10 Best Vulnerability Scanning Software QAs Are Using In 2023

Acunetix is a penetration testing tool that is easy to use, and provides an array of features accessible to any level of a development team. Acunetix provides a quick analysis that can identify high risk vulnerabilities, as well as the ability to send different types of reports to various levels from board member to developer, tailored especially for the recipient. Acunetix provides the ability for continuous scanning, allowing you to schedule regular scans of targets which checks for vulnerabilities in your infrastructure repeatedly. This allows you to have continuous security awareness of your organization's vulnerability level. The feature also allows you to pause the scan at any time. Acunetix integrates with issue trackers such as Jira, Bugzilla and Mantis. Acunetix offers customized pricing upon request.

Qualys analyzes misconfigurations and threats across your global tech environment with six sigma accuracy. The system provides real-time alerts on zero-day vulnerabilities, compromised assets, and network irregularities. You can quarantine compromised assets with a single click, buying you more time to investigate and contain an attack.

To protect your IT environment, you need to know which assets are connected to your network. Qualys’ free Global AssetView application helps security teams accomplish this by automatically identifying all known and unknown assets on a network. You can quickly grab detailed information about each asset, including installed software, running services, and vendor lifecycle information. The application also helps with asset organization, enabling teams to categorize assets into product families with custom tagging.

Qualys supports native integrations with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

Pricing is based on several factors, including the number of user licenses, Qualys Cloud Platform Apps, internal web applications, and IP addresses your team will be utilizing.

Tenable’s Cyber Exposure Platform helps businesses protect every corner of their web environment, including applications, data, and cloud infrastructure. Tenable is known for developing Nessus, a fully portable vulnerability scanner. Nessus offers comprehensive remote and local scanning capabilities while maintaining low operating costs.

IT teams can scan a broad range of network devices, including firewalls, routers, switches, printers, and storage to identify security vulnerabilities. Nessus also covers cloud applications and instances, such as Salesforce and AWS. Your team can detect various threats, including viruses, malware, backdoors, and web services linking to malicious content.

Prioritizing vulnerabilities is simple with Tenable’s Top 10 Reporting, which assigns a Vulnerability Priority Rating (VPR) to the most critical threats detected during a scan. VPR calculations are based on several criteria, including the vulnerability’s age, the exploit code’s maturity, and how many of your products are affected.

Tenable integrates with Splunk, ARCON, CyberArk, and many other security operations platforms.

Pricing for Nessus Pro starts at $3,390 for a one-year license. Organizations can try Nessus Pro free for seven days.

Probely is a web application and API vulnerability scanner. Based on Headless Chrome, its powerful spider can easily crawl and index rich JavaScript applications and sophisticated single-page apps. The platform provides detailed reporting on the vulnerabilities found in your IT infrastructure along with precise remediation guidance.

Many scanning tools aren’t intended for developers, but that isn’t the case with Probely. The platform can automatically detect everything from common vulnerabilities to complex issues, meaning developers don’t need expert intervention to conduct security testing. This agility allows software teams to scale web application security and test apps earlier in the development process.

Probely integrates with CI/CD tools like Jira and Jenkins. You can automatically start scans within your pipeline and view vulnerabilities as issues in Jira. After a Jira issue is closed, Probely automatically re-tests the vulnerability and reopens the Jira issue, if necessary.

Probely offers a free plan for basic scans and paid subscriptions starting at $49/month.

Enterprises use Imperva’s cybersecurity solutions to protect their applications, data, and networks. The web application security suite is Imperva’s specialty, offering firewalls and advanced bot, client-side, and runtime protection. Imperva also uses machine learning to spot suspicious behavior, enabling security teams to stop and contain attacks early.

DDoS protection is one of Imperva’s top features. The system proxies all your incoming traffic to block layers 3, 4, and 7 DDoS attacks before they reach your servers. Whether your applications are in the cloud or on-premises, Imperva DDoS Protection is constantly monitoring your assets to ensure business continuity and minimal downtime in the event of an attack.

