How to Run Continuous Security Scans on Your Website

You cannot scan what you have not mapped. Start by creating a complete inventory of every web asset you own or operate. Missing even one forgotten subdomain or staging environment can leave a wide-open door for attackers.

• List every domain and subdomain (e.g., www, api, staging, admin, dev) associated with your organisation.
• Catalogue all public-facing IP addresses and their associated services.
• Identify third-party web assets you are responsible for securing (partner portals, white-label products).
• Include non-production environments — staging and development servers are frequent targets.
• Document any APIs (REST, GraphQL, SOAP) that are publicly accessible.
• Update this inventory every time a new asset is deployed or decommissioned.

Scanning frequency should match the pace at which your application changes and the sensitivity of the data it handles. A static marketing site and a payment platform have very different requirements. More frequent scans mean faster detection, but you also need a team capable of handling the volume of findings.

• High-risk applications (e-commerce, healthcare, financial): scan at least daily, ideally on every deployment.
• Medium-risk applications (authenticated portals, SaaS products): scan at minimum weekly, triggered on every release.
• Lower-risk public sites: scan at least monthly, plus after any significant content or infrastructure change.
• Always trigger an additional scan after major dependency upgrades, CMS updates, or infrastructure changes.
• Schedule scans during low-traffic windows if your application is sensitive to the additional load.

Getting the initial configuration right saves you from noisy, inaccurate results later. A well-configured scan targets the correct scope, uses appropriate authentication, and covers the vulnerability categories most relevant to your technology stack. Sensagraph automatically discovers and scans your full attack surface once you add your domain.

• Add your primary domain and confirm that subdomains are included in the scope.
• Provide authenticated session details (cookies, API tokens) so the scanner can reach protected pages and endpoints.
• Exclude known-safe paths that generate noise (e.g., logout URLs, file upload stress endpoints) from active scanning.
• Enable checks for the OWASP Top 10 as a baseline: injection flaws, broken authentication, sensitive data exposure, security misconfigurations, and more.
• Confirm that TLS/SSL configuration checks are included in the scan profile.
• Verify that HTTP security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, etc.) are part of the check list.
• Run a baseline scan immediately and review the initial findings before scheduling recurring scans.

A scan that produces hundreds of findings with no context is almost useless. Effective triage means separating genuine, exploitable vulnerabilities from informational notices, and fixing the most dangerous issues first based on real business risk — not just CVSS scores.

• Use severity ratings (Critical, High, Medium, Low, Informational) as a starting point, not the final word.
• Elevate priority for vulnerabilities on assets that handle personal data, authentication, or payments.
• Check whether a vulnerability is exploitable from the public internet versus only from an internal network.
• Mark confirmed false positives and document your reasoning so the same issue is not re-triaged next cycle.
• Assign ownership: every finding should have a named person or team responsible for remediation.
• Set realistic SLA targets — for example, Critical within 24 hours, High within 7 days, Medium within 30 days.

The earlier in the development lifecycle a vulnerability is caught, the cheaper and faster it is to fix. By embedding security scans into your CI/CD pipeline, you ensure that new code is checked for issues before it ever reaches production.

• Trigger a lightweight scan (focused on new or changed endpoints) on every pull request or merge to a main branch.
• Run a full scan automatically on every deployment to a staging or pre-production environment.
• Define a threshold of findings that will fail the build — for example, block deployment if any Critical or High severity issue is detected.
• Use your scanning platform's API or webhook support to fire scans from your CI/CD tooling (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, etc.).
• Publish scan results as pipeline artefacts or post them directly to your issue tracker so developers see them in context.
• Exclude low-severity informational findings from build gates to avoid alert fatigue.

A vulnerability discovered at 2 AM is only useful if someone is alerted quickly. Configure notifications so that the right people are informed the moment a new critical issue is detected — without drowning everyone in low-priority noise.

• Route Critical and High severity alerts to your on-call channel (Slack, PagerDuty, email, or SMS) immediately.
• Send Medium and Low severity findings to a daily or weekly digest rather than real-time alerts.
• Notify the asset owner directly, not just a generic security inbox, so accountability is clear.
• Set up escalation rules: if a Critical finding is not acknowledged within a defined window, alert the next level of management.
• Use webhooks to push findings into your existing ITSM or ticketing system (Jira, ServiceNow, Linear) automatically.
• Test your alerting pipeline end-to-end at least once a quarter to confirm it is working correctly.

Discovering vulnerabilities is only half the work. You need a system to track every finding from its initial detection through to verified closure — otherwise issues get lost, duplicated, or silently ignored.

• Create a ticket for every finding at or above your defined severity threshold — do not rely on scan reports alone.
• Link tickets back to the specific scan finding so context is never lost during handoffs.
• Re-scan the affected endpoint or asset immediately after a fix is deployed to confirm the vulnerability is closed.
• Track mean-time-to-remediation (MTTR) by severity level and report it to stakeholders monthly.
• Maintain a register of accepted risks — vulnerabilities you have consciously decided not to fix, with documented rationale and a review date.
• Review overdue findings in a weekly security standup or backlog grooming session.

Your application evolves — and your scanning configuration must evolve with it. A quarterly review of your scan setup keeps results accurate, reduces false positives, and ensures new parts of your application are not missed.

• Audit your asset inventory every quarter and add or remove targets as your infrastructure changes.
• Review the false positive list and update exclusions to reflect current application behaviour.
• Add new authenticated user roles or session tokens if new protected areas of the application have been built.
• Check that scanning credentials (API keys, session cookies) have not expired and are still valid.
• Review your alerting thresholds — adjust severity gates if the team is experiencing alert fatigue or missing real issues.
• Benchmark your MTTR trend over time and set improvement targets for the next quarter.
• Share a quarterly security posture summary with technical leadership, including total findings, resolution rates, and trend data.