What is vulnerability scanning?
Vulnerability scanning is the automated process of identifying security weaknesses across code, applications, infrastructure, and cloud environments. It helps organizations detect issues such as known vulnerabilities, missing patches, misconfigurations, and exposed components before attackers can exploit them.
Modern vulnerability scanning goes well beyond traditional network checks. In cloud-native environments, scanners need to analyze source code and open source dependencies alongside virtual machines, containers, images, APIs, and managed cloud services. This broader coverage reflects how applications are actually built and run today.
Vulnerability scanners work by comparing assets in your environment against vulnerability intelligence sources, such as CVE databases and vendor advisories. Depending on the scan type, they may inspect software packages, configuration settings, exposed services, and metadata to identify potential weaknesses.
Because environments change constantly, effective vulnerability scanning is continuous rather than periodic. New code is committed, workloads are deployed and torn down, and cloud configurations evolve throughout the day. Continuous scanning ensures findings stay current and reduces the risk of vulnerabilities going unnoticed between scheduled scans.
While vulnerability scanning plays a critical role in identifying weaknesses, its value depends on coverage, accuracy, and signal quality. Modern tools prioritize agentless deployment, broad visibility across code and cloud, and contextual enrichment to reduce noise and make findings easier to act on.
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Vulnerability scanning vs. penetration testing: What’s the difference?
Vulnerability scanning and penetration testing both play important roles in a security program, but they serve different purposes and operate at different depths.
Vulnerability scanning is an automated, continuous process designed to identify potential security weaknesses across code, applications, infrastructure, and cloud environments. It provides broad coverage and frequent visibility, helping teams detect known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposures as environments change.
Penetration testing, by contrast, is a manual and time-bound exercise. It simulates real-world attacks to determine whether specific vulnerabilities can be exploited and how far an attacker could go once inside. Pen tests typically focus on a limited scope and are conducted periodically due to the time, cost, and expertise required.
Rather than replacing one another, vulnerability scanning and penetration testing are complementary. Vulnerability scanning helps teams maintain ongoing awareness of weaknesses across rapidly changing environments, while penetration testing provides deeper validation and insight into how attackers might chain issues together in realistic attack scenarios.
In modern cloud-native environments, continuous vulnerability scanning is essential to keep pace with frequent code changes and dynamic infrastructure. Penetration testing remains valuable for validating defenses, testing assumptions, and assessing risk in critical systems, but it cannot provide the same level of continuous coverage on its own.
Here’s a bird’s-eye view of the differences:
| Action | Outcome | Input | Time | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vulnerability scanning | A list of potential vulnerabilities | Automated |
| Daily |
| Penetration testing | Results of a real-world simulated cyberattack | Manual |
| Once per year |
Penetration Testing vs Vulnerability Scanning: What's the Difference?
Penetration Testing vs Vulnerability Scanning: Penetration testing simulates attacks to exploit flaws while vulnerability scanning identifies known risks.
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What actually makes vulnerability scanning valuable
The problem isn’t finding vulnerabilities, it’s finding the right ones
Most environments don’t suffer from a lack of vulnerability data. They suffer from too much of it. Traditional vulnerability scanning has been very good at identifying weaknesses, but far less effective at helping teams understand which ones actually matter.
When scanners treat every CVE as equally urgent, security teams spend time chasing low-impact issues while genuinely risky weaknesses get buried. Over time, this leads to alert fatigue, slower remediation, and reduced trust in scan results.
Context turns noise into signal
Vulnerability scanning only becomes useful when findings are evaluated in context. A vulnerability’s importance depends on where it exists and how it could be exploited, not just on its severity score.
What matters is whether the vulnerable asset is exposed to the internet, what permissions or entitlements are attached to it, whether secrets or misconfigurations are nearby, whether sensitive data is accessible, and what attack path an adversary could realistically follow. Without this context, scanning produces volume, not insight.
Cloud environments change the equation entirely
Static, IP-based scanning models were built for environments that rarely changed. Cloud infrastructure doesn’t work that way. Workloads are ephemeral, services auto-scale, and assets appear and disappear constantly.
