Are you wondering how to scan websites for vulnerabilities and potential threats? With rapid technological advancement, cybercriminals continue to infect websites, looking for vulnerabilities and gaps to exploit. These activities include uploading malicious content, crashing websites, stealing data, and sabotaging services.
A website security scan is basically a systematic process of identifying and evaluating vulnerabilities, potential security risks, and threats in a web or website application. It also involves manual or automated techniques and tools to identify issues such as broken links, malware, outdated software, weak encryption, and other exploitable flaws.
Let’s dive into this extremely crucial topic without wasting any more time!
Why Website Security Scans Are Important?
How to scan websites and why is it important? First, we will explain the importance of website security scans. There are several reasons why website scans are crucial, including:
- Maintaining Website Reputation: Security violations can exploit a website’s reputation. This can cause users to lose trust and potentially reduce conversions and traffic. Thus, a website security scan helps to maintain brand reputation and user confidence.
- Protection of Data: A website security scan helps to recognise and stop vulnerabilities that can lead to data violations, unauthorized access and theft of personal and sensitive information, such as personal details, user credentials, and financial data.
- Regulations and Compliance: Several industries have particular regulations, such as PCI-DSS, GDPR, and HIPAA. These regulations need businesses to uphold a secure online environment. Frequent security scans can help avoid potential penalties and ensure compliance.
- Enhanced website performance: Security scans can detect problems that affect a website’s performance. It includes slow-loading pages, broken links, and outdated software. Managing these problems can enhance search engine rankings and user experience.
- Prevention of cyber attacks and malware: Scanning a website can help identify phishing attempts, malware, and other malicious activities before they cause any trouble. This also helps to protect both the website’s owner and the users from potential harm.
- Cost Savings: Identifying and solving vulnerabilities early can save businesses from costly recovery efforts. Those include potential legal liabilities, data restoration, and public relations management.
Top 5 Free Website Security Scanner to Find Malware and Vulnerabilities
Are you looking for a free website scanner for the website to scan malware and vulnerabilities? Keep reading to find out the top 5 security scanners for complete protection.
Sucuri: Sucuri is undoubtedly one of the most popular free website security scanners. You can easily do quick testing for defacement, malware, injected SPAM, and blacklisting status.
Quttera: Quttera scans websites for vulnerabilities and malware exploits. It also scans for malicious files, potentially suspicious files, malware domain lists, Safe Browsing (Yandex, Google) and PhishTank.
Intruder: Intruder is one of the most powerful cloud-based vulnerability scanners that can find weak points in the whole web application infrastructure. It is also enterprise-ready and provides a bank and government-level security scanning engine without much difficulty.
Criminal IP: Criminal IP’s real-time URL scanner Domain Search determines how a website is safe by extracting multiple data such as page redirections, network logs, connected subdomains, technologies used, and certificate information.
HostedScan Security: HostedScan offers a complete suite of scanners that allow businesses to scan networks, websites, and servers for security risks. You can effectively manage your risks via alerts, dashboards, and reporting.
How To Scan Websites: A Step-By-Step Guide
How to scan websites? Well, in this section, we will explain the step-by-step process of setting up a web application scanner and guide you through the whole vulnerability management lifecycle. It will empower you to efficiently identify and address potential security dangers and keep a secure and safe environment.
1. Setting up the Scanner
To set up the website security scanner, you need to download software that is suitable for and compatible with your operating system.
After downloading, configure its settings based on your particular needs. It includes the IP address ranges which are to be targeted during the scanning intervals, potentially across various networks.
Authentication details are also required to access particular services if needed. Once the settings have been properly configured, the website scanner can be set to run scheduled scanning intervals every month automatically at predetermined times.
Additionally, it saves valuable time and helps team members responsible for effectively managing an organization. An online website scanner helps everyone better utilize the available resources while also ensuring that all crucial hosts remain secure and safe.
2. Scanning The Application For Vulnerabilities
How to scan websites? Well, after completing the above procedure, the next step is to run the scanning interval by using the predefined configurations specified earlier.
This process involves setting parameters for a particular target environment being scanned. Also, the IP address ranges given to a specific segment of target networks being scanned, along with any authentication details needed to access specific services, should be taken into consideration.
Once all these parameters are properly established, the preferred types of results must be mentioned. It includes whether HTML format is preferable or if text-based output is preferred.
After all the parameters are finalized, just press “Start,” “Go,” or whatever command is appropriate to start the scanning procedure for automated vulnerability management.
3. Analysing The Results
The last step is to review the outcomes themselves after the results are generated via the automated scanning interval. It’s also important to identify whether the findings are false positives or legitimate needs for further investigation.
A security analyst is accountable for managing the complete lifecycle of security operations techniques. They are also responsible for assigning risk-based and severity levels to individual findings. Additionally, they give the topmost priority to those considered highly dangerous, which could potentially lead to a compromise of the whole infrastructure.
Reacting quickly to remediation efforts can effectively reduce risk exposure. By simply doing this, the security analyst can focus their efforts on the extremely important issues first, allowing for a more compelling and efficient use of resources.
4. Delivering the Final Report
Now, you have the answer to how to scan websites, but there are some essential steps to consider. After completing the review and vulnerability assessment of individual findings, a security analyst is also accountable for giving the final report.
The report includes the findings, prioritizing their importance and making recommendations for handling the problems and eradicating threats. After the report is delivered, it provides the basis for a raw timeline specifying the remediation efforts required to resolve the issues completely.
This ensures that everybody involved understands the matter’s seriousness and can correctly guess the resource amount needed to complete the task successfully.
By providing a concise yet clear report, a security analyst can help guide the company’s efforts to improve the security posture of its website applications.
5. Rescanning & Remediation
After the remediation efforts are done, the last step is to rerun the same scanning interval to ensure that the issue is fixed entirely. This also helps to ensure that no additional effort is needed to complete the task efficiently. Additionally, it offers peace of mind, knowing that every identified issue is addressed completely and correctly.
After the remediation efforts have been completely verified, confirming that all the things are fixed and rescanning helps to serve as added reassurance that everything has been correctly done according to the plan.
Rescanning also involves rerunning the exact command sets, which avoids unnecessary task repetition and saves a lot of time. This method makes life a lot more easier and simplifies the whole procedure from start to end.
How To Scan Website For Malware?
Simply choose a website scanner online from our above-mentioned list. Just paste your website’s URL in their search bar. Your website will then be properly scanned for malware and other potential threats.
Many website scanners use huge malware databases to find potential threats. Other scanners use ML (machine learning) to boost their ability to determine malware. The best combination of both is best.
If you have also found malware on your website during the scanning process, the next step is to remove it completely. Most of the products on our list of free website scanners, like Quettera and Sucuri, offer premium packages and products that eliminate threats for you and also add real-time protection to your website.
How To Create A Scan Code For A Website?
- Follow the steps below to generate a QR code online effortlessly.
- Open any online QR code generator.
- Enter your website URL and tap on the option of “Create QR Code.”
- To ensure the link is correct, paste your URL instead of typing it manually into the field.
- A new QR code will be generated.
- Customize your QR code’s frame, shape, and design if needed.
- Download your QR code.
To Conclude:
So, that was our call on how to scan websites for potential threats and risks. Scanning websites and web applications for vulnerabilities is a crucial component of an organization’s cyber security system.
By following a structured process, businesses can effectively shield their digital assets and sustain a safe and secure online environment. Constant vulnerability scanning not only helps organizations comply with industry rules but also enables them to build trust with partners and clients.
Also Read: How to Hack a Website Built on WordPress?