Introduction
In today’s corporate environment, there is no doubt that security is now one of the main issues being addressed. Every day, you hear about Cyber hackers attacking into computer systems and servers, stealing everything from passwords to financial information and data.
No matter how hard the management and IT teams at these businesses try to combat these types of security breaches, the hacker is always one step ahead. In fact, this can be very much likened to that of a cat and mouse game.
But, the good news is that there is a way a company can find out security weaknesses and vulnerabilities before the Cyber Hacker can. This can be accomplished through an iterative process known as “Penetration Testing”, or simply known as a “Pen Test” for short.
In simple terms (although the actual testing can be quite complex a Pen Test examines any weaknesses in the IT infrastructure of a corporation by trying to discover and exploit them, in a safe manner. These vulnerabilities can be found in the software itself at these particular points of entry:
- Backdoors in the Operating System;
- Unintentional flaws in the design of the software code;
- Improper software configuration management implementation;
- Using the actual software application in a way it was not intended to be used.
Pen Testing can be accomplished either through manual or automatic processes and is often targeted towards the following endpoints:
- Servers;
- Network endpoints;
- Wireless networks;
- Network security devices (this is hit upon the most in an actual Pen Test, which includes the Routers, Firewalls, Network Intrusion devices, etc.);
- Mobile and wireless devices;
- Other areas of exposure, such as that of software applications and the code behind it.
