It cannot be argued that as the global march of digitization continues to grow unchecked, it has brought high convenience, shorter delivery times, cost-effectiveness, and unprecedented access to the customer base for the organizations. However, this myriad of benefits is also accompanied by the curse of privacy and security breaches that are encountered by the companies invariably. The distressing increase in the number of cyber-attacks against the companies has led to a tremendous negative effect on the reputation and customer retention of companies. Owing to this, the security and vulnerability testing is fast becoming the boardroom agenda of organizations, and it has been acknowledged that one of the most effective ways to evaluate the security system is from the perspective of the hacker and not an insider.
How does It work?
A penetration testing company puts themselves in the shoes of the threat actors and breaks into the security system from the outside to effectively assess the vulnerabilities and weak spots in the network. The fundamental aim of penetration testing is to simulate a real-world malicious attack to detect any potential risks and threats that can possibly impact the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of data. The simulated attack on the business systems, financial assets, and database not only checks for the vulnerable vector points for attacks, but it also evaluates the ability of the IT system to identify and respond to an attack in real-time. By identifying the security weak nodes which may have been overlooked in the routine testing, the penetration testing company facilities the organization to comply with current regulations.
Why Should Organizations Opt for Penetration Testing?
The network penetration test constitutes of the information collection and vulnerability detection phase where the testers understand the scope of the organization and identify any potential vulnerabilities, followed by the exploitation phase within the weak vector points are actively attacked to gauge the capabilities of the IT system, and finally the reporting phase where the derived insights are reported back to the organization in a comprehensive manner.
- Some of the primary advantages of a network penetration testing include;
- Verification of false positives through testing
- Detection of weak nodes and potential threats in the security system at an early phase through a hackers’ eye view
- Enhancement of the security controls through detailed testing
- Circumventing the rate of system downtime by helping the organization avoid any financial setbacks by responding to threats proactively
- Facilitates the organization in meeting the compliance regulations and evading any penalties
Conclusion
Organizations often presume that frequently updating their passwords or having a windows firewall in place is sufficient to safeguard them against any malicious attacks. However, there are many weak attack vectors in the system that the companies may not even be aware of and so, they are often undetected in regular security testing. Therefore, a thorough security and vulnerability assessment of the network security is necessitated to evade malicious infiltrations and data breaches, and for a robust security system.
Author Bio:
Scott Andery is a Technical Writer and Marketing Consultant at Software Development Lead. He has 8+ years of experience in Marketing and he has worked with different IT companies.
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