What is Penetration Testing?

March 25, 2024

Penetration testing definition

A penetration test ultimately seeks to answer the question “How effective is my organisation’s security controls against a skilled human hacker?” while determining the security posture of your organisation's network infrastructure and identifying any potential risks. Penetration testing assists businesses with realising the true impact of a security breach by:

Identifying areas for improvement:


Increasing customer confidence:

  • Protecting those that matter most
  • Happy stakeholders
  • Reducing the risk of a cyber breach
  • Avoiding fines/lawsuits


Providing business assurance:

  • Implementing a flexible control framework
  • Real time monitoring capabilities
  • Developing strong authentication and management controls

Penetration testing is a form of an ethical hacking simulation conducted in accordance with industry guidelines, which aims to closely mimic real-world targeted attacks that organisations face on a day-to-day basis: to identify


  • Security vulnerabilities
  • Weaknesses
  • Misconfigurations


By exploiting vulnerabilities within your business’s security controls, a malicious actor can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or loss of availability to business data.

Types of penetration testing

Website Application Penetration Test

Aims to identify security issues resulting from vulnerabilities in design, coding and publishing of software or a website.

Internal Penetration Testing

An ethical hacking technique used to simulate a scenario where the attacker will already have some sort of internal access to your organisations system(s).

External Penetration Testing

Examines all aspects of externally facing IP addresses and services that may allow a 'threat actor' to gain access from outside the network.

Social Enigneering

Identifies how aware staff are concerning how they respond to certain requests from unverified parties trying to gain access/retrieve sensitive data.

Application Testing

Testing software applications for  vulnerabilities to see how they respond to certain intrusion attempts.

Infrastructure Segmentation

Tests access from certain network segments that communicate with other network segments.

"52 per cent of large businesses and 23 per cent of high-income charities carry out penetration testing."

- Gov.UK 2021

Penetration testing methodology


Planning - Planning is key! Here, the penetration testing team will define the scope and overall objective for the penetration test while also detailing the systems to be tested and the testing methods to be used. A decision regarding which systems are to be exploited or highlighted will be required to avoid business disruption.


Reconnaissance - Identifying hosts, software and operating systems while determining the applications and services running within your organisation.


Scanning - The scanning stage intends to test the system's defences to see how it reacts when faced with various intrusion attempts. By examining a database of known vulnerabilities and replicating them on their system, the scanning tools provide the testing team with a better understanding of the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the target before they've even attempted any specific tactics.

Manual Tests - Adding analysis and relevance to the vulnerabilities found and translating it to information gathered about the customer environment.


Penetration Attempt - Any previously identified vulnerabilities will be recreated and exploited.


Priviledge Escalation - Once the penetration attempt has been successful, the testing team will attempt to identify any other avenues of authority by further exploiting systems for higher-level privileges or potential access to other systems/applications.

Clean up - Once all penetration attempts and exploits have been resolved, any virtual artefacts left behind from the testing process will be removed.


Review & Documentation of Findings - The results of the penetration test are then compiled into a report detailing:


  • Specific vulnerabilities that were exploited
  • Sensitive data that was accessed
  • The amount of time the pen tester was able to remain in the system undetected
  • Any other avenues of exploitation that were identified


Reccomended Next Stepts - Decisions and a plan of action within the organisation must be made post-analysis in regards to ensuring identified vulnerabilities get patched while ensuring that the appropriate safeguards are enforced going forward

The benefits of penetration testing:


Gain real-world vulnerability insight - Penetration testing identifies how a hacker will attempt to exploit vulnerabilities within your businesses systems, applications, networks, and infrastructure. By detecting weaknesses, you gain the ability to heighten your protective measures around your biggest assets and most threatening vulnerabilities.

Develop strong authentication and session management controls - Not only does penetration testing identify current gaps within your organisation's security controls, but it can also start the process of developing a strong security culture within your business. Everyone taking a cyber security first approach can ensure that any future security controls are appropriately safeguarded.


Protect customer loyalty and company reputation - Even a single occurrence of compromised customer data can destroy a business’s brand and negatively impact its bottom line. Penetration testing helps avoid data breaches that may put reputation and reliability at stake.


Avoid expensive post-breach assessments - By actively testing against your assets, you decrease the likelihood of being caught off guard. By not doing so, you increase the chance of being the next cyber breach victim.


Not only will you have to deal with potential fines and lawsuits, but the cost of getting your business back online could be crippling. You'll also be responsible for creating a post-breach assessment to identify the scope and potential damage caused.


This can be an extremely difficult and expensive process, especially if you don't have the expertise. Ensuring you are actively testing your systems while also having a cyber security team to support you every step of the way can be highly beneficial.

Conclusion

Penetration testing involves your business undertaking planned ethical attacks against your own security infrastructure to gain a better understanding of your businesses' security posture. Penetration testing can be performed on many different areas within your business such as website applications, internal infrastructure, external infrastructure, and against staff to simulate a reality where a 'malicious threat actor' attempts to gain unauthorised access and disrupt business continuity.


Actively testing your organisations' defences can help keep your business up to speed with an ever-changing cyber-security landscape where attackers are constantly adapting - so must you.

If you have any questions or queries considering penetration testing or your businesses' security posture, speak with one of our cyber security experts today - start the process of defending your business, protecting your customers and data, and becoming cyber secure.

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