanding of your security posture and how to improve it

The Dell Network Vulnerability Assessment Service is designed to identify critical vulnerabilities that exist in your network.

However, our consultants do much more than just assess your network. We rank findings based on what is important to your organization, what we know about identified vulnerabilities and what trends we see in the marketplace. We provide you actionable guidance through executive and detailed reporting, to address known issues and improve the overall security of your network.

See your organization as it would be seen by a cybercriminal

The challenge for any IT organization is to assess and prioritize vulnerabilities as they would be by an intent outsider practiced in hacking tools and techniques. This requires a different perspective, tools and expertise than what traditional IT resources have on the team.     

We work to view your organization and network through the lens of a hacker. During the Network Vulnerability Assessment, we work diligently to learn about your organization and your network. Our consultants collect information from a number of sources including publically available databases, perform limited scanning of your Internet address ranges, and perform other automated and manual processes using various tools and techniques.

Our consultants attempt to understand as much about your internal network as we connect through passive and active reconnaissance techniques. This involves actively trying to identify services running, applications used, version numbers, service banners, etc. Through this reconnaissance, we are able to tell a great deal about your environment and organization.

Results from these activities vary across organizations, but our ultimate goal is to identify areas a hacker would find particularly appealing to exploit.

Avoid False Positives

Automated scanning tools often report false positives – vulnerabilities that are not actually present. Addressing false positives is a tedious process that takes valuable resources away from your more important initiatives.

During the Manual Verification and Testing portion of the Vulnerability Assessment, we take steps to ensure vulnerabilities discovered through automated scanning are accurate. Automated tools can sometimes generate false positive findings. This step ensures that the vulnerabilities reported to you are accurate. Without this often overlooked step, you will waste time attempting to remediate false positives that all scanning tools can produce.

Identify False Negatives

IT professionals often cite their frustrations with false positives that take away time from other projects. However, false negatives present the opposite challenge and arguably, pose a greater risk - that a breach is classified as normal. Often, IT simply doesn't have the visibility into the types of threats and practices in the marketplace on a daily basis and hasn't developed the depth of experience needed to identify issues when automated scanning fails..

Automated scanning tools also occasionally fail to report true vulnerabilities. During the Manual Verification and Testing portion of the assessment, we perform other manual testing which does not rely on automated scanning. A testing methodology that solely relies on automated scan results can provide a false sense of security. Our consultants work with these tools on a daily basis, and know their limitations and how to supplement their results. 

Dell SecureWorks’ broad visibility into actual attacks that are occurring allows us to test your environment with a much deeper knowledge of real-world attacks than someone without this capacity.

Learn which risks that should matter most to your organization

Understanding what risks matter most to an organization can be a difficult proposition as IT simply may not have all the information it needs and a proven framework by which to judge risk.  

Dell SecureWorks uses a proprietary risk ranking methodology that is easy to understand. This methodology presents risks as Critical, High, Medium, Low and Informational priority, based on many factors, including ease of exploitation, business criticality of the host and prevalence of the threat. Our consultants know and use several risk and vulnerability ranking methodologies, including CVSS v2, DREAD, FAIR, OCTAVE and others. If you would like us to use one of these models or your preferred model, we can usually accommodate that request.

Other Resources

Based on your interest in a Vulnerability Assessment, you may also be interested in:

• Penetration Testing
• Vulnerability Management service