A Comprehensive Guide: Penetration Testing

The digital transformation of businesses that involve around networks, servers, devices, storage solutions, and cloud had made the organizations more prone to the cyber-threats and attacks. To address the security challenges, the demand for expert cyber-security professionals is soaring, who can enforce utmost security with effective security infrastructure assessment. Experienced and certified ethical hacking experts on board can help preventing malicious attacks by performing a penetration test on organizational infrastructure including systems and networks. Ethical hackers are expertly trained professionals having extensive understanding of the sound hacking tools, techniques and processes to conduct penetration tests and evaluate the status of existing security systems in the enterprise environment.

What is penetration testing?

The process of conducting simulated attacks on the organization’s systems and networks by ethical hackers, to test the strength of existing security infrastructure and analyzing potential risks and vulnerabilities that could harm crucial information and data, is termed as penetration testing.

What is penetration testing life cycle?

Penetration testing is a complete cycle of various stages carried out to evaluate the security architecture and standards of an organization, that include:

· Agreement: Before performing the pen test, an agreement is negotiated and enforced by the involved parties. It includes all details about the tools, methods and exploitation strategies, that would be used during the penetration testing process.

· Planning and Reconnaissance: At the planning stage, information is collected about the target system from all possible sources to identify the tender spots making the attack fatal.

· Scanning: This stage includes the application of specialized tools and vulnerability scanners to dig deeper into the targeted systems.

· Gaining Access: An attempt is made to break into the targeted system and take full control over the network devices with data extraction or launching attacks as primary goals.

· Maintaining Access: The stage relates to maintain a commanding position and withholding the target system access secretly to collect maximum information.

· Exploitation: In this phase, the real damage is done to the system and the DoS (Denial of Service attacks) are launched. The ethical hacker aims to identify the extent of damage through a real attack that can be incurred without being noticed.

· Report Generation: The last stage focuses to documenting and reporting of the assessments including identified threats, weak spots and recommendations to avoid any cyber-attacks.

What are the different types of penetration tests?

Penetration tests can be categorized as:

· White Box/ Black Box/ Grey Box: When the tester has the complete information about the target system, the penetration test is termed as White Box. Having no information of the target allows to perform the Black Box test, wherein publicly available information is used for penetration. When partial information about the target is known, the test is called as Grey Box pen test.

· Internal and External: When the pen test is performed remotely, from outside the organizational network, it is known as external pen test. The internal pen test refers to the test conducted from within the organizational system.

· In-House and Third-party: If the test is performed by an employee and -on-board security professional, it is termed as an in-house test, and if the expertise of an outsider is sought to conduct the test, it is called as third-party test.

· Blind and Double-Blind: In a blind pen test, the tester has no clue about the network or the target system, except the organization name and starting from the scratch every element needs to be tested. A Double-Blind test’s execution time is only known to the higher management and is performed to test the existing security standards.

What are the benefits of penetration testing?

Penetration testing helps organizations to:

· Determine the weak spots in the existing security infrastructures and systems framework

· Analyze the extent of the damages due to cyberattacks, if any occurs

· Fix the existing issues and prepare to withstand the actual attacks

Conclusion

Having an in-depth understanding of the penetration testing phases, benefits, tools and techniques along with best practices showcases proficiencies of the ethical hackers. The mentioned skills can be achieved with a professional penetration testing certification course that instills thorough understanding of penetration testing along with other ethical hacking essentials.

EC-Council’s CEH certification is a globally recognized certification that imparts practical knowledge and far-reaching competencies to think like hackers and combat through foolproof plans ensuring utmost information security. You can take CEH training and certification course from EC-council’s authorized training partners, having proven record of delivering enriched training experiences through certified instructors. CEH certification and training course is available at affordable costs through blended learning modes and custom learning schedules leveraging the flexibility to address your learning needs.