7 Best Vulnerability Assessment Tools

Proactive security is a critical part of any organisation’s security posture. Vulnerability assessments can help organizations identify security gaps before attackers can exploit them, increasing the efficacy of your security efforts significantly.

Whether you’re managing a small SaaS application or an enterprise-grade cloud environment, regular vulnerability scans are critical to hardening your infrastructure. In this post, we highlight the seven best vulnerability assessment tools of 2025 – these tools are chosen based on effectiveness, usability, ecosystem support, and overall value. From developer-friendly integrations to deep network scanning, there’s a solution for every use case – so let’s dive into your options!

What Is Vulnerability Assessment?

Vulnerability assessment is the process of identifying, quantifying, and prioritising the security vulnerabilities in a system. It typically involves scanning applications and their configurations to uncover known and unknown weaknesses, giving providers a starting point to make their systems better and more secure.

These assessments help security teams understand their exposure and mitigate risks before exploitation occurs, but also help to uncover likely areas where exploitation might have already happened. They serve as the backbone of modern security implementations, assisting in everything from penetration testing to product iteration.

Key Features of Vulnerability Assessment

When evaluating a vulnerability assessment tool, there are some common capabilities and features that should be considered foundational to a good tool. While not every tool is going to have all of these features, the best tools should cover as much ground as possible while still maintaining a critical value offering. These features include:

• Automated Scanning – continuous and scheduled scans of infrastructure and applications to ensure the most up-to-date state is being tested.
• Risk Scoring – assigns severity ratings to vulnerabilities for prioritization to ensure accurate and effective issue resolution.
• Remediation Guidance – actionable recommendations to fix identified issues so that teams aren’t left in the dark when issues arise.
• Integration Support – CI/CD pipeline hooks, ticketing system integrations, and more to ensure teams actually use the solution.
• Compliance Reporting – pre-built reports for standards like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and SOC 2.

What Are the Three Types of Vulnerability Assessments?

In essence, there are three core types of vulnerability assessments. These include:

1. Network-Based Assessments – those assessments with a focus on identifying vulnerabilities in wired and wireless networks, including open ports, insecure protocols, and rogue devices.
2. Host-Based Assessments – assessments that target specific machines (servers, workstations) to evaluate system configurations, patch levels, and permissions.
3. Application-Based Assessments – solutions that examine the security posture of web and desktop applications, identifying issues like SQL injection, XSS, and insecure API usage.

For application-based testing, there are three additional core types of solutions.

SAST stands for Static Application Security Testing. It is a white-box testing method that analyzes source code, bytecode, or binary code for security vulnerabilities without executing the application. Since SAST works directly with the source code, it can be integrated early into the development process, allowing developers to catch bugs while writing code. Note that this process is done before the code is even deployed – as such, it is more focused on intrinsic security issues rather than those that crop up during production deployment and utilization.

DAST stands for Dynamic Application Security Testing. It is a black-box testing method that analyzes applications during runtime, typically through their web interfaces or APIs. DAST simulates real-world attacks to find vulnerabilities in live environments, including logic, authentication, and session handling flaws. This is used after the code has compiled and deployed, and is a testing phase focused on the actuality of your production service.

SCA stands for Software Composition Analysis. It focuses on identifying risks within an application’s open-source components and third-party libraries. SCA tools scan dependencies for known vulnerabilities, licensing issues, and version conflicts using public vulnerability databases like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). This is focused specifically on testing systems in their built state, and is separate, but dependent upon both SAST and DAST tooling.

Top 7 Vulnerability Assessment Tools

1. StackHawk

StackHawk is a purpose-built solution for modern DevSecOps teams, offering powerful, proactive, knowledge-based vulnerability scanning. It integrates directly into CI/CD pipelines, allowing developers to catch and fix security issues early in the development cycle. It supports REST, SOAP, and GraphQL APIs, making it ideal for microservices and cloud-native architectures across the board, offering an incredibly powerful set of security tools and solutions for teams of all sizes and focuses. StackHawk stands out for its developer-friendly UX, actionable findings, and robust support for OpenAPI specifications.

Key Benefits:

• CI/CD integration for shift-left security
• Detailed remediation guides tailored for developers
• Fast, API-first scanning with minimal false positives

2. Tenable Nessus

Nessus by Tenable is a well-known vulnerability scanner in the industry, offering decent coverage across networks, systems, and applications. It boasts over 70,000 plugins to detect known vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting and other complex vulnerabilities across code and platform implementations. For some teams, this might be too heavy an instance, but it may be appropriate for larger teams with complex code stacks.

3. Rapid7 InsightVM

Rapid7 InsightVM provides live visibility into an organization’s risk posture. It’s particularly suited for asset management and offers predictive risk scoring based on exploitability and general attack surface measurements. Its dashboards and automation features make it a good choice for security operations teams needing an overview of their security weaknesses and potential vulnerabilities.

4. Qualys Vulnerability Management

Qualys VM is a cloud-based scanner that handles high compliance and regulatory reporting requirements well. It features continuous monitoring, scalable architecture, and integrations with other Qualys tools, making it a good option in highly regulated industries. Its focus on sensitive data means that it will always prioritize vulnerabilities of this type, however, and teams who do not need this specific focus might find it too narrow and specific a tool.

5. OpenVAS

OpenVAS is an open-source scanner that offers a robust feature set in a free and open-source distribution. It’s highly configurable and well-suited for Linux-based environments, offering a source vulnerability management solution that is business-friendly and efficient. That being said, it’s not backed by a team or an enterprise/commercial outfit, so while it’s good for security professionals who need flexibility without vendor lock-in, it may be lacking for teams needing more significant support and guided integration capabilities.

6. Acunetix

Acunetix specializes in web application vulnerability scanning, detecting over 7,000 types of vulnerabilities, including those in the OWASP Top 10 issues list. It supports both black-box and grey-box scanning and integrates well with issue trackers like Jira. That being said, it lacks more general integration solutions and can generate vendor lock-in for adopters.

7. Invicti (formerly Netsparker)

Invicty is a solution that leverages proof-based scanning engines for its vulnerability detection. While this security scanner can automatically verify many vulnerabilities and reduce the risk of false positives, it is relatively specific in its threat intelligence, making it a fit only for certain teams looking for specific issues in their security testing process.

Conclusion

Vulnerability assessments are a foundational element of a strong and modern cybersecurity posture. Whether you’re looking to integrate scanning into your CI/CD workflows or run enterprise-wide network audits, choosing the right tool depends on your infrastructure, team, and compliance goals.

StackHawk leads the pack in 2025 for API-driven environments, offering powerful solutions to improve your security outcomes and secure your system in real time. Whichever vulnerability scanning tools you choose, remember that assessment is just the start – remediation and continuous improvement are what drive real risk reduction. Accordingly, pick a tool that has accuracy and repeatability as core functions – if you’d like to get started quickly, you can check out StackHawk with a free demo today!