The complexity of your IT infrastructure is increasing day by day. Consequently, you need to connect several devices to your secure office network to facilitate your business operations. However, connecting multiple devices through the internet can make your IT infrastructure and business data vulnerable to security threats. Moreover, organizations that handle sensitive customer data or possess vast amounts of business information face a higher risk of exploitation by hackers. For instance, an incident of data theft can lead to significant losses in potential customers and revenue. Therefore, it has become critical for businesses to remain safe and ensure the security of their assets. To address these concerns, you need to foolproof your IT infrastructure to prevent any attempts at penetration. Ultimately, implementing effective penetration testing has become vital for safeguarding your IT infrastructure.
Organizations and managed IT services providers (MSPs) use multiple standardized security measures to protect businesses from attempts of system penetration. Penetration testing is such a specialized technique to detect any gap in the system that an attacker can find and gain access to in your system. Penetration testing is an effective method to stop hackers from stealing your critical data and saving you from losses.
What is penetration testing
Penetration testing is conducted over the whole IT infrastructure to detect exploitable loopholes of your network, server, software, and hardware. People also refer to it as ethical hacking. This testing technique identifies any vulnerabilities in your system that attackers may exploit. Here the testers try to determine whether a hacker’s attempt to penetrate your system, like cross-site scripting, man-in-the-middle, SQL or null byte injection, etc., can breach your organization’s cybersecurity posture.
Penetration testing is an effective way to identify an organization’s security flaws before hackers get the chance to steal your sensitive information. With penetration testing, you can have an impartial assessment of the security posture of your whole IT infrastructure. Penetration testers also provide you with valuable suggestions on improving your security measures.
Types of penetration testing
Whitebox testing
In this testing technique, the testers possess complete knowledge about all your network environment and systems. They even get complete knowledge and access to any source code. Then they conduct pen testing to assess the vulnerabilities in your system. A whitebox testing can result in an in-depth analysis of your system, providing more detailed results and targeted solutions.
Blackbox testing
In case of blackbox testing, the testers don’t get any information about your IT infrastructure before testing. Many people consider blackbox testing the most authentic testing process because testers conduct it in scenarios similar to those of an attacker with no inside information. With this testing method, testers may encounter unexpected vulnerabilities in your network and business systems.
Greybox testing
The term is self-explanatory. In case of greybox testing, limited information, like login credentials, is shared with the tester. Greybox testing is the most popular one as it is the most efficient one in respect of cost, speed, and effort.
Why penetration testing is essential
It’s simple. Cyber security is essential for your business. No one wants to suffer:
- Loss of business data or leak of sensitive information
- Monitory losses
- Lack of customer trust and lose them to competitors
Penetration testing is a vital component of cybersecurity reinforcement. Professional tester conduct penetration testing in a controlled environment to identify the potential loopholes in your business IT systems, network, servers, devices and web applications and helps you to eliminate them before hackers can exploit them. Without proper investigation, you might have loopholes in your IT infrastructure that hackers can locate and use to gain access to your system. It can lead to malicious activities in your system and data theft.
What are the benefits of penetration testing
Evaluation of your IT infrastructure
During penetration testing, testers thoroughly investigate your entire network, Virtual Private Networks (VPN), computers, mobile devices, servers, remote access, databases, along with the networked scanners and printers. It is needed to evaluate your security initiatives and ensure the security of your business assets, resources, employees, and customers. Even with every upgrade of your infrastructure, you need to conduct penetration testing to investigate if any new vulnerability is there. Cyber security assessment at regular intervals can help you keep your infrastructure secured from ever-evolving cyber-attack techniques. Penetration testing is the measure to keep you aware of the efficiency of cyber security systems and where you need upgradation.
Regulatory compliance
Pen testing is also essential to meet several regulatory compliances, such as PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), ISO 27001, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), and so on.
Cyber security risk assessment
Pen testing is meant to identify and assess security risks before an attacker can identify and exploit them. So, you need to do a regular risk assessment of your infrastructure to detect if any weak spot is there.
Identification of mobile app data leakage
Along with software and hardware, penetration testing also investigates the flaws of your mobile apps to stop you from making your user data vulnerable to hackers. Mobile apps are often designed to handle sensitive data. They are also an easy gateway to the core infrastructure and often become a preferred target to the attackers. Therefore, you should consider app security as a crucial aspect, and pen testing can help you with it.
Authorization and authentication issues
For ensuring the security of your infrastructure, identification, authentication and authorization of user access is vital. Pen testing can also help you to identify if any gap is there with your authorization and authentication processes. It can also identify issues in your network perimeter and internal systems.
Security
Though it is pretty challenging to secure a system 100%, penetration testing and the expertise of the professionals can help you to minimize the security risks and improve the stability of the system.
Conclusion
Penetration testing is essential for organizations. It can be beneficial in multiple ways, including eliminating potential risks, saving you from monetary losses, preserving the brand reputation, helping with regulatory compliance, and so on.
Therefore, it is vital to perform pen-testing at regular intervals and improve your system’s stability. For the best outcome, you can consider hiring an IT consulting services company with years of experience and expertise in conducting effective penetration testing.
