What Is Vulnerability Assessment?
- Vulnerability management involves identifying, analyzing, triaging, and resolving security weaknesses. This end—to—end process handles the entire lifecycle of vulnerabilities to cover as many attack vectors as possible.
- Modern IT infrastructure incorporates many components, including operating systems, databases, applications, firewalls, and orchestration tools, creating a large attack surface of potential vulnerabilities. As a result, manually analyzing the security posture is no longer feasible.
- Since the security landscape is highly dynamic, with many threats and attacks introduced daily, vulnerability management must become a constant process. Vulnerability management tools automate this process to ensure all of these different components of the modern IT environment are continuously configured to minimize potential threats.
Why Is Vulnerability Management Important?
Effective vulnerability management can help organizations avoid data breaches and leaks. This process involves continuously conducting vulnerability assessments. A vulnerability assessment involves identifying, evaluating, classifying, remediating, and reporting vulnerabilities in enterprise applications, end-user applications, browsers, and operating systems.
The Vulnerability Management Lifecycle
- Identifying Vulnerabilities
- Evaluating Vulnerabilities
- Treating Vulnerabilities
- Reporting Vulnerabilities
What are Penetration Testing Services?
Penetration testing (also called pen testing) is a controlled attempt to breach IT systems. Penetration testing is performed on behalf of the organization, to discover and remediate security weaknesses. There are two types of penetration testing services: manual and automated.
- Manual penetration testing services
Traditionally, organizations contract penetration testing services from ethical hackers or security consulting firms. Manual penetration tests are extensive and methodical, but because of their high cost and complexity, they are performed infrequently, usually once per quarter or even once per year. In addition, manual pen testing can be unpredictable as some testers are very good, and others are not as good so will perform less well.
- Automated penetration testing services ( Our Future Down the Road Target )
A new type of penetration testing service is penetration testing as a service (PTaaS). In this new model, a software as a service (SaaS) platform gives an organization automated tools it can use to perform penetration tests against its systems. The main benefit of PTaaS is that it is predictable, inexpensive, and enables penetration testing continuously.
PTaaS can be fully self-service, used by the organization’s security or development teams or it can be delivered in a hybrid model, where the PTaaS provider offers a technological platform, but also helps operate it with its security experts, guiding penetration testing and recommending remediations.
Types of Penetration Testing Services
Penetration testing services can be applied to several levels of the IT infrastructure. When selecting a penetration testing service, ensure it supports the type of penetration tests your organization needs.
- Web Application Penetration Testing
Web application penetration testing looks for weaknesses in data validation and integrity, problems with authentication and session management, and other vulnerabilities. Penetration tests can identify security issues in databases, web application source code, and backend networks.
A web application pentest typically has three phases. Reconnaissance, discovery of security vulnerabilities, and exploiting vulnerabilities, in an attempt to gain unauthorized access to the application or its backend system.
- Network Penetration Testing
A network penetration test identifies security weaknesses in network infrastructure, including firewalls, switches, routers, and endpoints like servers and employee workstations. It can help prevent attacks exploiting incorrect firewall configuration, attacks against routers or switches, DNS attacks, proxy attacks, man in the middle (MiTM), and more.
Network penetration testing uses techniques like port scanning, traffic fuzzing, configuration vulnerability testing, virus scanning, and system fingerprinting.
- API Penetration Testing
Application programming interfaces (APIs) play a crucial role in modern information systems. Many IT systems communicate with APIs or expose APIs, over the public Internet, making APIs a preferred attack vector for many attackers.
API penetration testing involves learning an API’s structure and commands (some tools can import API commands using standards like OpenAPI) and checking for vulnerabilities like weak authentication, code injection, resource rate limiting, and data exposure. Here are some of the common threats that can be tested with network penetration testing.
- Mobile Application Penetration Testing
Many organizations have adopted bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, meaning that employee’s mobile devices are allowed to connect to the network. Naturally, these devices are less secure than corporate devices.
Mobile penetration testing can test new attack vectors, such as deploying malware through mobile applications or phishing messages sent to personal devices, attacks exploiting weaknesses in WiFi networks, compromise of mobile device management (MDM) protocols, and more.
Service offerings:
- Vulnerability Assessment: This phase involves a detailed examination of your digital infrastructure, utilizing tools and methodologies to pinpoint potential weaknesses. Our team conducts thorough scans and analyses to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by cyber threats.
- Penetration Testing: We simulate real-world attacks to assess the resilience of your security measures. This penetration testing phase involves ethical hacking techniques to identify exploitable vulnerabilities and validate their severity and impact. By emulating the tactics of malicious actors, we provide insights into how your systems would withstand actual cyber threats.
Customized Reports and Recommendations: Upon completion of the assessments and testing, we provide detailed reports outlining discovered vulnerabilities, their potential impact, and actionable recommendations for remediation. These insights empower your organization to prioritize and address vulnerabilities effectively, enhancing your overall cybersecurity defences.
Ongoing Support and capacity building: Our commitment extends beyond the assessment phase. We offer continuous support and expert knowledge vide training to help implement recommended security measures, ensuring ongoing protection against evolving cyber threats.
Get your Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing Training done by Cyber Crocs
For any queries or further information related to our services, please feel free to contact us at info@qacamail.com or call us at +919599619392. We are here to assist you!