According to a report by IT Governance (https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/blog/list-of-data-breaches-and-cyber-attacks-in-2023) there were 2,814 data breach incidents in 2023 with 8,214,886,660 records affected. With cyber threats on the rise, businesses are increasingly turning to penetration testing to bolster their security posture. However, for those unfamiliar with the practice, penetration testing can seem daunting and mysterious. In this article, we’ll demystify penetration testing, exploring what it entails, and why it’s essential.
What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing, often referred to as pen testing or ethical hacking, is a proactive approach to identifying vulnerabilities in your organisation’s IT infrastructure and applications. Unlike traditional security measures that focus on prevention and detection, penetration testing simulates real-world cyber-attacks to uncover weaknesses before malicious actors exploit them. Simply, you can think of a pentest as a security audit of your IT infrastructure, applications and in some cases people when conducting a social engineer assessment.
Who conducts a penetration test?
When most people think of a hacker they visualise a hooded figure in a dark room on a computer, and while a lot of us do have dark hoodies and hack long into the night this is very far away from what an ethical hacker is and how they conduct penetration tests. A penetration tester or ethical hacker is an experienced and qualified security professional who ethically assesses an organisations IT infrastructure and/or applications to uncover and validate vulnerabilities, weaknesses and miss-configurations. Discovered vulnerabilities are allocated a severity based on the risk they impose to an organisation ranging from informational to critical. At the end of an assessment, a report detailing the vulnerabilities, and a summary of the assessment is issued and presented to the organisation allowing them to understand the risks and remediate issues.
How does a pentester find vulnerabilities?
Pentesting is both a skill and an art with testers needing to use both their knowledge and experience to navigate around a network or application and uncover potential vulnerabilities and ensure best practises are being implemented. Many vulnerabilities require out of the box thinking to be discovered which means automated tooling won’t always provide an accurate view of an organisation’s risks. Penetration testers use a mix of both automated and manual tooling along with a robust methodology such as the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) methodology or the Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTES) to conduct a comprehensive assessment of an organisation’s assets.
Why is Penetration Testing Essential?
New vulnerabilities and threats are discovered daily such as this finding today affecting 92,000 D-Link NAS devices (https://thehackernews.com/2024/04/critical-flaws-leave-92000-d-link-nas.html). Penetration testing identifies risks by uncovering vulnerabilities that may otherwise go unnoticed, allowing organisations to address them before they can be exploited by malicious actors. Penetration tests are considered snapshot in time assessments and should be conducted at least annually or after any considerable changes to the network or applications to ensure no new vulnerabilities have been introduced.
Many regulatory standards and industry regulations mandate regular penetration testing as part of a comprehensive cyber security program. Compliance with these requirements not only helps organisations avoid fines but also demonstrates their commitment to data protection.
A data breach can severely damage your company’s reputation and erode customer trust. Regular penetration testing helps mitigate this risk by identifying and addressing security vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by malicious actors.
Conclusion
Penetration testing is a vital component of a proactive cyber security strategy, providing organisations with valuable insights into their security posture and managing risk. If you’re interested in learning more about how Securebytes penetration testing services can help protect your organisation, please contact us at info@securebytes.co.uk today for a free consultation.