The modern cybersecurity threat landscape continuously changing. One of the most popular ways for organizations to keep up with the onslaught of security vulnerabilities is through Penetration Testing (pen testing).

Penetration testing, also known as “Pen-Testing” or “Ethical hacking” is a process in which a skilled penetration tester conducts a series of tests using penetration testing software which is then likely combined into a report and sent to development teams to fix vulnerabilities found by a pen tester.

While manual security testing provides organizations with thorough point in time security assessment, unfortunately, manual penetration tests are time consuming, expensive, only provide point-in-time security assessment (not continuous), and does not provide a scaleable approach when organizations have several hundreds or even thousands of web applications to test.

Fortunately, automated penetration testing tools like Acunetix web vulnerability scanner allow organizations to scan anywhere from a handful to thousands of web applications quickly, cost effectively and, most importantly, continuously. Pen Testers are able to leverage the pros of automation for their web penetration testing freeing up their time for more important manual tests.

Industry leading technology coverage

With Acunetix, security teams can setup scheduled automated scans, to test for thousands of web application vulnerabilities (including SQL Injection, XSS) as well as misconfigurations.

While most penetration testing tools supports legacy technologies, Acunetix takes technology support to the next level with the best-of-breed JavaScript support. Unlike most software, Acunetix has full support for modern Single Page Applications (SPAs) and can understand and fully test applications which rely on JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, Ember and Vue. This means that unlike most penetration testing software, Acunetix can scan everything from legacy web applications developed on traditional stacks, as well as modern web apps taking advantage of all the latest and greatest technologies.

Speed without sacrificing flexibility

Additionally, unlike many other web and network penetration software, Acunetix is lightning fast. With a re-engineered core, and a highly optimized crawler, every inch of Acunetix is tuned for speed and efficiency, allowing it to scan hundreds of thousands of pages without breaking a sweat.

What’s more, Acunetix can save the progress of a scan mid way, pause it, and resume it later on from where it left off entirely automatically. This is a crucial for time boxed pen testing or when scanning enormous web applications with time restrictions.

Unlike traditional thick-client applications, which are locked away behind corporate firewalls, web applications are typically accessible from outside corporate networks and potentially open to dangers such as SQL Injection and application-layer denial of service attacks. This makes web application security and web service security a different beast altogether. Moreover, in case of attacks such as Cross-site Scripting, client-side JavaScript source code is right there in the browser for any malicious user to tinker with. With so many threats to sensitive data, it’s no surprise many organizations are seeking tools to help them secure their software development life cycle.

Defend Against Known Application Vulnerabilities

The first step to kick starting your web application security program is to look for known application vulnerabilities. Keeping known vulnerabilities out of your code base prevents attackers from easily exploiting them and running malicious code. Attacks such as SQL injection and Cross-site Scripting are usually much easier to fix than to find them, so educating developers about best practices, defining a security policy and enforcing development security standards are all important approaches when defending against web security vulnerabilities.

Acunetix is a software product for web application security testing which helps you quickly and easily identify known vulnerabilities, as well as vulnerabilities in any website or web application, including sites built with hard-to-scan HTML5 and JavaScript Single Page Applications (SPAs). With Acunetix you can:

• Discover in excess of more than 4,500 security vulnerabilities
• Detect SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting and all of their variants
• Automatically scan all webste files with custom form authentication or other custom access controls and session management

Defend Your Entire Attack Surfac

Web applications have a large attack surface and security threats can come from anywhere, including third-party code. Vulnerabilities can exist in several layers of an application, be it in the frontend, the backend or even within web server configurations.

With built-in support for exporting discovered vulnerabilities to the most popular security tools such as web application firewalls, you can take automated testing even further. Virtually patching the vulnerabilities in production will give you enough breathing room to fully and carefully undergo remediation.

Additionally, Acunetix can find security issues beyond the typical black-box scanning approach thanks to its AcuSensor gray-box scanning technology. With AcuSensor, Acunetix can automatically examine Java, ASP.NET and PHP server-side code that is being executed. This allows Acunetix to pinpoint the exact line of code where vulnerabilities lie, as well as dramatically reduce an already low false positive rate.

Get Actionable Insights into Your Web Application Vulnerabilities

By using tools to help you simulate web application attacks, you’ll be in a position to find and fix security vulnerabilities before an attacker has the chance to exploit them. A vulnerability scanner like Acunetix also recommends actions that you can take to correct the vulnerabilities it identifies, as well as the ability to retest fixes.

