Cybersecurity testing for an organization should encompass cloud penetration, internal penetration of the corporate environment, remote access from home-bounded workers, and network infrastructure within remote offices.
Web apps have quickly become part of finance, banking, eCommerce, and other industries. Significant steps in predictive security models and security assessments against critical public and private systems will hopefully change hacker behavior and attacks against the finance, healthcare, and government systems.
Unsecured applications succumbed to these cybercrimes and cybersecurity attacks, while businesses face financial penalties, brand losses, and a drop in investor confidence. Security testing is critical. Injection attacks, code injection, client-side injection, and unauthorized network attacks affect enterprise environments. Proactive security testing is vital.
The Role Of The Developer In Cybersecurity
Developers should design secure web apps using safe coding techniques, such as input validation, output encoding, cross-site scripting, SQL injection prevention, parameterized queries, and session management. They should develop secure web apps using specific programming languages such as Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, and JavaScript. These languages provide built-in support for certain coding features.
Accessibility testing is essential because it ensures that your application works well for everyone. Security testing helps in checking the security level of an application:
- Test the protection of data before storing it in a database security system
- Testing includes Password strength, Captcha, and Login forms.
- Rogue commands through user inputs
- Malicious URL input
- Brute Force Password attack simulation
- Cross-site request
Every system within the enterprise has inherent security flaws that pose a significant security threat. Microsoft servers, Cisco networking devices, and Oracle cloud components have critical vulnerabilities. The attack surface in these areas will continue to expand after an initial launch. Cyber security is ongoing within the enterprise. Security Testing ensures that all the critical features of an application work flawlessly in a production setting.
Conducting Penetration Testing
Penetration testing is a human-enacted activity involving cybersecurity testing that uses controlled cyber-attacks to target a running system to determine vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit.
Penetration testing of a running system comprises the following steps:
Data Collection – The first step of conducting a pen test is collecting data such as table names, databases, information about third-party plugins, and software configurations:
- Identify the target audience.
- Determine the level of risk aligning to various security standards, including PCI, HITRUST, and NIST.
- Prepare the test environment by leveraging current security measures and customer security components.
Vulnerability Assessment – Once the data is collected, the software pen testing team evaluates it to determine security risks or vulnerabilities that could put the system at risk of a security attack.
- Analyze the results, including any business logic issues discovered during the engagement.
- Report the findings, including manual penetration testing results.
- Document the process, including all vulnerabilities discovered, application security flaws, and database security issues.
Launch Simulated Attacks – The pen testing team begins with a controlled attack on the target system to explore more vulnerabilities and understand how they can prevent attacks.
- Perform the test
Report Preparation – After the system has been targeted and entirely assessed for potential vulnerabilities, the software testing team creates an essay that outlines the discoveries of the test and the measures required to protect the system.
- Review the report
Remediation – Followed up with additional post-pen tester sequence:
- Make corrections.
- Repeat the process.
- Deploy the changes.
- Monitor the system.
- Maintain the system
- Re-test
Understanding the role of Manual Security Testing
Manual security testers often use a combination of handpicked security testing software and tools best suited to evaluate their application.
The primary goal of manual security testing is to discover potential vulnerabilities in an application. Automated security testing alone might not understand or reveal that ultimately.
The recommendation is to hire security experts to leverage automation technology to find patterns or other clues that might uncover critical information about the application’s vulnerabilities.
Summary
Security testing aims to ensure that an application is secure against known threats. A good security tester needs to understand how to identify the weaknesses in the application.
All efforts aim to ensure that all critical features of the application function flawlessly in a production environment. Therefore, testers assess various levels of security, such as the confidentiality, integrity, continuity, vulnerability, and authenticity of the web application.
Penetration testing requires patience and perseverance. A qualified resource must complete A pen test on at least an annual basis and consider both internal and external threats to maximize the value of your investment. Please let us know here at CYBRI if you have questions regarding your PCI pen test or if you’d like to learn more about how we can help.
What makes CYBRI one of the Premier penetration testing companies?
Our outstanding penetration testing company services have attracted several clients that range from small startups to huge multinational companies. We are dedicated to improving cybersecurity across the board, which means that our services to your organization continue even after the pen test report has been delivered.
No matter the size of your organization, we will assess all of your cybersecurity needs from scratch to provide security measures tailored to your business needs. Our experts are always available to all of our clients in an advisory capacity should you wish to contact us.
Discuss your project with us!
Click here to go to our site, fill out the form, and the engagement team will contact you shortly!