Imperva integrates with leading SIEM tools, including ArcSight and Splunk.

Multiple protection plans are offered for applications and data. Pricing is available upon request.

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is a free vulnerability scanner designed for small to medium-sized businesses. QA analysts can scan local and remote systems to identify common IIS and SQL administrative vulnerabilities, like weak passwords or too many admin accounts and missing security updates.

Users can scan multiple computers by domain or IP address range. After each scan, MBSA provides a detailed report on which systems were scanned, the vulnerabilities found, and step-by-step instructions on fixing each issue. QA analysts can quickly access security reports for each computer from MBSA’s GUI. Reports older than seven days will indicate a new scan should be performed, ensuring your team maintains a regular cadence of security monitoring.

MBSA is compatible with Windows Server 2008 R2, Server 2003, Server 2008, Vista, XP, and Windows 2000.

Intruder scans your IT environment to find a variety of vulnerabilities, including misconfigurations, missing security patches, and application bugs. The platform makes vulnerability management simple with threat prioritization and actionable remediation advice that IT and business stakeholders can understand.

IT teams can track how long it takes their organization to remediate vulnerabilities with Intruder’s Cyber Hygiene Score. Scores are determined by the time it takes to fix issues, which is benchmarked against targets set for critical, high, medium, and low-level vulnerabilities. You can quickly retrieve this information from your dashboard, which displays your performance over six months and the average time to fix each issue type.

Intruder users have access to multiple integrations, including AWS, Google Cloud, GitHub, and ServiceNow.

Pricing is based on the number of assets your organization needs to scan. A free 30-day trial is available for Intrudor Pro.

Rapid7 delivers cybersecurity and compliance solutions to help organizations manage vulnerabilities in their IT environment. Security analysts can automate threat monitoring across multiple platforms, including local, cloud, and virtual infrastructure. With Rapid7’s expertly vetted detections, your security team can maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio and mitigate critical threats early.

Rapid7 also protects against external threats with Threat Command. The external threat intelligence tool monitors thousands of sources across the clear and dark web to identify threats targeting your business. Threat Command delivers highly contextualized alerts, enabling teams to turn threat intelligence into action quickly.

Rapid7 users have access to a robust library of integrations with third-party tools, including Azure, Proofpoint, AWS, Teams, Cisco, Slack, and Jira.

Various plans are available for each of Rapid7’s products. Organizations can purchase each solution individually or together.

Invicti is a simple to use web application scanner built for enterprise security teams. Security analysts gravitate to Invicti because of its ability to automate nearly all pre-and post-scan tasks. Invicti also leads the industry in scan accuracy based on independent benchmark tests performed against other vulnerability scanning tools. The platform blends dynamic and interactive scanning, helping teams discover actual vulnerabilities and fewer false positives.

Producing secure code is how you prevent vulnerabilities. Invicti helps software teams accomplish this with its vulnerability location feature. Security analysts can see the exact lines of code that need fixing when Invicti’s IAST sensor is deployed. As a result, developers receive the information they need to fix software issues faster.

Invicti was designed to embed security into your entire software development lifecycle with more than 50 integrations. Development teams can connect Invicti to Jenkins, Jira, GitLab, and other leading CI/CD tools.

Pricing is available upon request.

Cyberpion is an external attack surface management (EASM) solution that helps organizations identify and manage previously unknown, high-risk assets. The platform’s intelligent vulnerability assessment engine provides deep insights into the connected assets posing the highest risk to your digital landscape. Threat mitigation is automated with Cyberpion’s Active Protection tool, which immediately neutralizes assets vulnerable to attack.

Cyberpion runs continuous, multi-layered vulnerability scans and assessments across your entire attack surface. The assessment engine conducts web, cloud, DNS, PKI, and TLS analyses, providing a comprehensive snapshot of your organization’s security posture. With this information, your team can take action against the connected assets that pose a risk to your IT environment.

Integrations are available with Splunk, Cortex XSOAR, ServiceNow, and Azure.

Pricing is available upon request.