Penetration Testing: The Low-Down

In today's digital age, cybersecurity is a top priority for businesses of all sizes (or at least it should be). As cyber threats continue to evolve, it's essential for companies to adopt proactive security measures to prevent data breaches and other cyber-attacks. One such measure is penetration testing.

What is Penetration Testing?

Penetration testing, also known as pen testing, is a simulated cyber-attack conducted by cybersecurity professionals to identify vulnerabilities in a company's network, systems, or applications. The goal of penetration testing is to identify potential security weaknesses before they can be exploited by real attackers, by acting as the attackers.

Penetration testing typically involves a series of tests designed to simulate various attack scenarios, including phishing attacks, malware attacks, brute-force attacks, and exploiting system and software vulnerabilities. The results of these tests are then compiled into a detailed report (with a layman's term executive summary, of course), and used to improve the company's security posture by addressing identified vulnerabilities, Beyond that, creating a long-term roadmap is crucial to ensuring new vulnerabilities don't prop up, and when they do, remediating them before they can be exploited.

How Effective is Penetration Testing in Preventing Ransomware Attacks?

Penetration testing is a critical step in preventing ransomware attacks, because it gives your organization visibility. Once a pen test has been conducted, anything that an attacker (or ransomware) can take advantage of to gain a network foothold, or to spread through systems, has been identified. Whether it's a misconfiguration, outdated piece of software, poorly-designed in-house application, or the use of insecure protocols and authentication mechanisms, a penetration test will find it, and provide detailed steps for a recommended remediation. If it's something that cannot be remediated for some reason, Sentinel will provide you with guidance on mitigating the threat.

What Businesses are Required to Do Penetration Testing?

Penetration testing is not required by law, but it is recommended by many industry standards and regulations. Companies that process payment card data, such as those that fall under the PCI DSS, are required to conduct regular penetration testing to maintain compliance. Any business that stores or transmits ePHI (Protected Health Information, including medical records and any other sensitive/personal data about a patient) is required to conduct periodic assessments. Businesses in the financial sector including banks/credit unions and investment firms are required by their respective compliance bodies to conduct penetration testing at least once per year. The new expansion of GLBA guidelines require educational organizations to conduct an assessment every year as well.

Although not always required, many companies choose to conduct penetration testing as part of their security best practices to ensure their security defenses are effective.

How Often Should Penetration Testing be Done?

Sentinel highly recommends conducting penetration testing at least on an annual basis. An incredible amount of new security issues and vulnerabilities are identified and released to the public each year (along with a terrifying amount of new risks that are not released to the public). A penetration test will ensure you can identify and tackle these issues before a malicious attacker can. It's also recommended to stay plugged in and alerted to the latest critical threats. If there's a new critical issue released to the public that affects systems or software that your organization uses, ensure your information security program has effective patch management procedures in place to address the issue right away.

Statistics on Penetration Testing

A study by the Ponemon Institute found that 64% of companies conduct penetration testing at least once a year, and 27% conduct testing twice. Compared with statistics to data breaches and the companies affected, having penetration testing conducted at least once per year reduces the risk of a ransomware or data breach by 47%. This clearly indicates that lack of visibility into your network's potential security vulnerabilities is a major contributor to security breaches. As long as you can identify the issues present in your systems and applications, develop a strategy for remediating or mitigating those issues, and ensure a long-term plan is in place for an on-going "test -> remediate -> repeat" cycle, you can rest easy knowing your risk to a data breach is significantly less.