Penetration testing is the safest way to determine how well your security protocols protect your system. Ethical hackers expose security weaknesses, giving you a heads-up on what needs to be done to reduce your risk.
You might consider a penetration test necessary during an initial assessment of your security procedures, as part of industry regulatory requirements, or perhaps with a new business acquisition.
In truth, Penetration Testing is a good, if not crucial tool for any of these circumstances.
Rigorous (and regular) Penetration Testing helps you assess your security strategy, plan future improvements, and prove to industry bodies and customers that you are doing everything possible to protect your organisation’s cyber security.
If you’re planning a penetration test project, you probably want to know the process.
Do you just call someone and ask them to try and hack your system? Not quite.
Penetration Testing can be broken down into multiple phases. What happens in each phase will vary depending on the type of organisation and the type of test conducted, but the methodology is the same.
Before commencing this cyber assessment, you and your chosen security service provider must agree on the project's scope, objectives, the budget, etc. Beginning a project without first pinpointing these details will be a waste of time and money. The tester might be looking in the wrong place, or the results could be watered down by having a scope that is too broad.
The penetration tester researches your organisation using all the available means, from search engines to the dark web. This phase exposes all the publicly available data and how it could be used against you and your organisation. For example, if your CEO has a public Facebook profile and a special relationship with a cat named Wendy, that might give your attackers a little insight into his password.
The test moves into a more active phase. The tester scans your system for vulnerabilities, looking at your overall IT infrastructure configuration and searching for any open ports or weaknesses that could be exploited.
The penetration testers begin exploiting those vulnerabilities. This phase identifies which of the vulnerabilities enables the tester to gain ‘unauthorised’ access to your system/information. The goal of this phase is to confirm the vulnerability's existence and how exploitable it is.
Getting in might seem like the key point of a penetration test, but customers are most interested in what attackers can do once they’ve gained access. The tester will use all available means, including misconfigured services, permissions, and other techniques, to gain the highest privileges for the vulnerable targets. This might include, for example, trying to extract or manipulate data, or – in the case of a physical breach – attempting to remove a laptop or tablet.
After successfully completing the test, the tester must ensure that everything is left as they found it. Any scripts or files planted on the target must be removed, and any virtual door that has been pried open should be returned to its original state. It should be as though the test never happened.
The information in the penetration test report is highly sensitive. Therefore, it should only be shared with previously agreed-upon people in hard copy format and only face-to-face.
A final meeting with the security service provider will allow you to discuss the report’s findings. The penetration tester should be able to recommend next steps to improve security, whether new protection software or staff security awareness training. Please make the most of this meeting by involving the appropriate personnel so that it is easier to build engagement with future cyber security projects.