The Ultimate Guide to Enterprise Penetration Testing: What You Need to Know
Pabitra Kumar Sahoo
Co-Founder & COO @Qualysec | Cyber Security consultant & Speaker | VAPT | Penetration Testing | Application Security | Helping businesses to make their application secure and hackproof
By the end of 2023, cybercrimes cost the world's economy?$8 trillion annually . By 2025, it is anticipated to have increased by 15% to reach 10.5 trillion USD. Enterprise penetration testing is necessary to identify security gaps and guarantee that your company is protected from data breaches and illegal access.
This article will cover enterprise penetration testing in this comprehensive tutorial, its various types, advantages, and how to locate a trustworthy testing vendor.
What is Enterprise Penetration Testing?
Enterprise penetration testing, often known as pentesting, is a security testing technique used to evaluate the effectiveness of an organization's current security controls and find weaknesses or vulnerabilities. The technique simulates actual cyberattacks on the company's networks, apps, and cloud architecture to identify vulnerabilities that malevolent actors might exploit.
?5 Benefits of Enterprise Penetration Testing
Enterprise IT security can be greatly enhanced and evaluated using penetration testing. Penetration testing is being used by?68% of international businesses by 2023?to improve their online security. Doing enterprise penetration testing has several benefits, including:
Enterprise security testing identifies current vulnerabilities in your network architectures and application setups that may result in unauthorized access and data breaches.?
2. Determine Actual Risks
Penetration testers attempt to breach a network or application by exploiting vulnerabilities that have been found. This lets you visualize what a real-world attacker could do with those vulnerabilities.?
3. Check the Effectiveness of Your Cyber Defenses
Your defense must be able to recognize attacks and act quickly and correctly. It should launch an investigation when it detects an invasion, find the intruders, and stop them.?
4. Get Expert Opinion from Third-Party Professionals
When a security vulnerability is discovered by someone working for your company, the management may not always take it seriously. However, a report from an outside expert may have more influence over managerial choices.?
5. Follow Industry Regulations
Businesses must carry out a specific degree of penetration testing through third-party providers to guarantee secure IT infrastructure that complies with legal compliance requirements in some industries.?
?Different Types of Enterprise Penetration Testing
Web app, mobile app, and cloud penetration testing are the three main categories of penetration testing that are performed for enterprises.
1. Web App Penetration Testing
Web application penetration testing aims to find security holes or vulnerabilities in web-based applications. To do this, the tester gains access to the web application itself by utilizing various methods and attack strategies.
2.?Mobile App Penetration Testing
Testing mobile applications for flaws or vulnerabilities before hackers take advantage of them is known as mobile application penetration testing . Business penetration testing professionals assess the risks posed by the discovered vulnerabilities using both automated and human methods.
3. Cloud Penetration Testing
Cloud penetration testing is the procedure for locating and exploiting holes in cloud-native infrastructure by modeling intentional and real-world cyberattacks. Cloud service providers such as Azure, AWS (Amazon Web Services), and GCP (Google Cloud Platform) have rigorous criteria to be followed when performing this task.
4 Best Practices for Enterprise Penetration Testing
Enterprise penetration testing can be done in a variety of ways; therefore, in order to reap the rewards of their labor, pentesters must properly design their tests.
Businesses must specify precisely what they hope to achieve from the penetration test, including which networks, apps, and assets will be examined. Budgetary restrictions sometimes limit what they can test.
2. Observe the law and permissions
Be sure you have the target company's consent and authorization before doing any corporate penetration testing. Be sure to follow all applicable laws and rules before, during, and following the test.
3. Good Planning
The best penetration testing combines automation and manual methods to assess an organization's security meaningfully. Pentesters can decide what areas to examine and how to test them with the use of testing frameworks such as the OWASP Web Security Testing Guide.
4. Reporting
Upon completion of penetration tests, testers are required to compile comprehensive reports summarizing the testing outcomes. This entails disclosing the vulnerabilities found as well as suggesting ways to fix these errors.
5 best Enterprise Penetration Testing Tools
?Many forms of corporate penetration testing techniques employ a variety of tools. These tools mimic the methods that attackers employ to gauge how strong an enterprise's defenses are.
How to Choose the Best?Enterprise Penetration Testing Provider
Selecting the best enterprise penetration testing service provider for your business might be difficult, as there are many to pick from.
Prior to anything else, you must determine which parts of your business require penetration testing. Pentesting is available for cloud-based, mobile, and web apps.
2. Request References
Request a couple of referrals from businesses they have previously collaborated with. You can speak with them and ask pertinent questions to gain insight into the nature of working with the supplier.?
3. Request a Sample Report
After the test is over, the supplier will present you with a report that includes the results of the enterprise penetration test. The report should include a summary of the pentest, all vulnerabilities discovered, and remediation tips.
4. Examine their Procedures and Methods
You must be aware of the procedures and methods used by the enterprise penetration testing company you have shortlisted. Make sure they utilize the right equipment and adhere to industry-accepted pentesting techniques.
5. Talk about Retesting
Penetration testing ought to be a routine procedure to provide robust security for your business. After addressing the identified vulnerabilities, you must retest to determine whether the vulnerability repair was successful.
?Conclusion
To keep businesses safe in the digital era, Enterprise penetration testing is crucial. Businesses must identify and promptly address any security vulnerabilities as cyber threats change. You may strengthen your digital assets by finding security issues through routine business penetration testing.
Consistent pentesting also guarantees compliance with relevant industry requirements. Qualysec Technologies offers reports on penetration testing, which is mandatory to meet these requirements.
Reach us at?[email protected] ?or visit us at our official website,?www.qualysec.com , to learn more.