Pen Testing is NOT a Luxury and Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore It
With how rampant cyber attacks are, you can’t afford to view pen tests as a luxury — it has become an absolute must for companies.
According to cybersecurity statistics, one out of five vulnerabilities is considered high risk or has high severity.
If you aren’t proactively reinforcing your cybersecurity measures, there’s a good chance you’ll fall prey to the attacks of cybercriminals.
Running a penetration test, however, can help you address this.
It can strengthen your cybersecurity and help you get rid of most of your network’s security gaps.
If you’re still thinking twice about running a penetration test, we’ll dive deeper into how it works and why you can’t afford to ignore it.
Understanding your vulnerabilities
Understanding your security vulnerabilities is crucial to establish the right measures to prevent potential threats and reduce the risks of cyber-attacks.
After all, when you know your weak spots that cybercriminals can use to carry out their attacks, the better equipped you will be to strengthen those possible points of entry.
An excellent way to understand your security vulnerabilities is to learn their potential causes.
For instance, some of the most common vulnerabilities come from human error and factors like the lack of cybersecurity awareness and training for your employees.
This can lead to poor security practices like password sharing, leaving documents unsecured, and more — which can also lead to data security incidents and breaches.
Other security flaws can also come from design and development errors on your systems or software that could put your business-critical information at risk.
With how layered and complex your IT infrastructure can get, it can be challenging to find where your security flaws are or what’s causing them.
Conducting penetration tests helps you identify your vulnerabilities before cybercriminals can find and exploit them — effectively reducing the risks of cyber-attacks.
It’s also a great approach to understand hacker motives and why you should take cybersecurity seriously.
Establishing preventive cybersecurity measures
One of the most cost-effective ways to protect your business from cyber-attacks is to prevent them before they can happen.
Penetration testing can help you do this by simulating a cyber-attack on your systems, web apps, networks, and more to check for vulnerabilities.
Although it can be a complex process depending on your needs, establishing preventive security measures through pen testing is vital to keep your business secure from threats.
The test can include breaching attempts on your application systems such as backend/frontend servers and APIs to check for weaknesses like unsanitized inputs that are vulnerable to code injection attacks.
You can then use the results of the pen test to fine-tune your cybersecurity policies and patch your detected vulnerabilities.
Plus, you can use the recommendations from the pen test to create a risk-preventive strategy and optimize your existing security systems.
This way, you can create a cybersecurity remediation plan and manage your resources properly, while making sure that your identified risks are targeted in your security strategies.
Pen testing is also a great way to assess your level of compliance with specific security standards and gain insights on how to improve your adherence to regulations.
This helps you avoid the potential expenses and penalties related to data breaches, and your customers will trust you more because you’re keeping their sensitive data safe.
The different types of testing
Different types of penetration testing can vary depending on various parameters like knowledge of the target, the position of the tester, and where the test is performed.
For instance, if you’re running a pen test without knowledge about the target, testers will use Black Box pen-testing – usually with automated tools – to check vulnerabilities in your IT infrastructure.
Penetration testing types according to the position of the tester include internal, external, targeted, and blind pen testing to simulate attacks on your networks and identify weaknesses.
Common penetration tests, on the other hand, are based on the specific areas where they are performed.
For example, pen testers can run wireless penetration testing to scour all your company’s wireless devices like tablets to spot vulnerabilities in your admin credentials, wireless access points, and protocols.
Network penetration testing is another approach to discover weaknesses in your network infrastructure — including activities like stateful analysis testing, Domain Name System (DNS) attacks, and more.
There are also other factors that you need to consider to help you determine which type of pen testing to run, such as your goals for the test, the cost, etc.
With all the different types of penetration testing, you can go through different layers of your IT infrastructure to uncover your security flaws — which is something worth investing in.
Why investing in penetration testing is worth it
There are many factors involved in running a penetration test, and these can affect pricing from your service providers.
A ballpark figure is usually $1,000 to $100,000 plus — depending on the size of your company and the complexity of your systems.
There are also other factors you need to consider, such as your objective and the scope of the test.
Are you pen testing a small or big website or a social media app? Will the testing include your networks, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, applications, and more?
Or are you running pen tests to help identify security issues in your employees’ workstations and assess if they are staying safe on the web by using the best secure and private browsers?
All of these can affect the price of your pen-testing.
The time and cost for the pen test are also related to the number of networks, IP addresses, parties, applications, restrictions if there are any, and more involved.
The benefits of conducting a pen test to uncover your security vulnerabilities and patch them up before hackers can exploit them is crucial to protecting your business.
After all, protecting your business from cyber-attacks is necessary — otherwise, you’ll be exposed to security risks that can lead to massive data loss, and you’d need to pay thousands in damages.
With how comprehensive a pen test can be in identifying your security vulnerabilities, the benefits can far outweigh the costs.
Final Thoughts
Although penetration testing can require a bit of an investment depending on the kind of test you want to run and the other factors, the benefits it brings to protect your business is worth it.
By identifying your vulnerabilities and giving you insights on how to fix them, pen testing can help you effectively bolster your current security controls and secure your data from cyber-attacks.
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