Vulnerability scanning matters because cloud environments require approaches that can keep up with this speed and scale. Scanning needs to be continuous, cloud-aware, and able to observe assets as they exist now, not as they existed during a scheduled scan window.
Finding vulnerabilities earlier reduces downstream risk
Vulnerability scanning is most effective when it happens before issues reach production. Identifying vulnerabilities in virtual machines, container images, and dependencies early helps prevent weaknesses from being deployed broadly and reduces the blast radius if issues do slip through.
Early scanning doesn’t eliminate risk, but it gives teams more options and more time to respond, instead of forcing remediation under pressure after exposure has already occurred.
The real value is understanding exploitability, not counting CVEs
At its core, vulnerability scanning matters because it helps teams focus on exploitability, not just existence. Long lists of vulnerabilities don’t improve security on their own. Understanding which weaknesses could realistically be exploited does.
When vulnerability scanning is combined with contextual insight, teams can prioritize with confidence, reduce noise, and spend their time fixing issues that actually increase risk rather than drowning in CVE lists.
Resources like Wiz’s Vulnerability Database help you achieve these benefits by alerting you to the latest vulnerabilities so you can proactively address the ones that pose the highest risk for your organization. With 136,000 vulnerabilities and counting in the database, you’ll get a more complete view of weak spots that attackers could exploit versus trying to keep up with the latest ones via a more manual method.
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Types of vulnerability scanning and common use cases
Vulnerability scanning includes both active and passive techniques:
Active scanning, or non-credentialed scanning, involves sending simulated attacks, queries, or requests to the target to identify potential vulnerabilities (like buffer overflows, unencrypted data, and broken authentication processes).
Passive scanning, on the other hand, involves unobtrusively analyzing network traffic (without actively probing) to detect vulnerabilities that attackers can leverage to spread malware or steal or manipulate data.
There are also different use cases for vulnerability scanning. These are the most common ones:
Network vulnerability scanning: Scans the network for vulnerabilities, including open ports, unpatched software, and weak network protocols
Web application vulnerability scanning: Looks for security flaws like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other vulnerabilities that are unique to web applications
Database vulnerability scanning: Concentrates on identifying vulnerabilities within databases, such as misconfigurations, weak authentication, and overly permissive permissions
Host vulnerability scanning: Scans individual hosts (servers or workstations) to identify vulnerabilities at the operating system level or within installed software
Container and virtualized environment scanning: Identifies vulnerabilities in containerized applications and virtual environments by scanning container images and managing containers and virtual machines
How vulnerability scanning works
Vulnerability scanning works by identifying weaknesses across code and runtime environments, then narrowing those findings to the vulnerabilities that could realistically be exploited. In modern environments, the goal is not to produce a long list of issues, but to understand which weaknesses actually increase risk.
Identifying what is present and in use
Effective scanning starts by understanding what exists and what is actually in use. This includes source code and dependencies being built, images and workloads that are deployed, and cloud resources that are active.
Without accurate visibility into what is running, vulnerability data quickly becomes misleading. Scanning only matters when it reflects the current state of the environment.
Detecting known vulnerabilities across the stack
Once assets are identified, scanners evaluate them for known vulnerabilities. This includes issues in application code, open source libraries, operating systems, container images, and cloud services.
At this stage, scanning is intentionally broad. The goal is to surface potential weaknesses wherever they exist, knowing that not all findings will represent meaningful risk on their own.
Evaluating exploitability through context
This is where modern vulnerability scanning diverges from traditional approaches. A vulnerability’s importance depends on whether it can actually be exploited.
Exploitability is influenced by factors such as whether the vulnerable asset is deployed, whether it is exposed to the internet, what permissions or identities are associated with it, whether sensitive data is nearby, and whether there is a realistic attack path an adversary could follow. Scanning that lacks this context produces noise rather than insight.
Updating findings as environments and threats change
Both environments and vulnerability intelligence change continuously. New vulnerabilities are disclosed, code is updated, and workloads are redeployed.
