A penetration test is something all businesses and organizations need to engage in a few times a year. For businesses without an in-house IT department to handle testing, hiring third-party professionals is recommended.
While this is true, penetration testing is still a significant investment. Understand what benefits are offered by the pentest framework is the best way to validate this investment.
Reveal Potential Vulnerabilities
Penetration testing is designed to find and exploit any existing weaknesses in a network, system, or application configurations. Even the habits and actions of staff members may result in data breaches or other malicious infiltration. The report provided by the penetration testing professionals will provide information on the security vulnerabilities to know what hardware and software improvements are needed to improve security.
Show Real Risks
The goal of a penetration tester is to exploit and identify any vulnerabilities. What that means is business owners can see what an attacker may be able to do in a “real world” setting. They could access sensitive data or execute operating systems commands. However, they may also state that the vulnerability that is the seemingly high risk is not as tricky as it seems because of how difficult it is to exploit. Only a specialist in this area can provide this level of analysis.
Test the Organizations Cyber-Defense Capabilities
An organization must detect attacks and respond promptly. Once an intrusion is detected, investigations should start immediately. This should lead to finding out how the intruders got in and provide the information needed to block them in the future. It does not matter if the intrusion was malicious or if it is experts testing how effective the organization’s protection strategy is. The feedback provided by the test will let the company owners know the problem and indicate actions that can be taken to improve defenses.
Help Ensure Business Continuity
To ensure a business’s operations always remain up and running, it is essential to have superior network availability along with 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week access to communications and resources. Any disruption can hurt on the business. With a penetration test, it is possible to reveal any possible threats to help make sure the business or operations do not suffer from any loss of accessibility or unexpected downtime. A penetration test is very similar to a business continuity audit.
Gain Opinions from a Third-Party Expert
During penetration testing, it is possible to identify issues that will encourage the management team to act quickly and decisively. Reports provided by third-party experts usually have more of an impact than in-house reports and may even result in the allocation of more funds.
When it comes to a penetration test, there are several factors to keep in mind. By remembering the information here, it is possible to make the most of a penetration test. The testing is a beneficial process for any business, regardless of size or existing issues that may be present.
