Understanding Penetration Testing: A Key to Cybersecurity
In the digital era, ensuring your business’s cybersecurity is paramount. It all begins with understanding essential concepts like penetration testing, often referred to as pen testing.
What is Penetration Testing?
Pen tests are structured ethical hacking engagements where experts try to infiltrate your network or application as malicious hackers would. The objective? To uncover weak spots and provide actionable recommendations to fortify your defenses.
The Importance of Pen Testing
“Without pen tests, a business may unknowingly harbor vulnerabilities that could lead to costly security incidents,” explains Terry Bradley from Mile High Cyber. Bradley emphasizes that pen testing isn’t just about fulfilling regulatory requirements, like those imposed by the Department of Defense, PCI standards for payment cards, or healthcare’s HIPAA. It’s about real-world protection.
How Pen Tests Work
Through both external and internal assessments, these tests simulate hacker tactics to identify “attack surfaces,” from open network ports to outdated systems lacking critical security patches. Sometimes, simple oversights like default credentials or weak security configurations can be found.
Pen Testing vs. Vulnerability Scanning
An intriguing facet of pen testing is the differentiation between IT-conducted vulnerability scans and comprehensive third-party pen tests. “Scanning highlights potential issues, but only through exploiting these vulnerabilities can you truly understand the potential business impact,” Bradley notes.
Who Benefits from Pen Testing?
Businesses of all sizes can benefit from pen testing. Even small companies are at risk, especially if they hold valuable data.
Note: Somebody who is not under some kind of government regulation to do penetration testing, might need to do a test if they have a cyber liability insurance policy.
Terry Bradley is the founder of Mile High Cyber and has over 30 years of experience in cybersecurity. Terry started in U.S. military Air Force and transitioned to National Security Agency.
