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Why Do You Need Penetration Testing?

A penetration test is an intense level of breach simulation, meant to prepare an organization for most types of attack. While lower-level vulnerability scans simply run tests for known and published vulnerabilities against your network; during penetration testing, a skilled security professional (or a security team) acts like a hacker and tries to come up with novel and creative ways to get into your systems.

While regular patching and updating of hardware and software to close off known vulnerabilities is an extremely important security element, it does not guarantee that the network is secure. Penetration testing is a holistic approach that tests other possible attack routes and security vulnerabilities: misconfigurations, internally developed applications and sometimes social engineering of employees.

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Who should perform penetration testing, and how often?

Security testing of this sort is beneficial to nearly every type of business with an online presence, even small businesses. This is especially beneficial for any small business that is protecting sensitive information (or has billing systems that attackers might exploit)

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Security professionals tend to suggest that penetration testing be performed annually for most organizations. More frequently for organizations that experience frequent attacks or may be more prone to developing security weaknesses. Doing it after major changes to networks and systems is also highly recommended.

Internal or External?

Penetration testing can also simulate attacks from the public internet or as someone with access to the internal protected network:

  • External: External testing focuses on the public-facing assets of the company but is more rigorous than a typical vulnerability scan. The penetration testers will probe the organization’s websites, email servers, domain name servers, web applications and anything else they can reach without company credentials.
  • Internal: An internal examination starts the pen tester behind the external defenses, allowing them to get straight to probing the organization’s network. This is most often simulating an attack that begins with an employee being phished successfully or a member of the organization “going rogue” and attempting to escalate their level of access to sensitive information.

Social Engineering

In a pen-testing scenario, alongside uncovering vulnerabilities in the hardware and software systems and exploiting them, the most effective of all is penetrating the human mind to extract the desired information. Such devious techniques are known as social engineering and at R2R our ethical hackers use different forms of social engineering. The most popular forms are:

  • Phishing – Emails
  • Vishing – Telephone Calls
  • Physical – In person visits