Penetration Testing

An internal, or internal infrastructure, penetration test assesses what an insider attack could accomplish. An insider refers to anyone that has access to organizational applications, systems, and data. This can include employees, contractors, or partners.

The target is typically the same as external penetration testing, but the major differentiator is the attacker either has some sort of authorized access or is starting from a point within the internal network. Internal network test generally:

• Tests from the perspective of both an authenticated and non-authenticated user to assess potential exploits
• Assesses the vulnerabilities that exist for systems that are accessible to authorized login IDs and that reside within the network
• Checks for misconfigurations that would allow employees to access information and inadvertently leak it online.

An external network, or external infrastructure penetration test aims to assess network for vulnerabilities and security issues in servers, hosts, devices, and network services.

Identifying and assessing all Internet-facing assets a criminal hacker could use as potential entry points. Evaluating the effectiveness of firewalls and other intrusion-prevention systems Establishing whether an unauthorized user with the same level of access as approved customers or suppliers can gain access to tested systems via the external network.

Clients will receive information about the identified vulnerabilities in a format that allows them to assess their relative business risk and the cost of remediation. This information can be used to resolve the&nbsp vulnerabilities in line with the network owner’s budget and risk appetite.

A web application penetration test aims to identify security issues resulting from insecure development practices in the design, coding and publishing of software or a website.

A web applications test will generally include:

• Testing user authentication to verify that accounts cannot compromise data Assessing the web applications for flaws and vulnerabilities, such as XSS (cross-site scripting)
• Safeguarding web server security and database server security
• The vulnerabilities are presented in a format that allows an organization to assess their relative business risk and the cost of remediation. These can then be resolved in line with the application owner’s budget and risk appetite, inducing a proportionate response to cyber risks.

Wi-Fi can provide opportunities for attackers to infiltrate an organization’s secured environment – irrespective of security access controls. Penetration testing can help identify weaknesses in the wireless infrastructure.

A wireless network test generally includes:

• Identifying Wi-Fi networks, including wireless fingerprinting, information leakage and signal leakage
• Determining encryption weaknesses, such as encryption cracking, wireless sniffing, and session hijacking
• Identifying opportunities to penetrate a network by using wireless or evading WLAN access control measures
• Identifying legitimate users’ identities and credentials to access otherwise private networks and services.

A social engineering penetration test will help you evaluate employees’ susceptibility to social engineering attacks. Educating employees about how social engineering attacks are carried out and implementing and maintaining appropriate security controls to mitigate them is critical. Social engineering penetration tests provide a basis on which to highlight issues with operating procedures and to develop targeted staff awareness training.

A social engineering penetration test will:

• Establish the publicly available information that an attacker could obtain about organization
• Evaluate how susceptible employees are to social engineering attacks
• Determine the effectiveness of your information security policy and cyber security controls at identify ingand preventing social engineering attacks
• Aid in development of an awareness training program.