Today, cyber threats are constantly evolving, so partnering with the ideal penetration testing companies can be your organization’s first line of defense, uncovering vulnerabilities before hackers exploit them.
Pentesting Definition
Penetration testing, often shortened to pen testing, is a method for assessing the strength of an IT infrastructure by securely attempting to leverage weaknesses. These weaknesses might include flaws in operating systems, services, and applications, as well as improper configurations or careless end-user behavior. Such evaluations are also valuable in confirming the effectiveness of defensive controls, along with user compliance with security policies.
An analogy can be drawn between penetration testing and attempting to see if someone could break into your flat by doing it yourself in a controlled manner. Penetration testers, also known as ethical hackers, assess the security of IT infrastructures using a safe environment to simulate attacks, identify, and exploit vulnerabilities. Instead of examining the windows and doors, they target servers, networks, web applications, mobile devices, and other potential entry points to uncover weaknesses.
Why is Pen Testing Important?
Uncover and Prioritize Security Threats
Pen testing assesses an organization’s capacity to safeguard its networks, applications, endpoints, and users from outside or inside attempts to bypass security controls and gain unauthorized or privileged access to protected assets.
Manage Vulnerabilities Effectively
Pen tests provide in-depth information on real, exploitable security threats. By conducting a penetration test, you can proactively identify which vulnerabilities are most critical, which are less significant, and which are false positives. This allows your organization to more strategically prioritize remediation efforts, apply necessary security safeguards, and allocate security resources more efficiently to ensure they are available when and where they are most necessary.
Embrace a Proactive Security Strategy
In today’s world, there’s no single solution to avoid a data breach. Organizations now need a range of defensive security safeguards and tools, such as encryption, antivirus, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions, and Identity and Access Management (IAM) programs, to name a few. Still, even with these essential security tools, it’s challenging to locate and minimize every vulnerability within an IT environment. Pen testing implements a holistic approach to detect weaknesses. In this way, organizations become aware of what fixes are essential and if extra layers of security must be used.
Validate Existing Security Programs and Identify Strengths
Without proper visibility into your entire environment, changes to your security posture might result in removing something that wasn’t actually problematic. Pen tests don’t just reveal what’s not working.
They also act as quality assurance checks, so you’ll also discover which policies are most effective and what tools are providing the highest return on investment (ROI). With these conclusions, an organization can also strategically allocate security resources, ensuring they are accessible where they are necessary.
Boost Confidence in your Security Strategy
By routinely evaluating your security infrastructure and your security team’s capabilities, you can eliminate guesswork about potential attacks and your organization’s response. Through this safe testing environment, you’ll gain valuable experience to proactively prepare and ensure your organization is never surprised by a real attack.
Adhere to Industry Standards
Penetration testing aids organizations in tackling the general auditing and adherence requirements of regulations and industry best practices. By simulating an assault on an organization’s infrastructure, pen testing can showcase precisely how an attacker could gain access to confidential data.
As attack tactics develop, frequent mandatory testing guarantees that organizations can stay ahead of the curve by uncovering and fixing security weaknesses before they can be exploited. Additionally, for auditors, these tests can also validate that other mandated security measures are implemented or functioning as intended. The comprehensive reports that pen tests generate can assist organizations in demonstrating continuous due diligence in upholding necessary security controls.
How Does Pen Testing Work?
Penetration testing, often conducted with specialized tools (manual or automated), systematically hunts for and exploits weaknesses in critical systems like servers, user devices (endpoints), web applications, wireless networks, network equipment, mobile devices, and other potential entry points.
Once testers successfully exploit vulnerabilities in a specific system, they may try to use that compromised system to launch further attacks on internal resources. This typically involves incrementally gaining higher levels of security access and deeper infiltration into electronic assets and information through a process known as privilege escalation.
Information about any successfully exploited security weaknesses discovered through penetration testing is typically compiled into a report and presented to IT professionals and network system administrators. This report helps these professionals make informed decisions and prioritize necessary corrective actions.
The primary goal of penetration testing is to assess the likelihood of systems or user compromise and evaluate any associated consequences these incidents may have on the affected resources or operations.
Through penetration testing, you can proactively identify the most critical security vulnerabilities before malicious actors do. However, it’s more than just infiltration. Pen testing is a comprehensive, well-planned undertaking that consists of several distinct stages:
- Planning & Preparation: Clearly define the goals and scope of the testing project.
- Discovery: Conduct various investigative activities to gather information about the target system.
- Penetration & Exploitation: Test identified security weaknesses, gain access and elevate privileges within the system.
- Analysis & Reporting: Analyze and report the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk to the organization.
- Clean Up & Remediation: Remove any traces left behind from testing activities and fix discovered weaknesses.
- Retesting: Verify that the fixes were implemented successfully and identify any new vulnerabilities that may have emerged.
What to Do after a Pen Test
Analyzing the insights from pen testing presents a golden opportunity to brainstorm future plans and re-assess your overall security posture. Viewing pen tests simply as a completed task and neglecting them won’t fortify your security stance. Scheduling a dedicated time for a post-test analysis to distribute, discuss, and thoroughly grasp the findings is essential.
Furthermore, communicating these results with clear, actionable insights to key decision-makers within the organization will better illuminate the risk these vulnerabilities pose and the positive impact that remediation will have on the business.
Through meticulous review, evaluation, and leadership buy-in, pen test results can be transformed into practical steps for immediate improvements and key takeaways that will help mold more robust security strategies.
How Exploits Are Used in Pen Testing
Infiltrating a system often involves attackers using an exploit, essentially a tool designed to take advantage of a known weakness in a targeted system’s application or device. These exploits can grant attackers unauthorized access or elevated privileges. Pen testers also utilize exploits to provide insight into what malicious actors might be able to achieve.
Unlike attackers who often need to develop custom exploits for newly discovered vulnerabilities, pen testers can leverage pre-existing ones. Many of these exploits are readily available online, often anonymously posted by other attackers.
Developing exploits from scratch requires significant expertise and time, a skill honed by ethical hackers over time. During a pen testing job, testers often lack the resources to create a new exploit. Therefore, similar to attackers, they often rely on pre-written exploits readily available online.
Since exploit development is a time-consuming and specialized task, both attackers and pen testers constantly seek out pre-written exploits or exploit libraries to save time and effort. Access to extensive exploit libraries is a significant advantage often associated with professional pen testing tools.