Businesses need to scan the external available infrastructure and applications to protect against external threats. They also need to scan internally to protect against insider threat and compromised individuals.

Pen testing should be conducted regularly, from monthly, to possibly quarterly.

Because of the constantly evolving threat universe, once a month is recommended, especially for high value businesses where there may be many ways for malicious threat to access sensitive data- e.g. web sites, web applications, mobile applications, SQL injection  etc.

 Only about 13 percent of security breaches are discovered internally Source: Verizon  

Source: Verizon  

The minimum frequency depends on the type of testing being conducted and the target of the test. In very low value businesses, testing should be done at least annually. Standards such as the PCI DSS also recommend intervals for various scan types.

Pen testing should also be undertaken after deployment of new infrastructure and applications as well as after major changes to applications, devices (e.g. introducing  IoT) firewall rules, updating of firmware, patches and upgrades to software).

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A Hacking Simulation

Penetration testing is a hacking simulation conducted with the purpose to create an event as close as possible to a real attack to test an environment’s cybersecurity posture, and eventually identify solutions to secure it, limiting exposure to threats and attacks.

Pen-testing is a systematic process that utilizes tools and applies ethical hacking techniques to accurately assess the systems’ risks. It is well known that breaches, unless publicized by the attackers, can go undetected for months.

Mandatory

Penetration testing is mandated by regulators in some industries like financial services, health care, and government systems access, while it is optional for many other industries. In today’s ever dangerous cyber universe, penetration testing is an essential information security practice and should be included in an organization’s governance framework.

Penetration testing can be performed by internal testing teams or by using third-party consultants.

One of the longest cyber attacks lasted more than four years, averaging 365 days each.

Source: Mandiant

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Businesses need to regularly scan the external available infrastructure and applications to protect against external threats. They also need to scan internally to protect against insider threat and compromised individuals. The worst situation is to have an exploitable vulnerability within your infrastructure, application or employees, that you are not aware of, as the attackers might be probing your assets for months or years.

Businesses need to conduct regular testing of their IT systems for the following key reasons:

• Adherence to CCPA or GDPR compliance
• Adherence to various industry compliances including HIPAA, HITECH, PCI or ISO 27001
• Ensure you maintain the trust of your customers, partners and markets
• To identify any weakness in the infrastructure (hardware), application (software) and people (social) in order to develop controls
• To ensure security controls have been well implemented and are effective – this provides assurance to information security and senior management
• To test applications that are often the avenues of attack (applications are built by humans who are fallible despite trying to follow best practices in software development)
• To discover new bugs in existing software (patches and updates can fix existing vulnerabilities, but they may inadvertently introduce new vulnerabilities)

When businesses are attacked through social engineering (soft target) the stronger perimeter controls are completely bypassed and less protected internal assets are exposed. The worst situation is to have an exploitable vulnerability within your infrastructure, application or employees, that you are not aware of, as the attackers might be probing your assets for months or years.

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