Best Website Scanners for Cyber Security Professionals

The world is moving towards digitalization; from small to large, every business has a website running to showcase its services, and simultaneously the need for the best website scanners is increasing.

In addition to providing services, they also keep user data in their databases, including cookies and personal information provided by users during registration.

Additionally, there are several technologies present outside that makes a website more efficient and easier to use for a user. Consequently, there are more opportunities to be vulnerable.

Basically, scanning is the second phase of ethical hacking, coming after reconnaissance. It aids in locating vulnerabilities present on the target.

EHA

Website scanners are often used to test dynamic web applications; as a result, they are also sometimes called dynamic application security tools (DAST).

Best Website Scanners & Key Features

Website Scanners	Key Features
Acunetix	Identification and Remediation of Vulnerability Reporting, alerting, and analytics all in one place Security Auditing and Vulnerability assessment
AppScan	Vast scanning modes Highly Scalable for web apps and services Centralized Management
AppTrana Website Security Scan	Security experts on the portal write custom rules Single view dashboard with all the information on assets Continuous monitoring of tasks running on
Burp Suite	Ability to intercept and tweak HTTP requests Mapping entire Web App using Spider Fuzzing and brute forcing parameters using intruder
Detectify	Expert remediation tips to fix vulnerabilities. Continuous Scanning in 3 different environments. It provides a risk score and point-in-time score.
Intruder	Authenticated web application scanning Multiple integrations- Jira, Slack, Github, Teams, etc. Tons of checks for known vulnerabilities
APIsec	A huge number of integrations are available Ease of deployment and maintenance Customization
Nessus	Broad CVE coverage Integration on other platforms using API Live results and offline scans
Invicti	Ability to integrate scanner within SDLC Automatically produces proof of exploitability On-Prem and On-Demand deployment options are available.
QualysGuard	Continuous Scanning process Asset discovery and inventory File Integrity Monitoring

What is a Website Scanner?

Website scanner tools enable analysts or testers to thoroughly scan a website and identify any vulnerabilities or weak points in the web application. Depending on the way the tool is made, the process can be either manual or automated.

The website scanner tools crawl through all of the web pages and files in a web app to look for flaws through an in-depth analysis, report them, and, if the scanner is able to do so, simultaneously fix them.

For cybersecurity researchers, the recon process has been greatly facilitated by the website scanner tools.

What Is the Work of the Website Scanners?

Since some vulnerabilities and loopholes are complex and some can be found by connecting multiple vulnerabilities, manual scanning is also a best practice to increase security to the next level.

The Website Scanner tool finds the vulnerabilities that are present on a website and specifies their severity level and CVE IDs if they are available, and it can also assign a CVSS score based on the findings.

This is because automated website scanner tools may not be able to find all types of vulnerabilities and loopholes.

Is it Illegal to Scan a Website for Vulnerabilities?

Yes, it is against the law to scan a website for vulnerabilities if you don’t have the owner’s consent to do so. It is necessary to obtain the website owner’s consent in order to conduct a scan of their infrastructure and then ethically report the results to them.

The owner’s permission is required because otherwise, you risk getting into legal trouble if the company decides to sue you for scanning and accuses you of stealing intellectual property (IP) rights.

How Do I Scan My Website for Malware?

The ability to scan for malware is frequently included in Website scanner tools, and it may be based on anomaly-based detection or signature-based detection. The tool will automatically report the results to the user.

Website scanner tools may be used to scan your website and find any malware that may be there. However, it depends on the scanner’s design whether it blocks the issue and resolves it or not.

In this write-up, we will read about the 10 best website scanners.

Let us have a look at the ten best website scanners for 2023.

1. Acunetix

Acunetix is one of the best website Scanner widely used. It’s an automated website scanning tool that hunts for vulnerabilities like SQL injection, Cross-site Scripting, etc., and crawls through the website and detects the bugs, subsequently reporting them.

It catalogs all of the subdomains, categorizes the technologies being used, and, if any are discovered on the website, flags them as being outdated.

