The Difference Between Pentesting, DAST and ASM | IONIX

Penetration testing, dynamic application security testing (DAST), and attack surface management (ASM) are all strategies designed to manage an organization’s digital attack surface. However, while each aids in identifying and closing vulnerabilities, they have significant differences and play complementary roles within a corporate cybersecurity strategy.

Let’s take a quick look at the definition of each of these strategies:

• Pen testing: Penetration testing simulates attacks against an organization’s systems. These tests often involve human actors emulating how a real-world attacker would approach and exploit an organization.
• DAST: DAST is a black-box testing methodology for assessing application security (AppSec). DAST identifies vulnerabilities in a running application by sending various malicious or unusual inputs and looking for unusual responses or behavior from the application under test.
• ASM:  ASM maintains visibility into an organization’s digital attack surface and the vulnerabilities that it contains. ASM solutions continuously attempt to maintain an asset inventory, detect vulnerabilities in known assets, and help the security team prioritize the remediation of known vulnerabilities.

How pen testing, DAST, and ASM differ

Pen testing, DAST, and ASM are all geared toward reducing the number and severity of vulnerabilities in an organization’s digital attack surface. However, the three approaches also have significant differences.

Scope

One of the biggest differences between pen testing, DAST, and ASM is the scope and depth of the analysis that they provide:

• Pen testing: Pen testing generally provides the most focused and in-depth analysis. A pen tester may search for vulnerabilities in a particular application or system and perform a deep dive, chaining vulnerabilities together to achieve a particular goal.
• DAST: DAST provides a balance between depth and breadth of analysis. DAST solutions can identify a wide range of vulnerabilities in an application; however, this testing is automated, limiting the degree to which vulnerabilities are explored.
• ASM: ASM provides the shallowest and broadest security testing. ASM solutions attempt to map and track an organization’s entire digital attack surface, but its visibility into vulnerabilities is largely surface-level.

Visibility

The three technologies also differ significantly in the assets that they monitor:

• Pen testing: Pen testing engagements typically focus on specific targets, including both internal and external systems.
• DAST: DAST is commonly integrated into CI/CD pipelines to assess the security of applications and APIs in the development stage.
• ASM: ASM solutions primarily focus on external-facing IT assets, including both official corporate systems and shadow IT.

Validation

When looking for vulnerabilities, there is the potential for false positives where a vulnerability that appears to exist based on surface analysis is not actually exploitable by an attacker. Pen testing, DAST, and ASM have different false positive rates:

• Pen testing: Low false positive rate since human testers exploit identified vulnerabilities to validate them and achieve the goals of the exercise.
• DAST: High false positive rate due to automation and a tendency not to exploit identified vulnerabilities.
• ASM: Low false positive rate as vulnerabilities are validated before being reported and prioritized.

Occurrence & ownership 

Security testing is most effective if it is performed frequently and as early as possible within the lifecycle of an asset. Key differences in rates of occurrence and ownership of these types of assessments include:

• Pen testing: Pen testing is a manual, labor-intensive exercise assessing production systems, so they are performed less frequently and are owned by the security team.
• DAST: DAST is automated and often built into CI/CD pipelines, enabling it to be run frequently by the development team while the software is under development.
• ASM: ASM is an automated process that involves continuous testing and is often owned by the security team.

	Pen testing	DAST	ASM
Automation	Low	High	Medium
Analytic depth	High	Low	Low
Test frequency	Low	High	Very high (continuous)
Cost	High	Low	Low
Required expertise	High	Low	Low
Scope	Specific systems	Applications and APIs	External attack surface
Vulnerability exploitation	Yes	Rarely	No
False positives	Low	High	Low
Customizability	High	Low	Medium

How ASM complements DAST and pen testing

ASM differs significantly from DAST and pen testing in various ways, but all three are focused on reducing the number and severity of vulnerabilities in an organization’s IT environment. These different approaches to a shared purpose mean that ASM can complement pen testing and DAST in a few ways.

EASM defines pen testing scope

Pen testing provides the most in-depth analysis of an organization’s security posture and the lowest false positive rate. However, it is time and resource-intensive and usually focuses on a specific asset or set of systems.

External ASM (EASM) provides insight into where pen testing efforts can be focused to maximize return on investment. ASM maintains a complete inventory of the organization’s digital attack surface and known vulnerabilities in it. Based on this information, an organization can define the scope of a pen test to assess the security of high-value assets or perform a deep dive into the security of an asset that seems particularly vulnerable to exploitation.

Enhancing pen testing continuity

Pen testing provides the deepest insight into potential vulnerabilities since human experts explore and exploit identified vulnerabilities. However, the time and cost associated with it means that organizations can only perform these assessments on an irregular basis.

EASM can fill the gap between pen tests and provide continuity across assessments. With broad visibility across an organization’s digital attack surface, ASM can identify and prioritize the vulnerabilities that an attacker is most likely to exploit to gain access to an organization’s environment. This protects against external threats and complements pen testing engagements, which help to manage the risk of attackers who have already achieved a foothold in an organization’s systems.

Providing supply chain visibility during AppSec testing

DAST solutions provide an assessment of an application or API’s security after each change to the codebase, enabling vulnerability detection and remediation with minimal technical debt. However, the effectiveness of this automated testing depends on the set of inputs that a DAST solution uses to evaluate the application under test.

ASM can help enhance the effectiveness of DAST by providing additional insight into an application’s eventual deployment environment and digital supply chain. With insight into the other applications that software will interact with — and their vulnerability to exploitation — DAST solutions can be tuned to enhance the realism and utility of their test cases.

Achieving cost savings with ASM

In addition to enhancing an organization’s security, ASM also provides opportunities for cost savings, such as:

• Issue ownership management: ASM maintains an IT asset inventory and tracks the vulnerabilities associated with each system. This simplifies the process of routing issues to the correct owner, enabling faster and easier remediation.
• Issue validation and prioritization: ASM solutions validate the vulnerabilities that they identify, ensuring that the organization only spends time and resources addressing real vulnerabilities. Additionally, all vulnerabilities are automatically prioritized, maximizing the ROI derived from remediation activities.
• Shorter, targeted pen tests: Pen tests often involve testers spending time performing a surface-level vulnerability assessment with vulnerability scanners and similar tools. ASM eliminates these vulnerabilities or provides visibility into them, eliminating the need for these steps and reducing the time and cost associated with the pen testing exercise.

Enhancing vulnerability and risk management with Ionix

ASM provides continuous vulnerability assessment and complements pen testing and DAST as part of a holistic vulnerability and risk management strategy. Ionix’s attack surface management helps you to track and secure your digital attack surface while avoiding costly false positive and negative alerts. To learn more about how Ionix can help your organization shrink its digital attack surface and more effectively protect what remains, you’re welcome to request a free demo.