Vulnerability Management - Network-based vs Agent-based Internal Vulnerability Scanning

Network-based scanning - It is the more traditional approach, running internal network scans on a box known as a scanning ‘appliance’ that sits on your infrastructure (or more recently, on a Virtual Machine in your internal cloud).

Agent-based scanning - It is considered the more modern approach, running ‘agents’ on your devices that report back to a central server.

Following are the parameters on the basis of which one can decide whether to go for Network based or Agent based architecture:

1. Coverage

2. Attribution

3. Discovery

4. Deployment

5. Maintenance

6. Concurrency and scalability

I won't draw any conclusions here as in which type of model is better. It all depends on your analysis based on application of above mentioned parameters to your environment, manpower and budget.   

Happy Learning !!