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What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing, also known as pen testing, is a security practice where a cybersecurity professional seeks to find and abuse susceptibilities in a computer system. The key purpose of penetration testing is to recognize security loopholes. Besides, the practice can also be used to assess an organization’s security policy, its conformity to compliance needs, and the organization’s capacity to detect and respond to security events.
Usually, the information about security holes that are recognized or misused through penetration testing is combined and provided to the organization’s IT and network system executives. The practice is akin to a bank engaging someone to dress as a robber and try to break into their building and secure access to the dome. If the robber succeeds and enters the bank or the dome, the bank will acquire precious information on how they need to boost their security measures.
Why Your Business Needs Penetration Testing
Today, eminent security breaks continue to dominate the media headlines, which places a rising number of businesses at risk. They are increasing in amount and intricacy while malicious attackers are vigorously developing new and more classy forms of attacks virtually every day. To evaluate whether and how a malicious hacker can secure unlawful access to your assets, you’ll need a specialized penetration testing service.
Here are the reasons why penetration testing is crucial for your organization’s health and security.
It Exposes Hidden System Susceptibilities Before the Hackers Do
The most reliable way to gauge your security level is by learning how it can be hacked. A penetration test provides a capacity to securely test your system’s resistance to outside hacking efforts. It replicates the actions of a possible prowler by trying to abuse the flaws caused by code errors, software viruses, uncertain locations, service configuration errors and/or operational faults.
Penetration tests are often conducted by organizations following the arrangement of new setup and applications or after the introduction of key changes to their infrastructure. This service can help them recognize and authenticate potential security shortcomings in their IT systems before hackers can make use of them and effectively bring new products to the market.
It Develops Effective Security Measures
The concise outcomes of a penetration test are vital for evaluating the current security level of your IT systems. They can provide your company’s top executives with perceptive information about recognized security holes, their practicality and their possible effect on the system’s functioning and performance. A qualified penetration tester will also offer you with a list of recommendations for their appropriate remediation while helping you develop a dependable information security system and prioritize your future cybersecurity investments.
It Minimizes Network Downtime
The process of retrieving from a security break can be detrimental to an organization, costing it millions of dollars including expenses on customer safety programs, regulatory fines and loss of commercial operability. As per a recent study, the average cost of a data break internationally in 2018 is $3.86 million, which is 6.4% more compared to the last year’s outcome. Therefore, getting everything back on track will need considerable investments, cutting-edge security measures and weeks to recover.
Professional security experts can guide you on the least incidence of penetration tests essential for your explicit business domain and IT infrastructure. They can also direct on the required events and investments with the aim of building a more secure setting within your organization.
It Enables Conformity with Security Procedures
Unquestionably, penetration testing plays a vital role in terms of defending your business and its treasured assets from possible trespassers. Consistent pentests can help you conform with security rules as per the given security standards, and shun the hefty fines linked with non-conformity. These standards necessitate company executives and system proprietors to carry out consistent penetration tests and security checks with the help of top security experts. In addition, the complete reports produced from penetration tests can help organizations increase their security controls and demonstrate continuing due diligence to evaluators.
It Helps You Avoid Costly Security Breaches
Your sensitive data may be compromised by security attacks, which leads to the damage of reliable customers and serious reputational costs. Penetration testing can help you shun expensive security breaks that put your company’s standing and clients’ allegiance at risk. Furthermore, a pen test may raise with time and difficulty if the system needs further scope. It may be also carried out along with weakness skimming to provide even more meaningful perceptions on susceptibilities and possible breach points in your IT infrastructure.
Types of Penetration Tests
Here are the important types of pen testing:
Black Box Penetration Testing
In this testing, tester is clueless about the systems that they are going to test. They are keen to collect information about the target network or system. For instance, in Black Box Penetration Testing, a tester only knows about the likely result and he does not know how the result arrives, nor does he assess any programming codes.
White Box Penetration Testing
This is a complete testing, as tester has been provided with a broad range of information about the systems and/or network. Usually considered as an imitation of an attack, the testing is also known as structural, or glass box testing. This type of testing evaluates the code coverage and conducts data flow testing, path testing, loop testing, etc.
Grey Box Penetration Testing
In Grey Box Penetration Testing, a tester typically provides incomplete or partial information about the internal specifics of the program of a system. It can be thought of as an attack by an outside cybercriminal who had acquired unlawful access to an organization’s network infrastructure documents.
Areas of Penetration Tests
The testers ought to aim the following areas in their penetration tests.
- Web Application testing
- Mobile Application testing.
- Infrastructure testing.
- Physical security testing.
- Wireless network testing.
Conclusion
The reasons mentioned above are absolutely clear as to why penetration testing should be done on a daily basis. The need for the kind of aggressive method to security breach defence is particularly important in systems that have precious or sensitive information stored, such as customer data centers, financial and medical records, an organization’s sales reports, legal documentation, etc.
