BackTrack 4: Assuring Security by Penetration Testing

Vulnerability assessment versus penetration testing

Since the exponential growth of an IT security industry, there are always an intensive number of diversities found in understanding and practicing the correct terminology for security assessment. This involves commercial grade companies and non-commercial organizations who always misinterpret the term while contracting for the specific type of security assessment. For this obvious reason, we decided to include a brief description on vulnerability assessment and differentiate its core features with penetration testing.

Vulnerability assessment is a process for assessing the internal and external security controls by identifying the threats that pose serious exposure to the organizations assets. ...