What is pentesting and why is it important?
Discover the importance of pentesting and how ethical hackers help companies improve their cybersecurity.
Tozetta's goal is to make pentesting accessible for every organization. That's why we've started a blog series in which we take you step by step through the world of pentesting. This is the first blog in a series of four. After this blog, we hope you'll be familiar with:
How pentesting works
What the benefits of pentests are
What is pentesting?
Pentesting, also known as penetration testing, is a process in which an ethical hacker uses techniques to investigate how well a company or organization is protected against cyberattacks. The ethical hacker examines a company's systems, networks, and applications to determine how well they are protected against potential cyberattacks. Pentesting is mainly used to determine how secure a company is and whether there are areas for improvement. The ethical hacker uses various techniques and tools to check the systems for weaknesses, so they can be strengthened and better secured.
Why is pentesting important for my company?
It's important that companies regularly carry out pentesting to check their systems for weaknesses. By doing this, systems can be better secured against potential cyberattacks. Pentesting is also important because it helps companies improve their systems. By carrying out pentests, technical problems and vulnerabilities are identified so they can be resolved. During a pentest, various security issues can therefore be exposed. Concrete examples of cybersecurity issues that come to light during a pentest are:
API-01 Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA)
The benefits of a pentest
Pentesting offers many benefits for companies. It helps companies improve their systems by identifying and resolving technical problems and vulnerabilities. This helps better secure the systems against potential cyberattacks and safeguards the continuity of an organization.
By carrying out a pentest, problems are identified and resolved, leading to less downtime and reduced costs. In addition, you show your relations and users that you're proactively engaged in cybersecurity. Trust in your organization can increase significantly as a result.
The risks of not carrying out pentesting
Not deploying ethical hackers can lead to serious risks for a company. If a company doesn't carry out a pentest, this means there is no check on whether the systems are secured against cyberattacks. This can lead to serious errors and ultimately a data breach and lasting reputational damage.
How does a pentest work?
Carrying out a pentest at Tozetta starts with a QuickScan. In this, we gather information about your digital footprint. The ethical hacker gathers information about the system, such as the IP address, the OS, and the various software being used. Based on the QuickScan, you'll receive an hours estimate.
After approval, the pentest is carried out to determine how well your systems are secured. During the pentest, various techniques are used to analyze the system for weaknesses. After the test, the results are analyzed and reported.
In the report you'll find a management summary, the vulnerabilities found, a proof-of-concept, and how the vulnerabilities can be resolved.
Want full insight into the entire pentest process? On Tozetta's Pentest page you'll find the entire pentest process in 6 steps.
The different types of pentests
There are roughly three pentest methods. We're talking about whitebox, greybox, and blackbox pentesting.
With a Black box pentest, the organization provides the ethical hacker with no prior information about the systems and IT structure. The ethical hacker only receives a scope consisting of a URL and/or IP addresses. This is a simulation of how a ''real hacker'' operates. Obviously, a hacker with malicious intent has no internal knowledge and must gather this entirely on their own.
This makes it more difficult for the ethical hacker to expose weaknesses.
With Grey box penetration testing, the hacker receives limited information about systems and IT structure. In some cases, the penetration tester is given access to a system with a user account. This is a simulation of a situation where a hacker has gathered login credentials through, for example, phishing, and has thereby gained access to an organization's internal environment.
From this knowledge/access, an ethical hacker can conduct more thorough research into vulnerabilities within the organization's systems.
With a white box penetration test, the ethical hacker is given full access to, among other things, the source code, network, or advanced privileges within the IT systems. This allows an ethical hacker to focus mainly on reviewing all systems and providing as good a picture as possible of vulnerabilities within the organization's entire landscape.
Improving cybersecurity
Now that you know what pentesting is, you can continue with Tozetta's blog series. In this blog series we're working toward the ''Hacking As A Service'' subscription.
Through a subscription with available monthly pentest hours, Tozetta enables clients to continuously keep checking their environments for vulnerabilities. Besides the option to carry out a pentest every month, Tozetta's Hacking as a Service subscription also offers 24/7 security monitoring.
Want to know more? Read our next blog in the series or go to our hacking as a service page!