Introduction: Types of Scanning

Cyber Security is one of the booming fields that are proliferating in the interactive world as more and more organizations are facing new challenges while having cyber attacks. Here, in this blog, you will find out about 5 types of scanning in cyber security. In addition, there are numerous methods by which cyber criminals penetrate duly secure IT systems to obtain access to crucial datasets, and enterprises have to put additional security measures in place as a result.

Since the upgrade of the technology to new horizons, many adversaries have also started to implement their potential to check if there are any vulnerabilities present in the IT infrastructures through their distinguished methodologies. In this attempt, they try to penetrate through the IT infrastructures via various patterns to modify, seize, delete, compromise, etc., the datasets possessing crucial digital assets.

Moreover, let’s try to know more about the diverse 5 types of scanning in cyber security that will undoubtedly help you understand these methodologies so keenly:

5 Types of Scanning in Cyber Security

It is one of the most remarkable components of being ready to deal with cyber security threats comprises scanning the relevant applications. In this regard, continuous testing and scanning of your apps confirm that the developers know where shortcomings are and how much damage they can cause to your security posture.

5 Types of Scanning in Cyber Security

As a result, they can effortlessly emphasize the threats and resolve them prior to driving on with expansion. In addition, this blog post will take you through a few prominent types of cybersecurity scans everyone can sincerely utilize to keep your applications safe from hackers.

1. Vulnerability Scanning

Many vulnerabilities inside the software coding strings can undoubtedly provide the black hat hackers with loose points that can work as entry points to exploit them and obtain sincere access to the overall information system, leading to the compromise of all the IT infrastructures. In addition, if they are able to locate these weak entry points in the coding strings, they trigger some cyber attacks to modify the code to alter the corresponding functionality of the software.

In this regard, a common practice that black hat hackers implement while exploiting many vulnerabilities comprises deleting several updated security patches. This leads to software code that is highly not being updated on a regular basis, establishes a vast attack surface for the adversaries to trigger cyber attacks and compromise the corresponding datasets.

However, other primetime hacking individuals look out for code vulnerabilities in particular types of codes that have not been updated on a regular basis. In addition, the more outdated code your software possesses, the higher the chance it gets trapped under the nose of black hat hackers by exploiting them with the weaker areas.

2. Penetration Testing

Penetration Testing can be expressed as a technique implemented by a cyber security agency and giving the same required authentication to hack into your networks to check if there are any vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a primetime black hat hacking individuals. The main concept behind implementing penetration testing is these groups of people are trying to attack your networks as real-time hackers.

In conclusion, they would implement a huge spectrum of techniques to exploit the shortcomings that you might have never seen before or thought to be there. However, after a thorough analysis and scanning of these IT infrastructures, you might come across some critical vulnerabilities and concerns within your networks.

3. Rogue Port Scans

Rogue Ports can be described as the components that are not inside your organization’s network; however, they are still linked to the same server in one way or another. In addition, these rogue ports can react as prime gateways for adversaries to utilize to exploit and gain access to your network.

Within an organization, the employees who try to use their laptops to connect to the organization’s network connection could unwittingly establish a rogue port for adversaries to exploit. In addition, an employee device doesn’t feature the same security extents as your network, which builds a convenient way for cybercriminals to penetrate into a system.

Subsequently, a practicing black hat hacker perhaps gives one’s prime consideration to attacking an employee’s laptop by establishing malware or a virus. As a result, this provides them with another entry point into your organization’s network while the employee links to their computer.

4. Network Scans

Executing network scans on a frequent basis is one of the most important steps that an organization should take in today’s technology-based environment. In addition, if you do not run proper scanning on your IT infrastructures and digital assets regularly, you probably be opening yourself wide to an entire host of security issues.

In the series of several organizations carrying out network scans every month, it has proven a great measure to provide yourself with a good idea to enhance your software’s security posture to an optimum extent. In addition, you can possibly look out at the reports and consider your attempts on regions that are duly vulnerable to lower the attack surface.

Moreover, many oper-source networks are significantly available to the public and could be more viable to security threats. Hence, you need to be sure to run quick monthly network scans and be one step ahead of any adversary’s thinking capacity to hijack your digital assets with one’s expertise.

5. Authenticated and Unauthenticated Scans

It is highly recommended to everyone that you execute authentication and unauthenticated vulnerability scans at frequent intervals. Firstly, Authenticated Scans permit testers to supervise the scans and get proper insights into them to discover corresponding vulnerabilities that come out as an output of running scans.

Secondly, unauthenticated scans offer you a diverse viewpoint by deploying you in the shoes of a real-time hacking individual. Executing both types of scans would certainly assist you in offering organizations a wider viewpoint about possible measures that adversaries may attempt to penetrate their network.

Drawbacks of Vulnerability Scanners

So far, some drawbacks of vulnerability scanners that one should consider just to keep up one’s expectations in place. Some of the corresponding drawbacks include the following:

False Positives: Sometimes, automated scanning tools have many intricacies in determining false positives. As a result, many developers have to take the long route of the list of vulnerabilities manually and neglect the false positives.
Scanners don’t find everything: Since “Nothing is 100% Secure”, you can understand that the diverse scanning tools do not find all security risks, as there are many chances that numerous severe vulnerabilities can slip through the cracks and cannot be identified by these scanners. Hence, it would be for the greater good of an organization not to rely only on these scanning tools.
Frequent updates: One must update many vulnerability scanning tools at frequent times to confirm that they are nicely equipped to find the corresponding vulnerabilities in your network.

Since there are a few pitfalls of vulnerability scanning tools, they are pretty influential. In addition, these vulnerability scanning tools offer quick results and can control networks consistently. Most importantly, you can nicely utilize them multiple times to determine security flaws in your network infrastructure.

Top 10 Cybersecurity Tips in 2026

Keep software up-to-date
Avoid opening suspicious emails
Keep hardware up-to-date
Use a secure file-sharing solution to encrypt data
Use anti-virus and anti-malware
Use a VPN to privatize your connections
Check links before you click
Don’t be lazy with your passwords!
Disable Bluetooth when you don’t need it
Avoid the “secure enough” mentality

Apart from the above-mentioned tips, one can also do multiple things to secure one’s information systems from any unauthorized access from an adversary, such as Scan external storage devices for viruses, Double checking for HTTPS on websites, Enabling 2-factor Authentication, Avoid using public networks, etc.

A Complete Guide of Cyber Security Course

In case you want to know more about the same, you can join a full-fledged 1 Year Diploma in Cyber Security Course by Craw Security, the best cyber security training institute in India with its courses duly accredited by FutureSkills Prime, a MeitY – NASSCOM, digital skilling initiative, and duly approved by the Government of India. Call us at +91-9513805401 to have a quick word with one of our skilled educational counselors and learn more about the upcoming batches at our Saket and Laxmi Nagar branches in Delhi NCR.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, we try to explore the 5 types of scanning in cyber security for our readers in this blog post. In addition, we even try to have a better idea of how many businesses secure their varied IT infrastructures from unauthorized access from any malicious threat actor trying to hijack digital assets from any location on the planet. Moreover, we also tried to provide basic information on distinguished security methods that are pretty nice to implement within an enterprise. We hope that the information provided so far has helped you to feel more confident about the main types of cyber security scanning methodologies.

5 Types of Scanning in Cyber Security [2026 Updated]

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