You want to make sure your new security system works properly with as little vulnerability as possible. Where your dollars involve, or you can’t afford more to learn from your mistakes and fill gaps in your security system that hackers previously exploited.
The great and guaranteed way to improve your new network’s security is continuously testing it. So, here we will talk about Penetration testing in detail, the benefits of Penetration testing, types of Penetration testing, and the stages of Penetration testing. So, let’s get started on it.
What is penetration testing?
A penetration test or pen testing is a security exercise performed on a computer system to check its security. Cyber-security experts use the same techniques or processes as hackers to find the business impacts of weaknesses in your computer systems.
Penetration tests involve the simulation of different attacks that could harm your business. A pen test might find out whether your system is enough strong to fight against attacks from authenticated positions, as well as organizes many system roles. With the best scope of pen test, we can dive into many aspects of a system that you want for your business system.
Benefits of penetration testing
Assume your organization has designed new systems with the purpose of removing dangerous security threats. Penetration testing gives insight into you how well you’ve fulfilled your purpose. Penetration testing gives you the following benefits according to your new system:
- It finds out weak points in your systems
- Find out the robustness of controls
- Supporting data privacy or security regulations.
- Giving you qualitative or quantitative examples of a current security system for best management.
Types of penetration testing
Depending on the purpose of a penetration test, the organization gives a Cybersecurity expert a great range of information about the target system. Sometimes, the expert’s team sets only one method at the start and sticks with it. Or sometimes, the expert team changes its strategy according to their awareness of the system during the penetration test. In the industry, we discuss here three types of penetration testing:
- Black Box The cybersecurity experts or penetration testing team have no information related to the target system’s internal structure. They act the same as hackers to understand the weaknesses of the system.
- Gray Box The team has some information about the target’s internal data structures. Penetration testers might create different test cases based on this information, like architectural diagrams of the target computer system.
- White Box For white box testing, testers have full access to systems insight and system source code, containers, and some cases even the servers running the system. This type of penetration testing White box gives you the highest level of assurance in a very short time.
Stages of Penetration testing
There are five stages of penetration testing.
- Planning
The first stage is finding the purpose of a test, or the testing methods to be used. Collect intelligence to better understand target works. - Scanning
the second stage is to understand how the target applications will respond to different intrusion attempts. - Gaining Access
this stage involves the use of different web application attacks, to know about the target’s vulnerabilities. Cyber-security experts then try these vulnerabilities, by stealing data, escalating privileges, intercepting traffic, etc., to understand the harm they can cause to your system. - Maintaining access
the purpose of this stage is to find out the weak points of your system that can be used to get a persistent wall in the system. The idea is similar to advanced present threats that stay in your system for months to steal your most sensitive data. - Analysis
the penetration testing outcomes are compiled into a report. Then this information is analyzed to find solutions to protect your system against future attacks.
Last words:
Well, it is relatively new, penetrate or pen testing provides you unique insights into hacker’s brain when they’re attacking or working. It’s precious information or results that even the cyber-security experts can’t give working on the surface provide you better shield cover of your business.
Penetrating testing can be the only or best way to avoid getting targeted by hackers or suffering harm or damage to your system.