Effective scanning revisits exploitability as these conditions evolve. A vulnerability that was previously low risk may become exploitable due to a configuration change, while others may become irrelevant once assets are removed or updated.
Validating remediation and reducing repeat exposure
After vulnerabilities are addressed, rescanning helps confirm that fixes were effective. Over time, this feedback loop helps teams understand where vulnerabilities tend to reappear and where preventative controls can reduce repeat exposure.
In this way, vulnerability scanning supports not just detection, but a clearer understanding of how exploitable risk enters and exits the environment.
What vulnerabilities does a scan uncover?
These are common areas of weakness that a vulnerability scan typically identifies:
Network: Open ports, weak passwords, misconfigured firewalls, and unauthorized devices or connections
System: Missing patches, outdated software, misconfigurations, and vulnerable operating systems
Applications: Security flaws, XSS and SQL injection vulnerabilities, and misconfigured settings
Cloud-specific: Misconfigured cloud services and settings and improper identity access and authentication
The specific vulnerabilities your scanner finds will depend on the type of scan it performs (like network, application, or database) and whether it’s an internal or external scan. But ideally, you’d use a tool that can spot all four of the vulnerabilities above.
Wiz, for example, caught a vulnerability in Ingress NGINX with system, network, and cloud-specific implications—not to mention an application-specific Ivanti EPMM RCE vulnerability. These are just two examples out of thousands.
Vulnerability scanning databases
Vulnerability scanners use a database of known vulnerabilities to identify weaknesses. These databases include the National Vulnerability Database and CVE.org, which contain information like vulnerability severity, potential impact, and recommended mitigation techniques.
Another one is Wiz’s Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Database, a CVE Numbering Authority that lets you filter by technology, recency, whether there’s been an exploit in the last 60 days, or how high-profile the vulnerability is. As a result, you can quickly drill down to the vulnerabilities that are worth paying attention to.
Scanners then compare discoveries in the target environment and match them with those in the database, after which they flag and provide remediation options for any vulnerabilities they identify.
The CVE Database: Curated Vulnerability Intelligence by Wiz
Wiz's CVE Database curates CVE data to create easy-to-navigate profiles that cover the entire vulnerability timeline, exploit scenarios, and mitigation steps.
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Common vulnerability scanning challenges
A vulnerability scan may be ineffective if the following issues are present:
| Challenge | Description |
|---|---|
| Resource sharing | Vulnerability scanning requires significant network bandwidth and computing resources. Production (in the IT environment) is also resource-intensive. When both processes share resources from the organization’s infrastructure, resource contention occurs, which can negatively impact the scan’s efficiency. |
| False positives | The vulnerability scanning tool could incorrectly identify a non-existent vulnerability, which wastes time and effort. For instance, while a developer is patching a dependency in the source code, the tool might alert that malicious activity is taking place. Misconfigurations usually lead to these kinds of false positives. |
| Alert fatigue | Vulnerability scanning often generates thousands of alerts, which makes tracking and addressing each alert overwhelming for your security team. This can lead to neglecting critical vulnerabilities. |
| Siloed tooling | Using vulnerability scanning tools with other security solutions across different environments or departments can create data silos and distort vulnerability management. This can hinder collaboration and make it difficult to have an end-to-end view of the organization’s security posture. |
| Inability to contextualize vulnerability impact | Vulnerability scanning tools may be ineffective for risk management since they’re often ignorant of asset criticality, business processes, and system dependencies. They also likely won’t understand the impact of vulnerabilities across individual organizations. |
| High ownership costs | Vulnerability scanning tools and their associated infrastructure can be expensive to procure, deploy, and maintain. Organizations may also need to invest in staff training and dedicated personnel, which increases costs. |
| Ongoing maintenance efforts | Some vulnerability scanning solutions require installing agents on target systems for continuous scanning. Additionally, managing these agents’ installation, updates, and maintenance across multiple systems can be challenging and time-consuming. |
| Blind spots | Tools sometimes fail to detect vulnerabilities within specific asset types, such as cloud infrastructure, mobile devices, or IoT devices. |
| Software development delays | Traditional vulnerability scanning practices require extensive scans and manual verification, which can delay application development and software update release. These delays ultimately hurt an organization’s bottom line. |
The #1 Vulnerability Management Buyer’s Guide
Choosing the right vuln scanning solution is just the start. This guide helps you evaluate tools, align your team, and take a more effective approach to managing risk across the cloud.
