A Quick Guide to Penetration Testing | Uses & Benefits
The number of cyberattacks has dramatically increased over the last couple of years. There are many reasons why it happened, but remote work, increased use of mobile phones and businesses moving online are the top three. In the era of digitalisation, companies should pay close attention to their security posture. In fact, it is now more vital than ever to invest in proper cybersecurity since the number of attacks seems to only growing and threats are becoming more dangerous.
While cybersecurity should be your day-to-day task, there are some methods that have been shown to effectively boost security posture and allow businesses to explore their vulnerabilities before attackers can reach them. One of these methods is penetration testing. Below you will learn what pen testing means, how it works and how this testing can benefit your business.
What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing (also known as a pen test or pen testing) is exactly what the name implies - the process where cyber specialists penetrate a company's cyber attack to identify security vulnerabilities. The key thing to know about infrastructure pen testing is that specialists use the same tools and technologies as hackers to provide real-life and effective results.
Vulnerabilities of your systems are exploited in the process via an authorised simulated attack. The goal of this process is to secure sensitive data from unwanted users like hackers who can have unauthorised access to the company's data. Once the weak spots are identified, companies will know what points they should secure and from what types of attacks.
Why Use Penetration Testing?
Risk Assessment
Since a successful attack will cost millions, you would need to prevent attacks instead of preparing for them. While each business costs differently, each type of attack can also lead to different results. Some attacks can damage the business; others can completely run it. So penetration testing is done to get a clear risk analysis. These include penetration test results, firewall logs, network security assessments and other threat detection tests. The results of the tests should offer you a list of prioritised objectives that you need to focus on to prevent the most dangerous attacks.
Reputation
Having a good reputation is essential for every company. It not only boosts customer loyalty but also helps organisations create worthy connections with investors. Now investors and users don't like companies that ignore the risk of attacks. That is why showing that your company has strong cyber security and being tested regularly helps companies to improve their reputation.
Competition and Rivalry
While companies are afraid of losing money in case of attacks, the truth is that they can give their clients to an opponent in case of data loss. In addition, your sensitive data can be disastrous, especially if this information is in the hands of your rival companies. Even though your competitors are not likely to attack you, they can use stolen data indirectly.
Regulations and Compliance
Since attacks happen too often and companies lose essential information that is too private to be stolen, most companies have created certain regulations and applied rules that must be followed. As a result, risk assessment provided by penetration testing allows organisations to estimate the impact of not complying with specific laws and regulations if they ignore a penetration test on your software.