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With so many different vulnerability scanning software available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want to proactively discover and address security gaps before they can be exploited but need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different vulnerability scanning tools with a variety of teams and projects, with my picks of the best vulnerability scanning software.

What Is Vulnerability Scanning Software?

Vulnerability scanning software is a tool used in cybersecurity to detect security weaknesses and vulnerabilities in computer systems, networks, and applications. It systematically scans these systems to identify potential vulnerabilities like outdated software, missing patches, and configuration flaws, providing a security assessment of the scanned environment.

The benefits and uses of vulnerability scanning software include enhancing an organization's cybersecurity by proactively identifying vulnerabilities that could be exploited by cyber attackers. It helps in prioritizing security risks and guides the remediation process to fix detected vulnerabilities. This software is essential for maintaining compliance with various security standards and regulations, ensuring the organization's digital infrastructure is safeguarded against potential threats. By regularly scanning systems, it supports a robust security posture and builds trust with customers and stakeholders.

Overviews Of The 10 Best Vulnerability Scanning Software Solutions 

Here’s a brief description of each vulnerability scanning system to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.

Best for proactive vulnerability management

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $196/month/application
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Rating: 4.8/5

Intruder is a cloud-based vulnerability scanner that aims to help businesses of all sizes discover security weaknesses in their online systems. The tool provides continuous monitoring of the network to identify vulnerabilities and reduce the attack surface.

Intruder provides a proactive security monitoring service, which includes regular scans to detect new threats as they emerge. Its network vulnerability scanning checks for over 10,000 vulnerabilities automatically. The tool then prioritizes the results to help focus on the issues that matter most and provide clear information on how to fix them.

Integrations are natively available with Slack, MS Teams, Jira, Github, and Gitlab. Other integrations can be accessed through Zapier and API.

Intruder costs from $196/month/application. A 14-day free trial is also available.

Best for continuous vulnerability scanning & pentesting for 9300+ test cases

  • Free demo available
  • From $199/month
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Rating: 4.9/5

Astra Pentest is a comprehensive, developer-friendly pentest software that combines continuous vulnerability scanning with manual pentests by security professionals to promote deep testing coverage and zero false positives. The software covers scanning and pentesting for web applications, cloud security, mobile apps, APIs, network security, and blockchain.

The platform can run 9300+ test cases and ensure compliance with standards like GDPR, SOC, HIPAA, ISO, SANS, and OWASP. The vulnerability scanner can also scan logged-in pages, single-page apps, and progressive web apps. Additionally, Astra Pentest offers robust reporting features with the ability to track progress and manage teams.

The platform also has a collaborative dashboard to allow team members to communicate with security experts in real time. Furthermore, the AI-powered chatbot can offer detailed recommendations for fixing vulnerabilities. The software even has a publicly verifiable security certificate to demonstrate a commitment to security. Integrations include Jira, Slack, GitLab, and GitHub. and more.

Information security solution that provides deep visibility into global assets

  • 30 Days Free Trials
  • From $542/month
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Rating: 4.4/5

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.

Provides comprehensive threat detection with blended DAST + IAST approach

  • Free demo available
  • Pricing available upon request
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Rating: 4.2/5

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.

Leading provider of governance, risk, and managed security solutions

  • Offers a demo
  • $1500/per year

beSERCURE is a vulnerability scanning tool that is designed for continent spanning networks with thousands of IPs. The tool is accurate and low maintenance, allowing the user to achieve a result through minimal effort. beSECURE is also easy to use, and boasts a clean and organized user interface, which makes it a good beginner’s tool. beSECURE provides in-depth security scanning features such as an instant alert system, which allows you to assess real-time threats on a real-time basis, limiting your cyber security’s downtime. The tool provides you comprehensive test stages so you are able to ensure maximum test coverage, which helps prevent your applications from future cyber attacks and vulnerabilities. beSECURE provides integrations with platforms such as vSphere, Jira, Slack and Zendesk. The cost of beSECURE starts at $1500/per year. The tool also offers a demo.

Offers external threat intelligence solution with clear and dark web monitoring

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.

Vulnerability scanner that tracks average remediation time

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $157/month/1 application

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.

Free Windows security scanner with built-in remediation guidance

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.

Enterprise-grade cybersecurity solution that guards against complex DDoS attacks

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.

Web app and API vulnerability scanner that’s easily accessible to developers

  • Free Plan For Basic Scans
  • $49/Month

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.

The Best Vulnerability Scanning Software Solutions Summary

Tools Price
Intruder From $196/month/application
Astra Pentest From $199/month
Qualys From $542/month
Acunetix Pricing available upon request
beSECURE $1500/per year
Rapid7 No price details
Intruder From $157/month/1 application
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer No price details
Imperva No price details
Probely $49/Month
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Other Options

Here are a few more vulnerability scanning tools that didn’t make the top list.

  1. Tenable

    Automates threat prioritization based on in-depth threat analysis

  2. Cyberpion

    EASM solution with multi-layer vulnerability assessment engine

  3. Invicti

    Automated web application scanner with highly accurate vulnerability location

  4. Burp Suite

    Vulnerability scanning tool great for crawling JavaScript-heavy applications

  5. ESET PROTECT Complete

    Best for identifying potential security weaknesses across an organization's network

  6. New Relic

    Best vulnerability scanning software to lower the rate of false positives

  7. Frontline Vulnerability Manager

    SaaS vulnerability management solution for network systems and software

  8. NMap

    Open source utility for asset discovery and security auditing

  9. GFI Languard

    Network security software with patch management tool

Comparison Criteria

The criteria below will help you decide which vulnerability scanning software tool is best for your business. 

  1. User Interface (UI): A simple, user-friendly interface helps security analysts configure a vulnerability scan quickly and accurately. 
  2. Usability: Good usability makes vulnerability scanning tools accessible to security experts and developers. Increased access enables software teams to implement security testing earlier in the development lifecycle. 
  3. Integrations: The best vulnerability scanners offer a variety of plug-ins and integrations that easily connect with your existing SIEM and CI/CD tools. 
  4. Value for $: The cost of your scanning tool should match the value it brings to your security efforts. 

Vulnerability Scanning Tools: Key Features

These key features ensure your vulnerability scanning tool provides the best protection against threats. 

  1. Asset Discovery: To protect your IT environment, you must know which assets are connected to the network. The top scanning tools can detect known and unknown assets that pose a high risk to your organization. 
  2. Threat Intelligence: There are countless cyber threats across the clear, deep, and dark web. Select a scanning tool that provides the latest threat research you need to mitigate attacks. 
  3. Automation: You can send secure products to market faster with scanning tools that automate your security team’s pre- and post-scan operations. 
  4. Threat Prioritization: Your scanning software should help you triage threats, enabling you to quickly contain security issues that pose the highest risk to your business. 

What do you think about this list?

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By Paulo Gardini Miguel

Paulo brings +12 years of experience in software development and team building, creating products for the Media and Advertising industries. With a track record of building high-performance lean teams, he specializes in handling large volumes of data and empowering his team to own their projects and products. When he’s not working, he’s a frustrated musician with a passion for football and technology.