Software vs. Hardware
The scanners can also come as either software-based agents placed directly on servers or workstations, or as hardware devices. Host-based scanners can use up processor cycles on the system, but are generally considered more flexible in the kinds of vulnerabilities they can scan. The network-based scanners are plug-and-play hardware devices that are self-contained and need less maintenance than software agents.
The focus of vulnerabilities has been changing over the past several years. On the one hand, organizations have become savvier about protecting their networks and systems, and hackers have had a harder time penetrating those defenses. At the same time, as Web-based services have become the lifeblood of many witnesses, hackers have found a goldmine of potential exploits.
That’s because Web traffic flows back and forth primarily through Port 80 on a network, which has to be kept open if those Web-bases services are to be available to a company’s customers and business partners.
It’s a hard to defend weak spot in enterprise defenses, and once hackers gain access to Web applications they can use them to get information from databases, retrieve files from root directories, or use a Web server to send malicious content in a Web page to unsuspecting users.
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