Based on its UI, the final scan report will be available in both PDF and HTML formats. However, a report could be created in any format using APIs.

A very interactive dashboard from Acunetix offers a statistical overview of all the web assets available, including the total number of targets and scans, the most vulnerable targets, and discovered vulnerabilities.

It has an interesting feature that shows a trend chart for each month for the previous 12 months about the number of bugs, targets, and the typical amount of time it takes to fix them. It is one of the best website scanner tools.

Features of Acunetix

Identification and Remediation of Vulnerability
Reporting, alerting, and analytics all in one place
Security Auditing and Vulnerability assessment
Integration with other software using API.

Pros:	Cons:
● Lots of integrations are possible.	● Scans are not satisfactory and miss simple vulnerabilities.
● Easy to install and maintain.	● Long response time from customer support.
● User-friendly UI and cost-effective.	● Insufficient fuzzing payloads.

Acunetix is paid software, but you can have a free trial for a fixed period.

Acunetix Demo/Trial

2. AppScan

The different modes of AppScan enable software composition analysis (SCA), interactive application security testing (IAST), static application security testing (SAST), and dynamic application security testing (DAST).

For effective policy enforcement and risk management, it can track multiple security testing programs. To reduce the risks in an easy and effective way, AppScan offers workable fixes.

Directly within the current deployment environment, it can conduct security analysis and make recommendations for corrective action.

To prevent expensive vulnerabilities that appear later in the development lifecycle, AppScan source mode can be added early on in the SDLC.

With the aid of AppScan, one can comply with industry benchmarks and standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, OWASP Top 10, SANS 25, and others.

Features of AppScan

Vast scanning modes
Highly Scalable for web apps and services
Centralized Management
Regulatory Compliance.

Pros:	Cons:
● Highly secure and capable tool.	● Support is too bad.
● Better visualization of reports.	● Only 1000 scans are allowed with the license, then need to delete manually.
● Customizable testing policies	● Lots of false positives.

AppScan Demo/Trial

AppScan is a paid tool with four different modes: Standard, Enterprise, Cloud, and Source.

3. AppTrana Website Security Scan

AppTrana is one of the best website scanners that offer security to companies through routine scans, risk detection, traffic monitoring, and other measures. This website scanning tool can be used manually or by scripts that run automatically.

With the help of this website scanner tool, you can see all of the blocked attacks as well as new trends. It offers real-time security using APIs against OWASP Top threats and has round-the-clock security support.

All cases that come under WAF sight are covered by custom rules, and the protection status is shown on the portal.

You can receive complete protection from DDoS attacks of all types and sizes with AppTrana’s unique DDOS policies.

Features of AppTrana

Security experts on the portal write custom rules
Single view dashboard with all the information on assets
Continuous monitoring of tasks running on
Distributed Global Edge Locations allow users to monitor website performance.

Pros:	Cons:
● Gives a summary of blocked attacks in a daily report.	● Added latency to the response time of the website.
● Great support and institutive dashboard.	● More customization options are needed.
● 24×7 monitoring of the website
● Immediate firewall update.

AppTrana Demo/Trial

AppTrana is paid software, but you can avail yourself of the 14-day trial period.

4. Burp Suite

The most popular website scanning tool used by web app security researchers, bug hunters, and security engineers in their daily work is Burp Suite. It is regarded as one of the best penetration testing and vulnerability scanning tools.

With many features already included, Burp Suite supports both automated dynamic scans and manual testing techniques.

The Burp Suite’s spider, repeater, sequencer, proxy, decoder, and extender features are some of the most frequently used ones.

Burp Suite must first be set up with the browser to use the proxy before it can intercept the traffic.

It can be used to perform an initial scan, analyze the logic of the web application, look for security holes, and then take advantage of them.

Features of Burp Suite

Ability to intercept and tweak HTTP requests
Mapping entire Web App using Spider
Fuzzing and brute forcing parameters using intruder
Customizable configurations for testing
Multiple Burp extensions and deployment options.

