Remember that you are not only testing a security system with simulated cyber attacks, but also your employees and their response to attacks. This means that you cannot rely solely on the effectiveness of your security without taking into account the many employees who constantly need to access the protected information. Safety is a company-wide commitment, so a pen test takes all this into account.
It would be fair to say that some of these data breaches could have been avoided or minimized if there had been a better or different approach to cybersecurity awareness training. Social engineering assessments emulate the coercive and manipulation techniques that hackers use to trick employees into unintentionally violating a company’s cyber defenses. Assessments help organizations identify human vulnerabilities so that they can be addressed through training and improving employee cybersecurity awareness. The time it takes for an ethical hacker to perform a penetration test depends on the scope of the assessment, but it can only take a day or two.
In general, the benefits of penetration testing are likely to outweigh these potential consequences, as you will not be able to protect yourself from threats that you are not aware of. Penetration testing of external networks allows an organization to get a complete idea of which areas are more accessible to external threats and where an organization needs to improve its security measures. A penetration test, also known as a pen test or ethical hacking, is a cybersecurity technique that companies use to identify, test and highlight vulnerabilities in their security situation. These internal employees or third parties imitate the strategies and actions of an attacker to evaluate the hacking ability of an organization’s computer systems, networks or web applications.
Penetration testers are authorized by the server owners to simulate a DDoS attack and generate a report on the integrity of their server. You can validate your current security measures by pentesting and check all risks at the end of the exercise. Ethical hackers who conduct such penetration tests usually document every step of the process on each independent network layer. So you can be sure how secure your organization’s server is, even if you use different protection schemes. Technological innovation is one of the challenges, if not the biggest, that cybersecurity is facing. In order for companies to protect themselves and their assets from these attacks, they need to be able to update their security measures at the same pace.
Variables can include the size of the network, whether the tests are performed remotely or on-site, and the number of IP addresses, applications, and services to be tested. Penetration tests are considered a proactive cybersecurity measure because they involve consistent, self-initiated improvements based on the reports generated by the test. This is different from non-active approaches, which lack foresight to improve emerging weaknesses. For example, a non-active approach to cybersecurity would mean that a company updates its firewall after a data breach has occurred. The goal of proactive measures such as pen testing is to minimize the number of retroactive updates and maximize the security of an organization.
The high cost of a successful cyber attack means that no company should wait for the development of a real scenario before going on the offensive. Using penetration testing tools to uncover gaps in an organization’s security layer allows security professionals and pen testers to correct flaws before they become critical responsibilities. After the discovery phase, penetration testers now have a complete knowledge of the target system. In the simulation and attack exploitation phase, pentesters begin to stimulate real attacks. Various types of automated scanners are also beginning to continue to search for vulnerabilities.
Another important aspect for companies conducting penetration tests is regulatory compliance. The team of cybersecurity experts supporting your penetration testing should have encyclopedic knowledge of the regulatory requirements for cybersecurity. The team must be able to clearly and accurately interpret these regulatory requirements in the context of the penetration testing project. The goal of penetration testing is to evaluate the security measures to protect an information resource by emulating the methods used by real hackers.
In this way, organizations can uncover vulnerabilities in the technical infrastructure and measure its resistance to hacker attacks. This step is often used to determine the ethical hackers who are best suited to perform the test. If a company wants to test its cloud security, a cloud expert may be the best person to properly evaluate its cybersecurity. Companies often also commission specialist consultants and certified cybersecurity experts to carry out security tests.
Simply put, because pentesting finds vulnerabilities that other security measures may not find, the bigger your business gets, the more significant it becomes. For example, firewalls and antivirus software can detect known threats only at the time of installation. New attacks and exploits are constantly being discovered, so it’s not enough just to rely on these measures to protect your business from cyber attacks.
These types of attacks, sometimes called “white hat” attacks, are very instructive. The second reason why penetration testing is necessary is to detect previously unknown vulnerabilities. The worst-case scenario is exploitable vulnerabilities in your infrastructure or applications, while penetration testing services the management team assumes that the assets are protected. Thoughts of being impregnable lead to decisions that cause an increased lack of awareness, as attackers examine their assets. Trava understands the importance of high-quality penetration testing in today’s cybersecurity world.