What Is Penetration Testing and Why Is It Important?

How many times have you walked away from your home and gone back to double-check if you locked the front door? Do you have the same defensive mentality about your business’s infrastructure and online presence?

Our penetration testing services not only check the front door but also the windows, roof, back door, the door you didn’t know you had, and even the cat flap.

This raises the question, what is penetration testing and why is it important?

In short, a penetration test is an in-depth assessment of the exploit ability and weaknesses of your business’s digital assets.

Penetration tests can uncover a range of security vulnerabilities, like poor password hygiene, unpatched software, or social engineering weaknesses. Regular penetration testing is important for businesses to meet security guidelines, improve overall security, and lower their risk of cyber attacks.

What Is Penetration Testing?

According to Gartner, the definition of penetration testing states that penetration testing provides visibility into aggregations of misconfigurations or vulnerabilities that could lead to an attack that could cause serious business impact.

So, what does all this mean?

In simple terms, penetration testing, another term for pen testing, is a digitally feigned cyber attack on a network or computer system. The aim is to assess the security of the target application or system, as well as identify weaknesses that an attacker may exploit.

A penetration test is different from a vulnerability assessment. A vulnerability assessment detects and reports prominent vulnerabilities, but a penetration test aims to exploit these weaknesses to establish whether malicious activity or unauthorised access is possible.

Why Is Penetration Testing Important?

So, why is penetration testing important? Essentially, penetration tests are important as you can use the insights to improve your security policies and mend any detected weaknesses.

Penetration tests can help identify a large range of security weaknesses, including the following:

• Social engineering susceptibilities
• Unpatched software
• Improperly configured security controls
• Poor password hygiene

Frequent penetration testing is crucial to adhere to security regulations and reduce the chance of cyber attacks.

Who Carries Out Penetration Tests?

Penetration tests may be carried out by an internal security team or a third-party service. If you’re considering performing a penetration test, here are some things to bear in mind:

• Select a reputable third-party vendor or security firm
• Determine the scope of the assessment and your end goals.
• Seek management or shareholder permission before moving forward.
• Keep in contact with the security service during the test.
• Solve any security weaknesses you find ASAP.

At Net Consulting, our penetration test assessments will find and demonstrate the attack paths a malicious actor could use to compromise your company’s valuable data and reputation. By revealing these, we can provide expert advice on how to remediate the vulnerabilities and a step-by-step guide to hardening your defences.

To find out more, give us a call at +44(0)29 2097 2020, or send us a message through our contact form.

Types Of Penetration Tests

The most appropriate penetration testing method for each organisation varies, as each assessment is custom to meet different requirements between businesses. Here are some of the different types of penetration tests:

• Internal and external: Imitates cyber attacks from an internal or external perspective.
• Network: Determines weaknesses in internal networks.
• Web application: Determines weaknesses in web applications, like XSS (cross-site scripting).
• Social engineering: Determines weaknesses in human behaviour, like phishing attacks.
• Red team: Exhaustive simulation of an attack scenario, where experts aim to get past defences

How We Can Help

Here at Net Consulting, we tailor each penetration test to meet your specific requirements, giving you a comprehensive evaluation of your security posture. This includes assessing:

• Websites and online-platforms
• Internal and external networks
• Phishing and social engineering
• Company building wireless and physical entry attack surface

Each penetration test includes comprehensive scoping to ensure any business-critical assets that may be at risk are not impacted during your working schedule. Our highly trained experts maintain contact with your onsite technical teams throughout to ensure that everything runs smoothly during agreed testing hours.

After we have conducted our assessment, we will deliver and present a tailored report including all of our findings, remediation advice and closing statements regarding your next steps to greater business security.

We hope this post helped answer what is penetration testing and why is it important, including the different types of penetration tests that can be performed.

We pride ourselves on always tailoring the report to our clients’ needs and requests, so if there are any particular assets that you are concerned about, we can deliver even more of an in-depth discussion regarding those.

If you’re interested in hearing more about our penetration testing services, email Ben Thomas for more information at ben.thomas@netconsulting.co.uk or give us a call to discuss your needs in more detail at 02920 972052.

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