Pros:	Cons:
● Lots of features are available for testing vulnerabilities.	● Log separation is not available for manual scans and is automated.
● Easy to install and set up.	● UI can be improved a bit.
● Fewer false positives.
● Integration with many powerful extensions.

Burp Suite Demo Trial

Burp Suite comes in different editions: community (free), Professional, Enterprise, and Dastardly.

5. Detectify

The tool Detectify is another best Website Scanners that can map the entire attack surface and identify any critical vulnerabilities using a fully automated external attack surface management approach.

This website scanner tool checks the website for vulnerabilities and notifies the user right away.

Initialize the assets before scanning them, and then define the scan profiles and configurations to launch the scan and collect the results.

The three environments that Detectify supports for scanning assets are Development, Staging, and Production.

Each time a new vulnerability is discovered by researchers around the world, Detectify updates its scanner to reflect this.

Additionally, API integration is supported, enabling the build system itself to initiate and schedule scans.

Features of Detectify

Expert remediation tips to fix vulnerabilities.
Continuous Scanning in 3 different environments.
It provides a risk score and point-in-time score.
Integration with tools like Jira, Slack, and webhooks.

Pros:	Cons:
● Integration of notifications.	● UI is confusing and needs to be improved.
● Detailed remediations for the findings.	● Documentation is not well-maintained.
● Beginner-friendly insightful reports.

Detectify Demo/Trial

Although Detectify is a paid website scanner tool, you can schedule a demo and try it out for 14 days without paying anything.

6. Intruder

The Intruder is yet another fantastic website scanning tool that scans the website for the OWASP Top 10, SANS Top 25, CWE, and numerous other vulnerabilities.

Using Intruder’s API, the tool can be added to the CI/CD pipeline to enhance the effectiveness of the security workflow.

You are protected from the most recent attacks and have plenty of time to take preventative action before a catastrophe occurs, thanks to Intruder’s ongoing vulnerability monitoring system.

It is also possible to use Intruder to perform a comprehensive security scan on all of your endpoint devices, servers, clouds, websites, and other computing resources.

Intruder’s primary selling point is its scanning capabilities, which are followed by detailed remediation instructions.

Features of Intruder

Authenticated web application scanning
Multiple integrations- Jira, Slack, Github, Teams, etc.
Tons of checks for known vulnerabilities
Comprehensive testing with well-documented reports.

Pros:	Cons:
● Real-time scans of the latest signatures.	● The initial setup cost is expensive.
● Good alert management system.	● The license renewal process takes a long time.
● Super-fast support and resolutions.

Intruder Demo/Trial

The intruder is a paid scanning tool, but it offers a 30-day free trial.

7. APIsec

It is a well-known tool for automating API scans. It is a tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to develop automated tests.

No matter how big or complicated your API is, it identifies weaknesses—including logical business flaws—before attackers can take advantage of them.

Before going into production, the tool identifies and flags critical flaws without slowing down the process or adding any technical debt.

There are many ways to integrate including Teams, Jenkins, AWS, Gitlab, Docker, Bamboo, etc.

All the business logic flaws related to RBAC, ABAC, application DoS attacks and injection flaws that hackers could exploit are revealed automatically created custom security attack vectors.

Manually, we can only look for simple attacks like SQL injection, but this tool analyzes all endpoints thoroughly and provides a comprehensive report. For analyzing web applications it is the best Website Scanner to be in the pocket.

Features

A huge number of integrations are available
Ease of deployment and maintenance
Customization
APIsec offers enormous scalability.

Pros:	Cons:
● Continuous and automated DevSecOps support.	● Less detailed documentation.
● Complete coverage on reports.	● Customization of product is not up to mark.
● Efficient ticketing system for issues.

APIsec Demo/Trial

8. Nessus

With over 72,000 CVEs and 177,000 plugins, Nessus is one of the best and most popular vulnerability scanning tools at the industrial level.

It is a multi-platform network that houses a vulnerability scanner that works with servers running Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX.

