Penetration testing (also known as pentesting) is one of the most popular new cybersecurity skills. But before you dive into this exciting career path, there are some things you should know first!
Penetration testing services replicate hackers to identify security gaps. They use a variety of tools to find vulnerabilities and exploit them.
Scope of Penetration Test
In the wake of major cyberattacks, organisations are realising the importance of penetration testing. They’re looking to ensure that their information systems are protected against security breaches and other malicious activity like phishing attacks and BEC (business email compromise).
A penetration test is a type of vulnerability assessment that simulates hacker attacks to assess the strength or weakness of an organisation’s cybersecurity. This enables a full risk assessment to be completed, which can then be used to identify and implement effective mitigation strategies.
However, penetration tests are not a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s important to work with your penetration testers to establish the scope of a penetration test and to ensure that it meets your organization’s needs.
Objectives
Many organisations spend a lot of time and money on risk assessments, information security policies and annual compliance audits. However, the reality is that cyber attacks are insidious and often undetectable. Penetration tests, also known as ‘pen testing’ or ‘ethical hacking’ are one way to test your defences and see how vulnerable you really are.
A penetration test simulates a real-world attack in a safe environment to identify and exploit vulnerabilities. It can probe for vulnerabilities in your networks (infrastructure), applications or even physical security measures such as employee susceptibility to phishing attacks.
Methods
During penetration testing, ethical hackers use a variety of tools and methods to simulate cyber attacks against an organization. These tests help companies identify and close security vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them.
One of the most common penetration tests is the network services test, which aims to search for and exploit weaknesses in systems like firewalls, routers, servers, proxy services and more. This test can be done locally or remotely.
Other pen test methodologies include grey box penetration testing, which uses limited information about the target environment to simulate external security attacks. There is also social engineering penetration testing, which aims to find out how susceptible employees are to phishing attacks.
Results
Once the penetration test is complete, a report should be prepared. This is an important step in providing the security team and business owners with a clear understanding of discovered vulnerabilities. The report should be written without a lot of technical details so that business executives can understand the risks and make decisions about remediation.
The results of a penetration test will include an executive summary, recommendations and remediations, findings and technical details, and the appendices. The last section, called the conclusion, ties up all of the loose ends and provides an overview of the penetration test engagement as a whole.