Acunetix Website Security Scanner Finds Security Vulnerabilities in Web Applications

Even the best designed web application, implemented by the most security-aware developers, is going to have security risks. It’s simply unavoidable. Developers focus on functionality, not web security. Applications are constantly changing. With new features designed and built against tight deadlines, it’s not surprising security critical vulnerabilities within application code and server configurations are introduced all the time. Hackers probe for vulnerabilities continuously, finding new security vulnerabilities in some of the most obscure web applications.

Regular website security checks are crucial to ensure your web application does not expose sensitive data. However, manual security testing simply does not scale against a large number of web applications common in the SaaS age. A web application security scanner will identify defects vital to your web application security posture.

Find security vulnerabilities before attackers do with a website security scanner

Code reviews and manual tests aren’t exhaustive enough to find all security vulnerabilities. Apart from relying on the developers and testers recognizing problems, they also don’t scale. Running an easy and quick scan with Acunetix website security scanner to comprehensively probe your site to identify where your application is at risk.

• Crawls all web pages, including those built in HTML5 and JavaScript
• Acts as a Java vulnerability scanner by examining web applications built with popular frameworks including Java frameworks such as Spring, Struts and Java Server Faces (JSF)
• Inspects the the source code of a web application whilst it is in execution thanks to AcuSensor technology
• Replicates user actions to execute scripts just like a browser
• Login Sequence Recorder allows you scan password-protected pages automatically.

Detect and fix common web application vulnerabilities

There are hundreds of common vulnerabilities your developers need to guard against, so it’s no surprise they might miss a couple. Acunetix can automatically discover thousands of vulnerabilities, including hard-to-detect variants. Acunetix website security scanner identifies more than 4,500 known vulnerabilities including:

• SQL Injection
• Cross-site Scripting (XXS)
• XML External Entity XXE) injection
• CSRF

Additionally, Acunetix can optionally make use of AcuSensor to examine server-side code during run-time and identify vulnerable lines of code in Java ASP.NET and PHP web applications where the vulnerability originate. What’s more, Acunetix generates almost zero false positives so test results are guaranteed not to throw a wrench in your web application scanning programme.

Concerned about WordPress Security? Enter Acunetix

WordPress is the most popular open source content management system (CMS). According to the latest W3Techs survey, almost 60% of all CMS instances use the platform and 32.5 of all the websites on the Internet are WordPress sites. From the standpoints of deployment and usage, this is exciting: given its popularity, WordPress is well-documented and full-featured. But it also means attackers are constantly looking to compromise vulnerable WordPress installations and the web servers behind them. To stay one step ahead, you need Acunetix: a WordPress vulnerability scanner that you can trust.

Detect a Full Range of WordPress Vulnerabilities

Acunetix is a full-featured WordPress security scanner. Vulnerabilities that Acunetix can discover include:

• Out-of-date WordPress versions, both WordPress core and plugins, that are missing critical security patches
• Malware disguised as 3rd party WordPress plugins and WordPress themes
• Weak passwords that can be used to launch a brute force attack
• Names of WordPress users that can be used to compromise accounts or perform social engineering
• Disclosure of publicly available wp-config.php files
• Susceptibility to XML-RPC brute force attacks

These results can be used by operations and development staff to update and secure existing WordPress installations. If out-of-date or unfamiliar plugins are detected, the team can quickly make educated decisions about whether to update the plugins or remove them from the site. Security teams can also use the findings as a basis for further penetration testing.

Up-to-Date WordPress Vulnerability Database

When information about WordPress security vulnerabilities is released, attackers almost immediately begin to scan for sites with an outdated version of WordPress or with vulnerable plugins. Stopping attackers in their tracks requires both a strong ongoing WordPress security program as well as timely response when vulnerabilities are announced.

Content Management Systems and Beyond

Even if your business depends on WordPress websites, it may not be your only web platform now. If it is, it may not be your only one in the future. You may be considering a tool specific to WordPress, but Acunetix is more flexible. It is a full-featured web application security testing tool that will evolve with your infrastructure. It detects security issues in any web application: from CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal to custom-built applications.

Furthermore, Acunetix is technology-independent. Whether your web application is built using PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, JavaScript, or any other language, you can trust Acunetix to enumerate the user input fields and find the vulnerabilities that the attackers are looking for. By choosing Acunetix now, you can ensure that your security team is using a full-featured web application vulnerability scanner, and that your business’s web presence can remain secure through any future plans.