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Re: Vulnerability Scanning Doesn't Work


From: ArcSighter Elite <arcsighter () gmail com>
Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:22:07 -0500

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Abe Getchell wrote:
Hey Adriel,

The title and opening paragraph of your blog post are quite misleading and
rather reckless. There is definitely a false sense of security that is sold
to some organizations by the developers of vulnerability scanning tools, but
that is the fault of the purchasing organization (due to a lack of education
and unqualified individuals making decisions), not those companies pushing
their product. It's a consumer problem, not a technology or process problem,
which you seem to describe it as in the bulk of your blog post.
Vulnerability scanning tools can have a wonderfully awesome impact on your
security posture if they're used in a manner in which they function
adequately; as a compliance tool. While I understand the sales aspect of
your blog post, what your customers (and any other organization
investigating this type of technology) should understand is that they should
not be "using a team of talented hackers for security testing instead of
relying on automated vulnerability scanners", but rather "using a team of
talented hackers AND vulnerability scanners for security testing and
compliance".

See ya,
Abe

I agree.
IMHO, a pen-testers team is a must-use for any penetration testing
scenario; they should be experienced people and the matter if they use
vuln scanners or not, is of their choice.

Vuln scanners are useful, but as I said, as with most tools, the human
knowledge is the real factor. When you combine both they you get pen-test.

Honestly.
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