Penetration testing is an integral aspect of any organization. It involves a team actively attempting to penetrate your system and try to exploit your IT assets. Whenever Penetration testing is named, you might be wondering why do a penetration test when I have a personal server for my office and all the systems are highly secured with antivirus and my IT team monitors everything? The answer is, yes, you still need Cybersecurity and penetration testing.
Penetration testing is like a litmus paper test to check the quality of your cybersecurity. When any vehicle is manufactured, automobile engineers test their security by crashing it into the wall or solid stationery to check its reliability and safety. The same happens with penetration testing; once penetration testing is done, you know about the benefits of penetration testing benefits. With the tests, you know where your servers are lacking, where is the loophole of your cybersecurity can be filled to ensure that your systems are safe. Let’s go ahead and discuss the benefits of penetration testing.
Top 25 Benefits of Penetration testing
1. Scrutinizes the Security Layer
Penetration testing shows the real-world attack vectors that could hamper the company’s IT assets and data. Through penetration testing, you get to know the effectiveness of your security controls against any cyber-attack.
2. Uncover Vulnerabilities
If you are wondering, what are some risks and benefits of performing penetration testing? Then this point will clarify your answer. Pen testing uncovers all the threats and vulnerabilities that can damage your company’s IT assets. A pen test is an annual occurrence where cybersecurity experts search for significant vulnerabilities in your IT assets.
3. Prioritizes Vulnerabilities
Pentest prioritizes your risk potential according to low, medium, and high risks. The vulnerabilities are categorized further into low, medium, and high, and timelines are assigned to mitigate every risk factor that can hamper your running operations.
4. Opportunity to Fix Vulnerabilities
Once the cybersecurity team knows the loopholes in your system, they get a clear picture of making the improvements. It is like a hit and trial method of mathematics where several attacks are made to check the potential threats.
5. Identify the Problems
In Hollywood, they say, leave it to the professionals. You might be a good entrepreneur, but everyone cannot do anything. A Pentest will uncover the moles within your network, applications, and data security you didn’t know about. Cybersecurity experts fix the misconfigurations in a DNS server and fix the compromised web server.
6. Shows your Network Strength
Quality Pentest shows your weaknesses in your security posture and your strengths where your security excels. Through the comparative analysis, you can quickly implement the strengths in your weaker areas.
7. Security Control Identification
The penetration test identifies your crucial security controls that are recommended in the system. Through this, you can prioritize remediation events, patch IT assets, or layer more security defenses in your company.
8. Exposes Poor Security Processes
A reliable Pentest reveals poor practices within your security system. You will get the missing necessary patches through the pen-testing. A good pen testing will reveal flaws within your networks that you might not expect.
9. Boosts Confidence to Work
Most of the time, during an incident in the organization, most of the employees start the blame game. Once pen testing is done, it will help the employees to work confidently. The added confidence in the team will be a plus point for the organization.
10. Enhances Security Technology’s performance
When Pentest is done, you might find some misconfigurations on your newly purchased security technology. It might be possible that your team members are still using default settings and credentials of the security tools, or they need to update the firmware on the firewall appliance.
11. Follows the Compliance
To follow the industry standards like PCI, DSS, SOX, or HIPAA, pen-testing is necessary. Through Pentest, you might discover the areas of improvement when it comes to your governance and compliance requirements.
12. Trains Security Team
Through penetration testing, your security team gets the learning opportunity and understands hackers’ techniques to penetrate your systems. Your team will learn about the latest tools and techniques to override any wrong commands sent by hackers.
13. Optimize incident response process
A Pentest will give your team a better idea of how they execute Incident Response (IR). After pen testing, your IR specialists will handle incidents and document, catalog, and carry out forensics during any security event.
14. Tests your Team’s Remediation Ability and Incident Reporting
When a security incident is analyzed, you can check the remediation team reports, communication in the event, and implement permanent fixes. This is important when you develop incident response and remediation plan. Through Pentest, you can check how well your IR team can assess an attack’s damage and cost.
15. Improves your Business Continuity
Through pentesting, you get to know about your business’ continuity in the event of an attack. Many business’ continuity plans remain idle without any update. If your organization performs a scheduled Pentest, you will have the opportunity to update your business continuity plans and check your backup and restoration abilities.
16. Protect your Critical Data
Data is considered as oxygen for your organization; if your oxygen is in the wrong hands, chances of your company’s survival will be less. A Pentest allows your organization to safeguard your data assets and prevent the attack before it reaches your IT assets.
17. Maps Cyber Kill Chain
Penetration testing helps map the various attack lifecycles within your organization. A quality Pentest will test the perimeter, network, and internal defenses. At every stage, a threat actor exploits the security layers to get deeper access. Through mapping techniques used by hackers, your security team will get an idea of the entire attack lifecycle.
18. Provides Reports
We understand that management and leadership require reports. When you get the approval for pen-testing, management would need a detailed report of the outcomes. Through pen-testing reports, you will be able to showcase the positive and negative aspects of your cybersecurity.
19. Aligns Security Standards
A penetration testing identifies your security gaps and lets you meet PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, GLBA, and FFEIC or other compliance and regulatory needs. Through these compliances, you can get international recognition and attract potential clients.
20. Strengthen Customer Trust
When you comply with PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, GLBA, and FFEIC, your customer base strengthens. The data breach is the last thing your customers want. If your customer’s data is in breach, you will lose your customer’s trust. Through Pentest, you get an opportunity to meet all the compliances.
21. Brand New Perspective of your Network
After the Pentest, you get a brand new perspective of your network, application, and data security. Pentest gives you a holistic view of your complete environment, and you will be able to check the major vulnerabilities. This allows you to use your productive time on other tasks apart from worrying about network and security issues.
22. Assesses Potential Impact Damage
If the Pentest attack is successful on your network, you can quickly assess the cost of loss you would have incurred if this attack would have been real. Through pen-testing reports, you can brief the potential threats and loopholes that can incur a massive cost if they are done from real hackers.
23. Prioritize budget on Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is one of the most neglected aspects of IT infrastructure. Through pen testing, you can assess the cost of loss if a cyber-attack happens in real-time. It can help you budget for advanced security tools that will free up time for your staff and prioritize cybersecurity measures.
24. Shows Clear Picture of your Response to Cyber Attack
Pentesting gives you a clear picture of your response in case of cyber-attack. When you already know your response time, you can either work on it or maintain it. Pentesting answers several questions related to cyber-attacks, like how well your organization is prepared. How ready are you for an attack? How to recover from an attack? What are the collaterals in case of an attack?
25. Help you to enforce Security Strategy
If you have a security strategy, you can show it to the organization for your readiness. If pen-testing exposes some human errors that can hamper the security layers, you can reinforce your security team and take corrective measures.
Conclusion
All the benefits mentioned above will be an integral part of your security strategy. Through pen-testing, you can easily cover all the loopholes and save yourself from any mishap that can hamper your business. Moreover, through pen-testing reports, you can easily keep a track of your weak points and maintain your strong points as a good example.
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