Enterprise Cloud Security and Governance

How a vulnerability scanner works

There are two methods based on which a vulnerability scanner works. These methods, typically, are as follows:

• External scans: External scans denote that all you have to feed to a vulnerability scanner is the IP address of the server. This sort of scan is what an attacker tries to do and the result might be impacted if you are in a cloud environment as many of the cloud providers have some kind of IPS system.
• Internal scans: Internal scan means that you allow the vulnerability scanner to SSH into your instance and it will run various kinds of tests. The results of internal scans are more detailed and appropriate.

Many compliances such as PCI DSS include having both, external as well as internal scans, as ...