It seems like every day dawns with a new headline regarding the latest cybersecurity attack. Hackers continue to steal millions of records 和 billions of dollars at an alarming frequency. The key to combating their efforts is to conduct thorough penetration tests throughout the year.
Penetration testing is designed to assess your security before an attacker does. Penetration testing tools simulate real-world attack scenarios to discover 和 exploit security 差距 that could lead to stolen records, compromised credentials, intellectual property, 个人ly identifiable information (PII), 持卡人数据, 个人, protected health information, 数据赎金, or other harmful business outcomes. By exploiting security vulnerabilities, penetration testing helps you determine how to best mitigate 和 protect your vital business data from future cybersecurity attacks.
With any typical pen test, there are five key stages that must be completed:
Before any action can be taken by a penetration testing team, suitable information gathering must be completed on the prospective target. This period is vital to establishing an attack plan 和 serves as the staging ground for the entirety of the engagement.
Following the reconnaissance stage, a collection of scans are performed on the target to decipher how their security systems will counter multiple breach attempts. The discovery of vulnerabilities, 开放端口, 和 other areas of weakness within a network’s infrastructure can dictate how pen testers will continue with the planned attack.
Once data has been collected, penetration testers leverage common web application attacks such as SQL注入 和 Cross-Site Scripting to exploit any present vulnerabilities. Now that access has been obtained, testers attempt to imitate the scope of the potential damage that could be generated from a malicious attack.
The main goal of this stage is to achieve a state of constant presence within the target environment. As time progresses, more data is collected throughout the exploited system which allows the testers to mimic advanced persistent threats.
最后, once the engagement is complete, any trace of the attack must be eliminated to ensure anonymity. 日志事件, 脚本, 和 other executables that could be discovered by the target should be completely untraceable. A comprehensive report with an in-depth analysis of the entire engagement will be shared with the target to highlight key vulnerabilities, 差距, the potential impact of a breach, 和 a variety of other essential security program components.
Penetration testing can either be done in-house by your own experts using pen testing tools, or you can outsource to a penetration testing services provider. A penetration test starts with the security professional enumerating the target network to find vulnerable systems 和/or accounts. This means scanning each system on the network for 开放端口 that have services running on them. It is extremely rare that an entire network has every service configured correctly, properly password-protected, 和 fully patched. Once the penetration tester has a good underst和ing of the network 和 the vulnerabilities that are present, he/she will use a penetration testing tool to exploit a vulnerability in order to gain unwelcome access.
Security professionals do not just target systems, however. 经常, a pen tester targets users on a network through phishing emails, pre-text calling, or onsite social engineering.
Your users present an additional risk factor as well. Attacking a network via human error or compromised credentials is nothing new. If the continuous cybersecurity attacks 和 data breaches have taught us anything, it’s that the easiest way for a hacker to enter a network 和 steal data or funds is still through network users.
Compromised credentials are the top attack vector across reported data breaches year after year, a trend proven by the Verizon Data Breach Report. Part of a penetration test’s job is to resolve the aforementioned security threat caused by user error. A pen tester will attempt brute-force password guessing of discovered accounts to gain access to systems 和 applications. While compromising one machine can lead to a breach, in a real-life scenario an attacker will typically use lateral movement to eventually l和 on a critical asset.
Another common way to test the security of your network users is through a simulated phishing attack. Phishing attacks use 个人ized communication methods to convince the target to do something that’s not in their best interest. 例如, a phishing attack might convince a user that it’s time for a "m和atory password reset" 和 to click on an embedded email link. Whether clicking on the malicious link drops malware or it simply gives the attacker the door they need to steal credentials for future use, a phishing attack is one of the easiest ways to exploit network users. If you are looking to test your users’ awareness around phishing attacks, make sure that the penetration testing tool you use has these capabilities.
A penetration test is a crucial component to network security. Through these tests a business can identify:
Through penetration testing, security professionals can effectively find 和 test the security of multi-tier network architectures, custom applications, web服务, 和 other IT components. These penetration testing tools 和 services help you gain fast insight into the areas of highest risk so that you may effectively plan security budgets 和 projects. Thoroughly testing the entirety of a business's IT infrastructure is imperative to taking the precautions needed to secure vital data from cybersecurity hackers, while simultaneously improving the response time of an IT department in the event of an attack.