Ultimate Guide to Vulnerability Assessment: What, Why & How (2026 Edition)

If you’re an IT MSP, vulnerability assessment has grown from a river to a flood over the last couple of years.

In 2020, there were 18,000 recorded common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). By 2024, that number had more than doubled, eclipsing 40,000. And 2025 is showing no signs of reversing the trend.

The rise of vulnerabilities means that manual vulnerability assessment is no longer possible. But that doesn’t mean that vulnerability assessment needs to be a never-ending money pit for your business.

In this post, we’ll outline a new way to think about vulnerability assessment — moving it from a cost center into a profitable service you provide your clients.

Vulnerability assessments are the structured, systematic identification and analysis of the risk posed by computer system weaknesses and exploits.

The NIST identifies vulnerability assessment as a subset of its standard on information security assessments in SP 800-115. It includes vulnerability assessment as a key part of the second phase of any security assessment, whereby after vulnerabilities have been identified, professionals investigate and analyze them, organizing them based on the risk each vulnerability poses to the host organization.

For IT teams, vulnerability assessments should be performed on both externally identified and internally identified vulnerabilities.

For the purposes of this piece, we’re going to talk about the assessment itself; vulnerability identification and remediation processes are outside our scope.

Today’s software threat landscape is overwhelming for individual IT teams. Some facts:

• In 2023, the CVE threat database recorded just under 29,000 vulnerabilities. In 2024, that number jumped above 40,000. In 2025, we’re already approaching 36,000, and the Q4 metrics haven’t been finalized yet.
• Less than 1% of CVEs were weaponized against organizations in 2024. This means that identifying the “important” vulnerabilities to remediate is like finding a needle in a haystack. If you have a security team of four people, it’s effectively impossible.
• Sixty percent of security compromises came from known, unpatched vulnerabilities. Attackers exploit vulnerabilities at a median time of five days, but the median patch time for organizations is 32 days.
• This patch gap creates a real-world impact: 20% of security breaches had an initial vector of an unpatched vulnerability, with a mean cost of $4.8 million.

These facts create a lucrative opportunity for managed service providers:

• The vulnerability management market segment is expected to reach $32 billion within the next 10 years.
• The managed IT services market is growing at a rate of 11% to 14% each year.
• When a small business suffers a security breach, 60% close within six months. To secure their operations, these businesses seek expert help.

If you’re a managed service provider, know this: There’s a strong market need for vulnerability assessment services.

Vulnerability assessments tend to fall into a few major buckets. Let’s outline each type and how they can help your clients.

• Network vulnerability assessments involve evaluating vulnerabilities in tools like routers, firewalls and switches. It also involves understanding vulnerabilities in network access and authorization systems.
• Endpoint and device assessments cover vulnerabilities in networked hardware, like servers, desktops, laptops and other internet-connected devices (e.g., smart appliances).
• Web application assessments include assessing vulnerabilities in any kind of browser-based or native client code that users connect to over the internet. One example of web application assessment is using the OWASP Top 10 to evaluate a web application’s current security posture.
• Cloud and workload assessments involve auditors examining virtual machines, containers and cloud platform or application configurations for security issues.
• Configuration and patch assessments are a cross-cutting type of vulnerability assessment that’s most common among vulnerability assessments.

For a configuration and patch assessment, one would examine the current configuration and patch state of a piece of hardware or software and assess the risk related to any unpatched vulnerabilities or misconfigurations.

Vulnerability assessments and penetration tests work hand in hand in a mature security organization.

The goal for a vulnerability assessment is to identify and outline potential risks to your organization. A penetration test acts as a proof of concept, showing the actual damage that results from not remediating those vulnerabilities.

Do you need both? Vulnerability assessment is like daily hygiene; penetration testing is the annual deep clean. Learn how Acronis provides the first and integrates with partners to solve the second.

Performing a quality vulnerability assessment might feel like a daunting task. 

In reality, once you break an assessment down into the constituent steps, it becomes a manageable cycle that you can automate. 

Each step of the process is critical, and if you’re not in the habit of working through the steps, your first time might be tedious. 

But as you grow organization muscle and learn how to leverage automation, each step will grow easier, until it becomes a constant cycle for you and the organizations you support. 

With that in mind, let’s walk through each step in the cycle.

1. Scope and discovery. Here, your team’s job is to identify assets to test. Understandably, in this part of the process, comprehensiveness is key. Vulnerabilities that you miss don’t cease to exist. They simply represent an unknown risk portfolio.
2. Scanning and identification. Next, use vulnerability scanning tools, which have information about existing vulnerabilities and known configuration errors, to automatically scan all of the resources identified in the first step.
3. Prioritization and analysis. This is the critical step of the flow. Triage all of the vulnerabilities that you’ve found using CVSS scoring, the importance of the asset, and the likelihood of exploitation.
4. Remediation and patching. Now, apply missing patches and update configurations to remediate risk. This step is the part where you gain all of the benefit from your vulnerability analysis cycle, but many companies don’t actually do this work. 

There’s a substantial patching gap for most organizations: 73% of companies still use spreadsheets to track their patch status, and 81% postpone applying patches after they find out about them.

1. Verification and rescan. At this point, validate the remediation was successful by rescanning your assets and ticking back to the top of the cycle.

As a managed service provider, you feel the needs around vulnerability assessment acutely.

For starters, there simply isn’t enough talent in the industry to handle the need for vulnerability assessment. In fact, 75% of employers have difficulty filling security roles, so you can’t hire your way out of this problem. But there’s an absolute flood of CVEs out there and more coming every day.

Secondly, there’s a major problem with tool sprawl, which makes things tougher for the employees you do have.

• There’s one tool for scanning things.
• Another tool for patch management.
• A third tool for backup and so on.

