Content
How does a network pen test work?
What insights does a network pentest report offer?
What are the benefits of a network pen test?
Meaning
Penetration testing, or pentesting, consist of simulating cyber attacks on your own systems to identify vulnerabilities that could potentially be exploited. A pen test on a business network uses various hacking techniques to identify weaknesses in the security of your networks. These tests use real methods and approaches that a hacker might use to gain access to the system, and provide critical information about the security of a network.
How does a network pen test work?
Simply put, network pen tests work by simulating a real attack, providing crucial information about potential weaknesses that hackers could use to gain access to your network(s). "Ethical hackers" (usually security specialists on your team or an outside party) use a variety of methods to try to compromise your network(s).
A typical approach for pen testing on networks includes the following steps:
- Planning. In the planning phase, ethical hackers discuss the scope and overall purpose of the test with key stakeholders. In this initial discussion phase, test methods and success criteria are defined. After a basic overview is established, hackers begin examining all parts of the corporate network.
- Testing. In this phase, hackers use static or dynamic test solutions to study and understand how the network responds to simulated attacks.
- Gaining access to networks. After testing the network to understand its behavior, ethical hackers will perform various attacks on the network, including web application attacks, SQL injections, etc. These attacks will help identify the vulnerabilities of the target network. If the ethical hackers identify vulnerabilities, they will try to exploit these actual exploit, from trying to steal data to escalating privileges and intercepting traffic. The idea is to determine how much damage they can do. After they successfully gain access, another interesting metric is to see how long the tester can keep access to the system. If hackers can keep access to a system for a long time, that gives them more opportunities to do damage and collect valuable sensitive data.
- Analysis. After completing testing activities, pentesters analyze their results and prepare a report with their findings. This report provides actionable insight into vulnerabilities, actual exploitability and the opportunity for companies to take necessary remediation measures before a real hacker has a chance to exploit their system.
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What insights does a network pentest report offer?
The final step in pen testing, providing a report with the analysis, should include the following key points:
- A summary. This summary should provide a concise description of the business risk and the overall impact of the findings on the business. By providing a non-technical and accessible analysis of the current state of security, non-technical stakeholders can easily understand their overall security posture and more easily provide needed support.
- Risk analysis. This section should review the risk findings, with a detailed analysis of the discovered risks and their consequences.
- Impact analysis. This should include a detailed description of how likely discovered vulnerabilities are to be exploited and how devastating/dispersed the impact would be if actually exploited.
- Recommendations for recovery. This should provide the next steps the company can take to address the discovered vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
What are the benefits of a network pen test?
The overarching benefit a network pen test is that it provides an organization with valuable insight into the overall security of the business network so that informed action can be taken to fix problems before a malicious party has a chance to exploit vulnerabilities.
Furthermore, network pentesting offers, among other things, the following:
- Ability to analyze and understand security measures and settings
- The ability to prevent breaches before they can occur
- Help in learning what to do in case of a real attack by understanding how a system responds to hacking activity
- Less time and money spent repairing damage by preventing attacks
Are pen tests required by law?
Various regulations and standards frameworks require the use of regular testing of security measures. To comply with this requirement, organizations often choose pentesting to demonstrate that they are effectively protecting their sensitive data and systems. ISO 27001, NEN 7510 and BIO are examples of standards frameworks where pentesting is regularly used to meet compliance requirements.
How can Warpnet help?
A pen test from Warpnet allows you to put the effectiveness of your security measures to the test, allowing you to systematically find and fix mission-critical vulnerabilities in your running Web applications and Web services, without the need for source code.
Our approach to pentesting uses a variety of test tools and in-depth manual tests that focus on business logic to find vulnerabilities outside of a canned list of attacks (e.g., OWASP Top 10). We offer different depths for network pentesting so you can tailor the level of testing to the risk profile of each application being tested.