What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing or pen testing is designed to test a system, network or web application to find gaps or vulnerabilities that have the potential to be exploited by an attacker or hacker.
Penetration tests are critical to gaining a clear understand of an organization’s gaps in security, the impact if those gaps are exploited in an attack, and a clear a prioritized risk-based plan to address the vulnerabilities quickly and effectively.
Pen testing can involve portions of an organization’s environment or the entire environment. They can leverage white hat or black hat hackers and can be conducted manually or almost entirely with automated tools.
PENETRATION SERVICES PROVEN TO EXPOSE AND ELIMINATE THREATS
Uncover vulnerabilities or potential
threats
Understand how to allocate resources to eliminate potential threats
Measure and track
the status of security
controls
Generate a gap analysis geared to strategically eliminate risks in a prioritized manner
Penetration tests provide a baseline assessment of potential threats to begin to reduce the overall risk in your environment in a structured, efficient way. Fundamentally, a pen test provides a list of vulnerabilities, a list of assets associated with the vulnerabilities, and most importantly the risk associated with the specific vulnerability.
The consistent and periodic service delivers:
- A list of assets or systems associated with the vulnerabilities
- A list of vulnerabilities uncovered by a skilled ethical hacker
- The risk score associated with the asset
- A plan to manage or eliminate the risk to reduce the overall risk of the organization
To improve your security posture, should you start with a penetration test, a vulnerability assessment or schedule both?
The answer is both should be part of a threat and vulnerability management program because they have unique benefits. However, penetration tests simulate the actions of an attacker while vulnerability assessments catalogue assets, assign a value to those assets, identify vulnerabilities, and prioritize remediating or addressing those vulnerabilities.
It makes sense to lay the groundwork to improve a security program with a vulnerability assessment and then test the newly fortified defense with a penetration test to ultimately create an ongoing process that incorporates both services.
Learning More About Penetration Testing
Attacks and certainly attackers are evolving and organizations struggle to simulate the latest tactics and threats. Third parties who conduct penetration tests frequently and across industries offer resources as well as knowledge and experience that may be difficult to duplicate in-house.
SecureOps has customized solutions including black or white hat hackers and a variety of intrusion methods including social engineering to provide your organization a comprehensive penetration testing service that is specifically geared to your organization’s needs and cost structure.