Coordinating all of this is a massive undertaking; many teams use spreadsheets to manage the process. There are a lot of cracks for vulnerabilities to fall into.

On top of this, companies are also worried about patching things because doing so can break their existing software. In fact, 81% of security professionals postpone patches due to concerns around operational disruption. So even when they know they have a risk profile, they don’t take easy steps to fix things.

This creates a major opportunity for MSPs. If you can solve these three problems efficiently for your clients, you’re in a prime position to capture the bulk of the annual growth in managed services.

his is where Acronis comes into play, providing a unified platform that solves all of your key problems. 

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud combines vulnerability assessment, automated patch management, AI-based anti-malware, backup and disaster recovery into a single platform. This eliminates tool sprawl, meaning that your team spends far less time trying to make sense of information stored across different systems.

Acronis is built for MSPs. It uses a multi-tenant architecture that allows you to segment your clients but still manage all of them from a single console. With pay-as-you-go billing with professional service/remote monitoring management integrations, Acronis fits snugly within your MSP business model.

The key differentiator for Acronis is risk-free remediation. Because backup is directly integrated with Acronis, you can patch with zero risk to an endpoint. If the patch fails or something breaks unexpectedly, you can instantly roll it back. Voila.

Acronis is purpose-built to scale alongside your business. With a single agent and single console, the platform reduces your workload as your client base grows. This allows you to deliver more high-value security services to your clients without having to increase headcount. 

• Common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs): An identifier for publicly known vulnerabilities. NIST recorded 40,077 CVEs in 2024 and 23,710 year to date in 2025.
• Vulnerability: A flaw or weakness in software or configuration that could be exploited. CVE data shows over 40,000 vulnerabilities in 2024.
• Vulnerability assessment: The process of scanning and prioritizing vulnerabilities in systems, applications, and networks. It identifies CVEs and misconfigurations for remediation.
• CVSS Score: A numerical rating (0–10) used to evaluate the severity of a vulnerability, which helps prioritize remediation.
• Weaponised vulnerability: A vulnerability actively exploited in attacks. Only 0.91% of CVEs were weaponized in 2024.
• Patch management: The process of deploying updates to fix vulnerabilities. Average patch time is 209 days while attackers exploit in five days.
• Penetration test: A simulated attack to exploit vulnerabilities and validate security controls. Unlike vulnerability assessments, it’s manual, periodic, and more focused on proof-of-concept exploitation.

Vulnerability assessment (VA) identifies and prioritizes weaknesses; patch management is the process of fixing them. Think of VA as the diagnosis and patching as the cure. Modern platforms like Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud integrate both, allowing MSPs to automatically scan, prioritize, and patch vulnerabilities from a single console. 

Continuous scanning is ideal, but a practical cadence is key. For most organizations, weekly or monthly scans are sufficient for evolving assets while critical systems may need daily checks. Using a unified platform like Acronis streamlines this, allowing MSPs to schedule automated, continuous scanning without adding to their workload. 

Yes. Regular VA is required or strongly recommended under frameworks such as ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, and NIST 800-53. Assessments provide the documented proof of proactive risk management that auditors require. 

MSPs benefit most from unified platforms that reduce tool sprawl. Solutions like Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud are ideal because they combine VA and patch automation with backup, AI-based anti-malware, and endpoint management — all through a single agent and console. 

Yes. Modern VA uses AI to triage vulnerabilities based on exploit likelihood, asset criticality, and global threat intelligence. This dramatically reduces alert noise. This same AI-driven approach is what powers the AI-based anti-malware in integrated platforms like Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, ensuring protection is both proactive and intelligent. 

The best practice is to use platforms that integrate backup with patch management. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, for example, can automatically back up a system before applying patches. If a patch fails or causes instability, you can instantly roll back to the last safe state, eliminating the fear of operational disruption. 

VA-as-a-service helps MSPs differentiate, reduce client breach-response costs, and create recurring revenue. When bundled with patching and backup on a multi-tenant platform, it converts a cost center into a high-margin service. Acronis's pay-as-you-go model allows MSPs to scale this offering profitably. 

Show them quantified risk: the 27-day "patching gap" between exploit and patch, the average $4.88 million cost of a breach, and the fact that 60% of small businesses collapse within six months of an attack. Data makes urgency tangible. 

Track key metrics like mean time to patch (MTTP), percentage of critical vulnerabilities remediated, and overall reduction in exploitable exposure. A unified platform like Acronis provides a single dashboard to track these KPIs across your entire client base, proving your value. 

Expect deeper convergence. The market is moving toward continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) and tighter integration with XDR platforms. This aligns perfectly with the Acronis philosophy of a unified cyber protection platform, where VA is not a siloed tool but a continuous, integrated part of your entire security posture.

There’s no evidence that vulnerability management is going to get any easier any time soon. 

The pace of CVE discovery is increasing, and we’re already well past a point where dedicated teams can manually triage all the risk those vulnerabilities represent. 

Any time a small business or managed service partner suffers a breach, the results are catastrophic, likely costing more than the company can bear. The result is a landscape where manual assessment processes can’t keep up. For many businesses, that’s an existential risk that they’re silently living with.

In that landscape, unified platforms are the only useful response to mitigating risk. By consolidating vulnerability assessment, patch management, backup and disaster recovery, and other security layers, Acronis Cyber Protect, combined with Remote Monitoring Management combines all of those capabilities into a single pane of glass, segmented by each of your tenants. 

These features remove a ton of overhead in managing your client services while removing the invisible existential threat that they’re living under. If you’re ready to unlock the growth engine for your managed security services, schedule a demo today.

If you’re not quite ready to book a demo, the Acronis Partner Program offers an additional option for starting your journey into offering your clients the safety and security that their business needs. 

Here’s to keeping your clients’ systems, networks, and data safe.