Quick Answer 

An automated check of your systems against a database of known weaknesses. It produces a list of what's missing, misconfigured, or exposed, ranked by severity. It finds problems — it doesn't fix them.

What It Looks For

Missing patches, unsupported operating systems, vulnerable software versions, weak configurations, exposed network services, open ports, and misconfigured cloud resources — across servers, workstations, network devices, applications, and cloud platforms.

Internal and External Are Different Scans

An external scan looks at your environment from the internet, showing what an attacker sees before they're inside. An internal scan runs within the network, showing what they'd find after getting in.

Most businesses only do the external one. That's a reasonable starting point, but it misses everything on the inside, which is where lateral movement happens.

Scanning Is the Easy Part

A first scan typically returns hundreds of findings. The report is not the outcome — the fixes are.

Businesses that scan regularly without remediating end up with an accumulating record of their own exposure and no improvement. Before committing to a scanning schedule, work out who acts on the results and how the work gets prioritised. Findings on internet-facing systems come first, regardless of what the severity scores say.

It's Not a Penetration Test

A scan is automated and checks for known issues. A penetration test is a person attempting to chain findings together and actually break in. Different exercises, very different prices.

Example Scenario 

A 130-person accounting firm scanned before an insurance renewal, covering servers, workstations, firewalls, and cloud. The scan found outdated applications, missing patches, and exposed services. PureStack prioritised by business risk, remediated, and rescanned to confirm the fixes held.

How PureStack Turns Scans Into Fixes

We run internal and external scans, cut the findings down to what actually matters for your environment, remediate, and rescan to verify — so you end up with a shorter list each time rather than a longer one.