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Key features to look for in a vulnerability scanning tool
Modern vulnerability scanning tools must do more than enumerate CVEs. In cloud-native environments, effective scanning depends on coverage, context, and the ability to reduce risk without slowing teams down. When evaluating a vulnerability scanning solution, these capabilities matter most.
Agentless, cloud-wide coverage
Vulnerability scanning should provide comprehensive visibility across cloud environments without relying on agents. Agentless approaches reduce operational overhead and eliminate blind spots caused by missed installations or offline workloads.
Look for tools that can scan across infrastructure and managed services, including virtual machines, containers, serverless workloads, and cloud platforms, while continuously updating findings as environments change.
Contextual, risk-based prioritization
Severity scores alone don’t reflect real risk. The most effective tools prioritize vulnerabilities based on exploitability, not just CVSS ratings.
This requires incorporating context such as external exposure, identity permissions, proximity to sensitive data, and whether a vulnerability is part of a viable attack path. Contextual prioritization helps teams focus on actionable risk and reduces alert fatigue.
Full code-to-cloud scanning
Vulnerabilities can originate at any stage of the lifecycle. Scanning should extend from source code and infrastructure-as-code during development to deployed workloads in production.
Tools with full code-to-cloud coverage help teams identify vulnerabilities early, prevent issues from reaching production, and continuously assess what is actually running. This end-to-end visibility is critical for understanding how vulnerabilities propagate across environments.
External attack surface visibility
Vulnerability scanning should account for how attackers see your environment, not just how it looks internally.
Dynamic scanning of internet-facing assets helps identify exposed services, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities that are reachable from outside the organization. This attacker-centric perspective is essential for understanding which vulnerabilities pose immediate risk.
Unified visibility across signals
Vulnerabilities don’t exist in isolation. Their risk depends on how they intersect with identities, configurations, workloads, and exposure.
Scanning tools that operate within a unified security view make it easier to correlate findings across domains, reducing the need for manual investigation and cross-tool stitching. Unified visibility helps teams understand risk holistically instead of managing disconnected signals.
Actionable, automated remediation guidance
Finding vulnerabilities is only useful if teams can fix them efficiently. Effective scanning tools provide clear remediation guidance that helps engineers resolve issues quickly and confidently.
Automation and AI-assisted recommendations can further reduce friction by suggesting fixes, validating impact, and integrating remediation into existing workflows. This allows teams to move faster without compromising security.
How Wiz approaches vulnerability scanning
Wiz provides vulnerability scanning as part of its broader exposure management platform, helping teams identify vulnerabilities across code, images, and runtime cloud environments, then prioritize them based on real-world exploitability.
Unlike traditional scanners that surface vulnerabilities in isolation, Wiz correlates vulnerability findings with cloud context to determine which issues actually matter. Vulnerabilities are evaluated based on whether they are deployed, externally reachable, associated with risky permissions or secrets, and connected to sensitive data or other weaknesses that form an attack path.
Wiz performs agentless vulnerability scanning across source code, open source dependencies, virtual machines, containers, and cloud services. This allows teams to gain broad coverage without deploying or maintaining agents, while still scanning both before deployment and in running environments.
By grounding vulnerability scanning in exploitability rather than volume, Wiz helps security and engineering teams focus on fixing the vulnerabilities that could realistically be abused, instead of working through long lists of theoretical issues. This approach reduces alert fatigue, improves remediation confidence, and makes vulnerability scanning actionable at cloud scale.
Agentless Scanning = Complete Visibility Into Vulnerabilities
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