What Is Penetration Testing and Why Is It Important?

How many times have you walked away from your home and gone back to double-check if you locked the front door? Do you have the same defensive mentality about your business’s infrastructure and online presence?

Our penetration testing services not only check the front door but also the windows, roof, back door, side doors, the door you didn’t know you had, and even the cat flap.

This raises the question, what is penetration testing and why is it important?

In short, a penetration test is an in-depth assessment of the exploit ability and weaknesses of your business’s digital assets.

Penetration tests can uncover a range of security vulnerabilities, like poor password hygiene, unpatched software, or social engineering weaknesses. Regular penetration testing is important for businesses to meet security guidelines, improve overall security, and lower their risk of cyber attacks.

What Is Penetration Testing?

Penetration testing, another term for pen testing, is a digitally feigned cyber attack on a network or computer system. The aim is to assess the security of the target application or system, as well as identify weaknesses that an attacker may exploit.

A penetration test is different from a vulnerability assessment. A vulnerability assessment detects and reports prominent vulnerabilities, but a penetration test aims to exploit these weaknesses to establish whether malicious activity or unauthorised access is possible.

You can use the Insights from the penetration test to improve your security policies and mend any detected weaknesses.

Penetration tests aim to assess the security of the target application or system, as well as identify weaknesses that an attacker may exploit.

Who Carries Out Penetration Tests?

Penetration tests may be carried out by an internal security team or a third-party service. If you’re considering performing a penetration test, here are some things to bear in mind:

Select a reputable third-party vendor or security firm
Determine the scope of the assessment and your end goals.
Seek management or shareholder permission before moving forward.
Keep in contact with the security service during the test.
Solve any security weaknesses you find ASAP.

At Net Consulting, our penetration test assessments will find and demonstrate the attack paths a malicious actor could use to compromise your company’s valuable data and reputation. By revealing these, we can provide expert advice on how to remediate the vulnerabilities and a step-by-step guide to hardening your defences.

To find out more, give us a call on +44(0)29 2097 2020, or send us a message through our contact form.

Penetration tests may be carried out by an internal security team or a third-party service. If you’re considering a penetration test for your business, make sure you select a reputable, trustworthy service.

Types Of Penetration Tests

The most appropriate penetration testing method depends, as each assessment is be customized to meet different requirements between businesses. Here are some of the different types of penetration tests:

Internal and external: Imitates cyber attacks from an internal or external perspective.
Network: Determines weaknesses in internal networks.
Web application: Determines weaknesses in web applications, like XSS (cross-site scripting).
Social engineering: Determines weaknesses in human behaviour, like phishing attacks.
Red team: Exhaustive simulation of an attack scenario, where experts aim to get past defences

The different types of penetration tests include internal, external, web application, social engineering, red team, and network penetration tests.

How We Can Help

Here at Net Consulting, we conduct penetration tests based on your needs.

This includes assessing:

Websites and online-platforms
Internal and external networks
Phishing and social engineering
Company building wireless and physical entry attack surface

Each penetration test includes comprehensive scoping to ensure any business-critical assets that may be at risk are not impacted during your working schedule. Our highly trained experts maintain contact with your onsite technical teams throughout to ensure that everything runs smoothly during agreed testing hours.

After we have conducted our assessment, we will deliver and present a tailored report including all of our findings, remediation advice and closing statements regarding your next steps to greater business security.

We hope this post helped answer what penetration testing is and why is it important, including the different types of penetration tests that can be performed.

We pride ourselves on always tailoring the report to our clients’ needs and requests, so if there are any particular assets that you are concerned about, we can deliver even more of an in-depth discussion regarding those.

If you’re interested in hearing more about our penetration testing services or have any questions, you can contact Ben Thomas for more information ben.thomas@netconsulting.co.uk or 02920 972052.

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What is Penetration Testing?