What is Penetration Testing and Why Do You Need It?

Across all your systems, applications, and software on your network lay vulnerabilities. Malicious attackers can exploit vulnerabilities and serious damage. These vulnerabilities can lead to data loss, system downtime, financial loss, malware, and even ransomware. Most of the time, organizations can easily remediate these vulnerabilities; however, if you do not know of their existence, how can you fix it?

What is Penetration Testing

Penetration Testing is a practice conducted on systems in order to find exploitable vulnerabilities. By finding vulnerabilities, organizations can stay proactive in their security stance. With the knowledge and understanding of the exploitable weak points an attacker can use, the organization can fix those vulnerabilities to prevent negative impact.

There are multiple types of penetration tests, including:

External Penetration Test – This type of assessment, the individual performing the penetration test uses tools and manual methods to test the external or publicly facing systems. This can include public IP addresses, websites, or external facing servers. This type of penetration test can simulate how a malicious attacker would attempt to breach those publicl facing systems.
Internal Penetration Test – Unlike the external test, internal penetration tests are done from inside the target organization’s network. However, both forms of assessments have the same goal in mind. An internal penetration test gathers insight into vulnerabilities within the network in which could be exploited by employees or a malicious attacker who gained access into the network.
Web Application Penetration Test – This form of penetration test uses tools and manual methods to discover vulnerabilities that lay within a web application. The individual conducting the penetration tests attempts to discover vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, Cross Site Scripting (XSS), insufficient transport layer protection, and many more vulnerabilities that a malicious attacker could use to exploit the target organizations web application.
Social Engineering Penetration Test – One of the biggest weaknesses in an organization’s IT systems and networks are the actual users themselves. This form of penetration test attempts to find the exploitable points of the users in order to educate them and be more security conscious. In addition, the individual conducting the penetration test might attempt to create a fake scam call or fake phishing emails. With their gathered information, they educate the users to help them understand security more in depth.

Why You Need A Penetration Test Done

In the world of cyber security, it is better to be proactive and stay prepared for a security incident rather than be reactive. Conducting a penetration test based on your organization’s needs allows for the understanding of all the active vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit at any given moment. With this information, you can work to remediate all of the discovered vulnerabilities and mitigate any unnecessary risk. Additionally, potential clients and the government require more and more compliances and regulations. Penetration testing can fulfill some of those requirements for your organization. Penetration testing works to discover those vulnerabilities before a malicious attacker does and it’s too late.

Our Services

If you wish to conduct a penetration test or vulnerability assessment on your organization, we are here to help! Cyber Protection Group offers external, internal, and web application penetration tests as well as other cyber security services. We offer very competitive pricing to any of your penetration testing needs.

Let us discover the vulnerabilities that plague your organization before an attacker does!