On any platform, including the Raspberry Pi, Nessus can be installed. It has many options, including policy configuration for scans, scan template configuration, audit file configuration, reporting, and plugin configuration.

Nessus doesn’t actively defend against attacks; it merely scans your computers for openings that hackers could take advantage of.

It is the system administrator’s responsibility to develop a security solution to close these holes. It is one of the best website scanners.

Nessus was initially developed as a network security scanner. Eventually, Nessus added some tests for web vulnerabilities.

However, web vulnerability scanning in Nessus does not offer as many features.

Features of Nessus

Broad CVE coverage
Integration on other platforms using API
Live results and offline scans
External Attack Surface Scanning

Pros:	Cons:
● Great list of pre-defined templates and plugins.	● Very Expensive
● Regularly updates the latest CVE’s.	● Hard to manage and download asset information.
● UI is user-friendly.	● Plugins are not customizable.

Nessus Demo/Trial

Expert and Professional are the two different modes available for Nessus. Both are fee-based, but the Expert mode is available for a 7-day free trial.

9. Invicti

With the help of its proprietary proof-based scanning technology, the website scanner tool Invicti is able to recognize and validate vulnerabilities while confidently indicating results that are definitely not false positives.

Invicti can be used as a website scanning tool in your DevSecOps or SecDevOps environment by integrating with CI/CD solutions.

It uses a special black-box technology for dynamic application security testing (DAST) and can be hosted online or installed on-premises.

Additionally, Invicti scans for commercial and open-source web servers like IIS on Microsoft Windows and Apache and Nginx on Linux.

Additionally, it provides the ability to create tickets through ticketing software for problems encountered during configuration, scanning, or reporting analysis in the dashboard.

Features of Invicti

Ability to integrate scanner within SDLC
Automatically produces proof of exploitability
On-Prem and On-Demand deployment options are available.

Pros:	Cons:
● Works for both legacy and modern applications.	● Does not integrate with many systems.
● Continuous Scan.	● High price than other competitive tools.
● Generates proof of exploit to confirm the vulnerability.

Inivcti Demo/Trial

Invicti is a paid website scanning tool, and before purchasing, you can try a demo too. It is one of the best website security scanners.

10. QualysGuard

Qualys enables the security risk analysis and reporting of web applications. It combines network analysis (passive scanning) capabilities, cloud agents, and virtual scanners into a single application.

Azure, Splunk, Jenkins, and other services can all be integrated with Qualys, and new integration services will be added to the platform soon. Qualys is one of the best Website Scanners, widely used.

To cover every app within your network perimeter, QualysGuard has implemented a deep scanning methodology. By using behavioral analysis, this website scanning tool can also find infections, malware, and zero-day threats.

A central dashboard allows users to take direct action from its interface while also displaying scan activity, infected pages, and malware infection trends.

You can drill down into specifics using Qualys’ interactive reporting features, which also provide you with a broad overview of your web app’s security posture.

Features of QualysGuard

Continuous Scanning process
Asset discovery and inventory
File Integrity Monitoring
Monitoring of Compliance
Labeling scans and using labels for reporting.

Pros:	Cons:
● Qualys constantly updates its features.	● Inadequate technical support.
● You can schedule future scans.	● Extremely poor documentation.
● Cloud-based tools are thus accessible from anywhere.

Qualys Demo/Trial

Qualys is a paid tool with different modes.

What is a website vulnerability?

Vulnerability is a type of weakness that opens a particular surface for attack. An attack may be caused by a website’s configuration errors, poor code validation, etc.

What are the common vulnerabilities of a website?

Some common website vulnerabilities are SQL Injection, Broken Authentication, Business logic flaws, cryptographic failures, command injection, etc. OWASP Top 10 mentions the top 10 common vulnerabilities found in a website during a period of time.

What are the basic security issues?

Unpatched bugs that have previously been discovered cause significant security issues. In many situations, using pirated software invites malware, which ultimately compromises the infrastructure.

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