Do you believe your data is secure? Do you believe your IT infrastructure is safe? Are your web interfaces hardened? These are just a few of the questions that you have to ask yourself before publishing a website or a web application or before deploying a new product. Is it safe? Penetration testing answers can these questions.
But what is penetration testing?
Penetration testing involves ‘attacking’ key IT systems to identify potential attack vectors to use in order to infiltrate and compromise internal or external systems, services, or accounts. Penetration testers are even placed ‘undercover’ in businesses to assess the physical vulnerabilities that are prevalent to IT systems nowadays such as sharing credentials or even using an electronic key tag to gain access to a secured room.
After reading that you might think, “What does that have to do with me?” or “I believe my IT environment is secure.” The answer to the first question is it is important to secure high-value assets such as servers and databases. The answer to the second question is it is better to KNOW that you are secure rather than THINK that you are secure.
Penetration testing is similar to a game of football. Attackers (Pen testers) will identify passing lanes (attack vectors) within a defensive formation (defence mechanisms like a firewall or authentication) that they can utilise to get into a good position to shoot (exploitation). The only difference is that Pen testers don’t shoot. Instead, they inform the customer of the vulnerability to ensure that it is remediated.
So, the main reason why penetration testing is important to your business is that it gives you the opportunity to fail without consequence. A pen tester is not going to exploit a vulnerability and gain access to, for instance, the entire username and password list for your company…but an attacker will.
Brace168 offers a B Aware solution that involves a CREST certified penetration tester to test your IT environment for vulnerabilities.
