At the current time implementing hi-tech cyber security solutions is generic amongst government agencies, businesses, and many other organizations. This is a crucial measure to keep businesses secure from ever-evolving cyberattacks. One common tactic used is hiring professional penetration testing companies for figuring out the risks. Other commonly used terms for penetration testing are pentesting, ethical hacking, and white hat attack. Let’s dig in more details about penetration testing which is gaining so much traction 

What Is Penetration Testing? 

Penetration testing is used to find security vulnerabilities that an attacker can exploit. This is figured out by evaluating IT infrastructures like a software application or network. The configuration errors, software bugs, design flaws, and risky end-user behavior are vulnerabilities to mention a few. It is primarily used to identify the weaknesses in IT infra. But in the long-term, it's utilized to test an organization’s ability to identify and respond to security incidents, its security policy, and its employee's security awareness. 

Why Is Penetration Testing Important? 

Here is a pointwise description of why cybersecurity services companies consider penetration testing as an important asset against cyber-crimes. 

• It reveals the vulnerabilities in a company's network infrastructure or application system configurations. 
• It reveals the real risks by exploiting the identified weaknesses. This enables an IT infrastructure to prioritize real-world risks. 
• It detects the cyber defense capability to ensure that your organization is quick enough to detect and respond to attacks. 
• It also ensures business continuity by identifying the potential threats which might result in unpredicted downtimes or the loss of accessibility. 
• It helps in maintaining the trust of customers and assures shareholders by omitting data breaches and cyberattacks. 

Difference between Vulnerability scans and Penetration Testing? 

Vulnerability scans are effective to examine an environment and create a report of revealed weaknesses. However, it does not help in prioritizing the most severe ones. As their results do not account for the unique circumstances of each IT infrastructure. While penetration testing adds additional contest to all the uncovered security weaknesses. It helps in figuring out if it’s possible to exploit the vulnerabilities to gain access to the critical pieces of information. It also helps in prioritizing recommendation plans based on risk posing threats 

Vulnerability scans are performed on critical systems and vulnerable information to determine the extent to which these are vulnerable to compromise or attack. While penetration testing moves a step further. It exploits the vulnerabilities post identification to gain access to the entire IT infrastructure: the critical systems, sensitive information, or a specified trophy. 

What are the Stages of Penetration Testing? 

Penetration testing is a comprehensive model to identify the most exploitable security vulnerability. However, the process involved must be made up of the following phases to make it thorough and well thought: 

In the first Phase: A team of professional cybersecurity service providers plan and prepare in advance. It is necessary that the testers and organization are on the same page about the goals to be achieved and the amount of information to be shared. 

In the second Phase: This is where all the confidential information and data like names, job titles, email address, IP address is gathered by the penetration testing companies. 

In the Third Phase: After they have enough data, exploitation of all the discovered weaknesses is done to infiltrate the environment and find out possible losses. 

In the fourth Phase: A collaborated report is formulated which consists of tools used by the security testing service, the weaknesses, and finally the remedies. 

In Fifth Phase: Now is the high time to implement the recommended changes to fix vulnerabilities. So, clean-up and remediation are done. And lastly retesting is done to check the effectiveness of changes. 

Conclusion 

Although, at first penetration testing companies might seem costly and labor-intensive. But security processes are vital for your organization to discover weaknesses. The knowledge that you gain from penetration testing is crucial to mitigate security risks & prevent data breaches and any undue losses. Reach out to the best cyber security consulting today to know more. Also immediately opt for penetration testing to thrive your business and readily evaluate the enterprise defense.