Why pen testing is important.  If you could safeguard your home and your family, would you take steps to do so?

I’d say that’s a yes – we lock our doors, close our windows, set our alarms, install CCTV, even upgrade our doorbells to keep us safe.

If you could actually see the likelihood of your business being cyber attacked and take steps to safeguard it, would you do something about it?

That’s where pen testing comes in.

Pen testing (also known as ethical hacking or penetration testing) is a process for securely testing your systems, networks & applications by emulating real cyber attacks so that you can discover where your business is vulnerable.

Testing can be automated (with software) or manual, where a cyber security expert (or a team of experts) attempt to find and exploit vulnerabilities in your computer systems.

In the late 60’s/early 70’s the US government started using ‘tiger teams‘ made up of engineers and scientists to test system security by attempting to penetrate computer systems to uncover security holes and patch them.  This is how pen testing first emerged on the computer scene.

Pen testing assesses and reduces your corporate cybersecurity risk and ensures compliance.

Ideally you should have good security practices and procedures in place and therefore have a good idea of what the penetration test is going to find. The results of these tests help you determine how vulnerable you are and where you should invest your time and money to ensure your business is secure and compliant.

It gives you the opportunity to patch up any issues and mitigate future attacks.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both – in an ideal world you would use both but not every business has the resources for that.

Automated pen testing can be continuous, it saves time, is cost effective, can check for compliance and gives a realistic assessment of your risk.  Provided the tests are run frequently and the results acted upon, your business will be secure & compliant.

Manual pen testing adds the human element to your vulnerability search.  Whilst automated testing is dependent on how the software has been programmed, the human element can analyse the vulnerabilities and think of solutions ‘outside the box’. Human pen testers are security experts that are curious, wish to show off their knowledge, are financially motivated and like to be challenged – they will be hoping to find that security gap.