Exploring the importance of penetration testing

Each day, cybersecurity professionals are in a race against time with threat actors in discovering vulnerabilities in systems and networks. Imagine that threat actors are able to exploit a security vulnerability on a targeted system before a cybersecurity professional can find it and implement security controls and countermeasures to mitigate the threat. The longer cybersecurity professionals take to identify hidden security flaws in systems, the more time threat actors have to improve their cyber operations, exploit their targets, and expand their foothold on a compromised network. This would leave the cybersecurity professional to perform incident handling and response to contain and eradicate the threat and recover any compromised systems back to an acceptable working state.

Organizations are realizing the need to hire white hat hackers such as ethical hackers and penetration testers with the skills needed to simulate real-world cyber-attacks on their systems and networks to discover and exploit hidden vulnerabilities and better understand the TTPs of cyber criminals. Furthermore, penetration testing helps organizations improve their incident response plans, enhances their security posture, and creates a culture of continuous improvement in cybersecurity practices.

These techniques enable the ethical hacker and penetration tester to perform the same type of attacks as a real hacker; the difference is the penetration tester is hired by the organization and has been granted legal permission to conduct such intrusive security testing.

Note

Penetration testers usually have a strong understanding of computers, operating systems, networking, and programming, as well as how these technologies work together. Most importantly, you need creativity. Creative thinking enables a person to think outside the box, go beyond the intended uses of technologies, and find new and exciting ways to implement them.

At the end of the penetration test, both an executive and technical report are presented to the organization’s stakeholders detailing all the findings, such as vulnerabilities and how each weakness can be exploited. The reports also contain recommendations on how to mitigate and prevent a possible cyber-attack on each vulnerability found. This allows the organization to better understand what type of information and systems a hacker will discover if they are targeted and the countermeasures that are needed to reduce the risk of a future cyber-attack. Some organizations will even perform a second penetration test after implementing the recommendations outlined in the penetration test reports to determine whether all the vulnerabilities have been fixed, whether the security controls are working as expected to mitigate the threats, and whether the attack surface is reduced. By providing feedback to the organization’s security team, the interaction ensures that security vulnerabilities are better understood and the recommendations are feasible and effective within the context of the organization’s mission.