What is meant by Penetration testing?
Penetration testing, also known as pen testing, is the practice of testing a computer system, network, or web application to find security vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit. Penetration testing can be automated with software applications or performed manually. In any of the ways used, the process involves gathering information about the target before the test, identifying the possible entry points, attempting to break in either virtually or for real, and report back the findings.
The main objective of penetration testing is to identify security weaknesses. Penetration testing can also be used to test an organization’s security policy, its employees’ security awareness, and respond to security incidents.
Purpose of penetration testing:
The primary goal of a pen test is to identify weak spots in an organization’s security posture, as well as to measure the compliance of its security policy etc. Penetration testing can also highlight weaknesses in a company’s security policies.
How often you should perform penetration testing?
Organizations should perform this pen testing regularly – ideally once a year to ensure more consistent network security and IT management. However, because penetration testing does not fit all, when a company should engage in pen testing also depends on several other factors including the size of the company, regulations, and compliance, the budget of the company or organization, etc.
Penetration testing tools:
Pen testers often use automated tools to uncover standard application vulnerabilities. These penetration tools scan the code in order to identify malicious code in applications that could result in a security breach. The pen testing tools examine data encryption techniques and can identify hard-coded values, such as usernames and passwords, to verify the security vulnerabilities in the system. Penetration testing tools should-
- Be easy to deploy
- Scan a system easily
- Categorize vulnerabilities based on the severity
- Be capable of automating the verification of vulnerabilities
Penetration testing is a vital component in the field of cyber security. To be theoretical it should be placed in the forefront for any security tragedy. But it isn’t as simple as doing some mails or new software- it requires people with tremendous skills, as well as a culture where stress testing and hacking your own system is viewed as a necessity, not an optional.
The use of artificial intelligence comes in which helps you to automate the penetration testing and make it much easier for the organizations to do consistently at a scale. This would help the organizations to tackle both the skills and culture issues, and get serious about their cyber security strategies. Basically, pen testing is carried out in 5 stages-
- Planning and reconnaissance
- Scanning
- Gaining access
- Maintaining access
- Analysis and WAF configuration
These stages, if done by a human, opens up a chance for an error. Even if you won’t make mistakes it would be very hard to do well on such a big scale. It requires a very high amount of energy and speed to test a piece of software. This is where artificial intelligence comes in.
Conclusion:
To ensure that network infrastructure is secure, Organizations must identify what you’re protecting and what you’re protecting it from. The most accurate method to evaluate your organization’s information security stance is to observe how it stands up
against an attack. E Com Security Solutions, a big 4 cybersecurity firm perform a simulated attack on your network to identify faults in your system, but with care to help ensure that your network stays online. They follow a structured methodology to ensure a thorough test of your entire environment and meet regulatory requirements like PCI DSS, GLBA, HIPAA, SOX, EU GDPR, ISO 27001, FISMA/NIST.