Do Not Confuse a Penetration Test with a Vulnerability Scan—How to Spot a Fake Pentest
8 minute read
There is an old joke in our cybersecurity world:
Asking for a penetration test but receiving a vulnerability scan or what we usually called, vulnerability assessment is like ordering a Michelin-star meal but being served instant noodles." The confusion is not just common, it is actually dangerous.
Businesses looking to secure their digital assets often mistake these two security assessments as interchangeable. They are not. While businesses debate security budgets, cybercriminals are already one step ahead. This is why understanding the difference could mean the difference between a secure infrastructure and a catastrophic breach.
What Is a Vulnerability Scan / Vulnerability Assessment ?
A vulnerability scan is like running a medical check-up. An automated tool sweeps through your systems looking for known weaknesses, much like a doctor measuring your blood pressure and cholesterol levels. It flags potential security gaps based on a database of known vulnerabilities but does not exploit them.
Vulnerability scans are automated and fast, using tools like Nessus, Qualys, or OpenVAS to scan thousands of assets in a matter of hours. These scans identify known vulnerabilities by cross-referencing systems against a predefined list of security weaknesses. However, they do not actively exploit the weaknesses to determine if they can actually be used in an attack. Because of this, vulnerability scans are often compliance-driven, satisfying regulatory frameworks such as PCI DSS, which require periodic vulnerability assessments to ensure security hygiene.
Vulnerability scans are essential, but they only tell part of the story. They don’t account for human ingenuity, chained exploits, or zero-day vulnerabilities that real attackers might use to break into an organization’s systems.
What Is a Penetration Test?
A penetration test, or pentest, is an entirely different beast. Think of it as a red team special forces operation rather than a simple security audit. While vulnerability scans are about finding weaknesses, penetration testing is about proving how those weaknesses can be exploited in a real-world attack.
Unlike vulnerability scans, penetration tests are human-driven rather than purely automated. A penetration tester thinks like an attacker, looking beyond obvious vulnerabilities and chaining exploits together to simulate real-world attack scenarios. Ethical hackers don’t just identify vulnerabilities; they actively test whether those vulnerabilities can be used to gain access to systems, networks, and data.
A penetration test is always customized based on the organization’s specific environment, infrastructure, and business risks. Every test is tailored to reflect the unique attack paths that an organization might face, making it a more comprehensive and realistic evaluation. A vulnerability scan may provide a list of theoretical risks, but a penetration test will go further by demonstrating exactly how an attacker could breach an organization’s defenses and what damage they could cause.
Why the Confusion?
Many businesses mistakenly believe a vulnerability scan is "good enough" and that a penetration test is simply a more expensive version of the same thing. Some vendors blur the lines, selling automated vulnerability scans disguised as penetration tests, further muddying the waters.
This false equivalence leads to a dangerous mindset. Organizations pass audits but remain vulnerable to real-world attacks. Leadership may believe their systems are secure simply because a scan reported no high-risk vulnerabilities. In reality, a vulnerability scan does not test how multiple weaknesses could be combined to create a successful attack path, which is often how real-world breaches occur.
The Business Impact of Getting It Wrong
A vulnerability scan might tell an organization that its web server has an outdated plugin, but it won’t reveal that a skilled attacker can chain this vulnerability with a misconfigured database to exfiltrate customer data. That’s where penetration testing comes in. It assesses not just what vulnerabilities exist but how they can be exploited together to gain full access to an organization’s infrastructure.
For organizations in Malaysia and beyond, where cybercrime is rising and regulations like RMiT and PCI DSS are tightening, skipping a penetration test can be a costly oversight. Many businesses only realize this after experiencing a breach, at which point the damage has already been done.
The AKATI Sekurity Approach: Beyond Basic Testing
At AKATI Sekurity, we’ve seen firsthand how companies that relied only on vulnerability scans ended up with catastrophic breaches. Our penetration testing methodology goes beyond automated tools, combining AI-powered reconnaissance for deep threat visibility, human-led testing that mimics real-world attack strategies, and chained exploitation analysis to uncover hidden attack paths. We don’t just find problems—we demonstrate them, ensuring security teams understand not just the weaknesses but how they can be exploited.
Unlike vendors who provide cookie-cutter reports, we focus on delivering actionable remediation guidance that goes beyond just listing vulnerabilities. Our approach ensures that organizations don’t just identify risks but are equipped with the knowledge and strategy to fix them before attackers can exploit them.
Red Flags Your Vendor Is Selling You a Fake Pentest
Many vendors blur the line between a penetration test and a vulnerability scan, often charging for a pentest while delivering nothing more than an automated report. If an organization sees these warning signs, they are not getting a real penetration test.
One of the biggest red flags is when a vendor provides only a list of CVEs without any proof of exploitation. A proper penetration test doesn’t just list vulnerabilities—it proves their impact. If a vendor only delivers a CVE list without demonstrating how those vulnerabilities could be exploited in a real attack, they’ve likely just run a scan and walked away. Organizations should ask for screenshots of successful exploitation attempts, step-by-step attack scenarios, and a demonstration of actual system compromise to ensure that testing has gone beyond mere identification.
Another clear indication of a fake penetration test is when there is no manual testing and only automated reports. If the final report looks identical to what free tools like Nessus, Qualys, or OpenVAS produce, the vendor has likely only run an automated vulnerability scan. A real penetration test requires human analysis to identify business logic flaws, misconfigurations, and chained attack paths that automated scanners will never catch. Organizations should ask for a detailed analysis of custom attack techniques and confirmation that business logic testing was performed manually, not just through automated scripts.
If the vendor makes no attempt to bypass security controls, this is another warning sign. Attackers do not stop at discovering a vulnerability—they find ways to bypass security mechanisms such as firewalls, web application firewalls (WAFs), and endpoint detection systems. If the security report does not show any bypass attempts, the vendor isn’t testing like a real-world attacker. Organizations should ask for proof of security control bypasses and documentation of techniques used to evade detection, such as WAF evasion or endpoint obfuscation.
A true penetration test also includes credential-based testing. A real-world attack often begins with compromised credentials, whether through phishing, brute force attacks, or leaked password databases. If a vendor only tests unauthenticated access and does not evaluate how an attacker could exploit weak or stolen credentials, they are ignoring one of the most common attack vectors. Organizations should ask for the results of weak password exploitation attempts and privilege escalation testing to determine if an attacker could move laterally within their environment.
Finally, a real penetration test must include post-exploitation analysis. An attacker doesn’t stop at breaking in—they steal data, create backdoors, and move laterally across networks. If a vendor only identifies vulnerabilities but does not show how an attacker could exploit them, they aren’t conducting a real pentest. Organizations should demand proof of data exfiltration, screenshots of exploited access, and evidence of lateral movement or persistence techniques to confirm that a true penetration test was performed.
Choose the Right Test for the Right Job
If an organization’s cybersecurity strategy relies only on vulnerability scans, they are flying blind. A penetration test is the only way to truly assess defenses against real-world attackers.
AKATI Sekurity is one of Malaysia’s leading cybersecurity firms, providing real-world attack simulations that go beyond compliance to deliver actual security. Organizations looking for a true penetration test should reach out to us to ensure that their security posture is tested the right way. The cost of getting it wrong is too high to ignore.
