Why penetration testing is important

We will need to have a proper procedure on how to detect, respond and recover from incidents. Here, we will be focusing on why we need to perform a security assessment, such as penetration testing on our IT infrastructure so that we can prevent these nasty incidents from happening.

Penetration testing Penetration testing , also called ethical hacking, white-hat hacking, or pentesting, is a form of security assessment that tests a computer system, network network , or software application to find security vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit. The scope of penetration testing can vary depending on our requirements. It could range from a simple single web application penetration test to a full-scale penetration test on the company, also known as Red-Teaming or Adversarial Simulation.

Here are four reasons why businesses should consider conducting a penetration test on themselves:. How much is your business worth is your business worth today? How crucial to your business is your IT infrastructure?

How much would it cost if that IT infrastructure is disrupted for a day? Basically, this thought exercise is a risk assessment of your business. It uncovers the risk you are exposed to and its impacts. You can either choose to do it on your own or engage an expert to conduct an independent risk assessment. The result of the risk assessment should provide you with a list of prioritized objectives that you need to achieve in order to secure your business.

Depending on the likelihood and impact of the threats, penetration testing can be one of the top priority objectives penetration testing can be one of the top priority objectives. As we continue on, we will touch on various impacts and threats that your business may face.

These threats should be properly addressed if the risk is deemed significant to your business. During the risk assessment, you will assess the impact of not complying to certain laws and regulations if you do not perform a penetration test on your products. Depending on the duration and level of business disruption caused by the breach, the costs of not manufacturing quality products, shipped accurately and delivered on-time can result in net annual losses. In more severe cases, these cyber incidents can be fatal to businesses and family legacies.

The second reason why penetration testing is important is to detect previously unknown vulnerabilities. The worst-case situation is to have exploitable vulnerabilities within your infrastructure or applications while the leadership team assumes assets are protected.

The thoughts of being secure lead to decisions that cause a further lack of awareness, as attackers are probing your assets. Successful attacks, called breaches, can go undetected for months. Another reason that contributes to the importance of penetration testing is to provide feedback on the effectiveness of security tools that manufacturers use in their day-to-day operations.

Most manufacturers and producers use some form of security tools , such as backup software, anti-virus and anti-malware services, and system maintenance tools. While leadership teams may have confidence that these tools are effective, they cannot assign any confidence level until they are adequately tested. Penetration testers help identify misconfigurations and default configurations that could allow criminal enterprises and hackers to disable these security tools, allowing attacks to be successful and financial losses to occur.

The final reason why penetration testing is important to manufacturers relates to adherence to regulated guidelines. Manufacturers that follow regulated guidelines such as Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement DFARS or Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification CMMC to enhance the protection of unclassified information within the supply chain must regularly conduct a penetration test to validate the level of security implemented.

Without conducting regular tests and a list of other requirements, these manufacturers will fail to meet compliance and certification requirements. DoD contractors should begin planning for CMMC certification because failure to secure an appropriate certification level will render contractors ineligible for new awards starting September Penetration testing, also known as ethical hacking or pen testing, can focus on the business needs and wants but can include internal network security testing, external network security testing, web application testing, and mobile application security testing.

The purpose of penetration testing is to help the business and IT leadership identify vulnerabilities within their environment, leading to an attacker accessing privately-owned networks, systems, and sensitive business information. Why penetration testing is important. If you could safeguard your home and your family, would you take steps to do so?

If you could actually see the likelihood of your business being cyber attacked and take steps to safeguard it, would you do something about it? Testing can be automated with software or manual, where a cyber security expert or a team of experts attempt to find and exploit vulnerabilities in your computer systems.

This is how penetration testing first emerged on the computer scene. Penetration testing assesses and reduces your corporate cybersecurity risk and ensures compliance. Ideally you should have good security practices and procedures in place and therefore have a good idea of what the penetration test is going to find. The results of these tests help you determine how vulnerable you are and where you should invest your time and money to ensure your business is secure and compliant.

Certain industries are required to perform tasks to check their compliance and need to stay one step ahead of the hackers. If you add something new to your network or applications , you move office, apply security patches or amend your policies you should run a test. There are advantages and disadvantages to both — in an ideal world you would use both but not every business has the resources for that.

Automated penetration testing can be continuous, it saves time, is cost effective, can check for compliance and gives a realistic assessment of your risk.

Manual penetration testing adds the human element to your vulnerability search. Human pen testers are security experts that are curious, wish to show off their knowledge, are financially motivated and like to be challenged — they will be hoping to find that security gap.

Take the example of the The Scream painting being stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo in , the gallery considered their security cameras and alarm system to be sufficient … it took 50 seconds. The thieves left a postcard behind in the gallery …. This was a helpful article about penetration testing.

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