What is a Penetration Testing?

Penetration testing are a set of techniques and procedures used to test whether certain networks, assets, platforms, hardware or applications are vulnerable to an attacker.

Penetration testing (or pen testing) is the practice of attacking your own IT systems, just as an attacker would, in order to uncover active security gaps on your network.

The process is conducted in a way that allows an organization to safely simulate attacks, so they can discover the actual exposures – whether within technologies, people, or processes – without taking down its network.

The process is conducted by a team of security experts, ethical “white hat hackers” who apply their knowledge of how to breach defenses of a company’s networks.

A comprehensive penetration test provides an assurance that the organization is operating within an acceptable limit of information security risks.

Challenges

Penetration testing is facing many challenges in the information security landscape.

It is usually performed by consultants who are often be double booked across projects and always pressure to produce their testing report in limited amount of time.

Therefore, more often than not, there will be untested portions of the target application and vulnerability blind spots.

Also, the analysis is limited by a time period and not all the vulnerabilities and threats can be covered.

The presence of restricted areas within an organization and any sudden and unexpected technical incidents due to heavy scanning and automated tools can lead in poor results, which leaves the organizations vulnerable.

A pen test only offers a snapshot of an organization’s defenses at a specific point in time.

How can these solutions & procedures help?

A pen testing tool or program is a must-have in any security program, providing an organisation with a virtual map of its exposures and where to direct its resources.

Penetration testing tools allow for organizations to actually go in and test for vulnerabilities that may be impacting their security systems.

These tools simulate a real-world attack enviornment, and are beneficial to ensuring that the security programs and procedures are as up-to-date as possible.

Investing in enterprise pen testing tool can provide a new knowledge base that is regularly updated with new tactics as well as exploits to take advantage of new vulnerabilities that have been published.

What is a Breach Attack Simulation (BAS) technology?

Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) is a relatively new IT security technology that can automatically spot vulnerabilities in an organization’s cyber defenses, akin to continuous, automated penetration testing.

A Breach and Attack Simulation platform can detect infiltration, lateral movement, and data exfiltration by offering cloud, network, and endpoint simulators.

BAS offers more than just pen testing and red team insights, going further in recommending and prioritizing fixes to maximize security resources and minimize cyber risk.

Challenges

Malicious attacks and advanced persistent threats pose a constant risk to SMB and enterprise organizations.

In response to the ever-evolving nature of threats, a number of security tools have evolved, among them vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, red teaming, and breach and attack simulation.

Organizations need to identify their most critical assets and works backward with attack-centric exposure prioritization, identifying the exploit routes.

Analyzing every potential attack path and crafting remediation options is a difficult task, but it gives administrators visibility in real-time and the opportunity to secure their network.

How can these solutions help?

Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) solutions represent a new and emerging technology and is directly adjacent to vulnerability assessment.

However, BAS solutions go beyond vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, and red teaming by offering automated and advanced breach simulation.

BAS solutions perform automated security testing, challenging the existing security infrastructure and some model attack chains, in order to identify the most-likely path an attacker would use to compromise an environment.

Advantages

Not only does BAS automate the testing process, but it also performs it continuously. Therefore, the organization can know its security posture at any given time and know how to focus its resources on the most critical issues.

With an on-premises or cloud-based breach and attack solution, administrators can automate vulnerability scans and attack scenarios for the most substantial visibility into a network’s defensive position.

These simulated attacks expose vulnerability gaps which allows the organization to determine if its security architecture provides the right protection and if its configurations are properly implemented.