Why Do You Need a Penetration Test?
Penetration testing is the most precise and reliable tool to get the real picture of your digital assets’ protection. You can successfully elaborate all your security policies, implement procedures, pass through the information security auditing, make a vulnerability assessment … but to be totally sure all of them work properly you need a careful technical check.
And here penetration testing comes into play. Only it can give you a truthful answer to the questions: “Are my digital assets really cyber secure?” and “What else I need to do urgently to avoid being hacked?” Penetration testing brings you the clear truth about the state and reliability of your cyber defense.
A penetration tester (you may also call him “an ethical hacker”) is a specialist able to think and act like an attacker. Imitating different kinds of cybercriminal attacks, he provides a real-life test of your defense line. Thus, you will have precise information about its week points and will be able to take steps to harden them—just in time to get ahead of cybercriminals trying to exploit these vulnerabilities.
What Kind of Penetration Test Do You Need?
There are three main kinds of penetration testing: Black Box, White Box and Grey Box. All of them have their own benefits and drawbacks.
In a Black Box pentest, the tester has zero information about its target. He acts exactly as a Black-hat hacker targeting your company would do. IT and security departments of the tested company are not informed about his efforts, so this kind of test is the most detailed and close-to-reality. And, of course, it’s the most expensive and time-consuming.
In a Grey Box test, the tester is provided with some (but not too much) information about the company that makes the process a bit quicker and easier.
In a White Box testing, the tester is provided with all information necessary to conduct the pentest and works in close cooperation with the related company’s employees. Many companies choose this variant because it’s far less costly and time-consuming.
Which one is best for you?
It depends on your needs and assets you want to protect. After you get in touch with DIESEC specialists, they will elaborate on the most appropriate variant for your needs.
The Scope of a Penetration Test
Penetration Testing includes plenty of techniques to use and entities to test. They can be divided into three main parts: networks, web-application and people.
A weakness in your network can lead to stealing valuable information or/and infecting all your computers. Unprotected web-application can be broken down or give away all databases in the attacker’s hands. A social engineering attack on an untrained employee can lead to destroying all your information and computers with ransomware… It’s just a few examples of the never-ending list of the harm and losses a cyberattack can cause.
You can choose to test all your assets or just the most valuable ones. Usually, this choice is based on the Risk Assessment results. That means you may need a pentest of the widest scope or narrow it to limited number of servers in the network and web-applications to test or people to be taught.
How to define the exact scope to protect your assets?
Get in touch with our consultants, and we’ll define the scope together based on your unique and special needs.
Is Penetration Testing risky?
Yes, if you hand it over to a low-skilled person. Conducting a penetration test requires surgical accuracy. Sometimes it reminds walking through a minefield, because there are many pitfalls and traps that only a high-professional pentester can notice and avoid.
Here are some examples. One incorrect move can make a server out of order or drop down a website/web-application. Incorrectly defined scope of IP addresses to test may lead to intrusion into a network you don’t own, thus breaking the law. A dishonest person can misuse your data he got access to while conducting the pentest.
To make a long story short, penetration testing is a sophisticated job that requires not only the top-level technical background in many IT-domains but also intelligence, quick thinking out of the box and high ethical standards That’s why you need to make your choice of pentesting company very scrupulously.
Penetration testers are proven high-qualified specialists with rich hands-on experience and the most authoritative certifications in this area – CEH, OSCP, CISA, etc. Hundreds of penetration tests successfully conducted by our company are the best proof you can trust our specialists.