Cyber Security is the need of an hour because of increasing hacking incidents. The overall statistics provided by IT industries around the world indicate that more than 50% of small business houses suffer a cyber attack. Out of this, nearly 60% of the companies’ fall out of business within six months time span. This raises an increased need for full proof network security. The only answer to this is Penetration Testing. In simple words, Penetration Testing or Pen Testing is a practice of web application testing or testing of computer network to check out the vulnerabilities that can be used by the hackers.
What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration Testing is a type of simulated cyber attack done against the computer system to exploit the vulnerabilities. It is commonly used for augmenting the WAF or Web Application Firewall.
The test is carried out for the identification of the weaknesses in the company’s security network or applications that can provide unauthorized access to the third parties. Even during the pen test, the strengths of the particular network system and web applications are checked too.
The closer outlook provided with the help of the Penetration testing will help in tuning the security policies of the WAF and fixing the occurring vulnerabilities.
Few statistics collected within few years for varied sectors show that 5.3% of the cyber attacks against the financial institutions, 38.9% against the Healthcare sector and 35.1% of the hacking were successful against the online third-party application services.
Importance of Penetration Testing
Everyone is aware of the WannaCry Ransomware Attack that started in the year 2017. It locked nearly 2 lacs computers. Hackers demanded a ransom amount in Bitcoin, and it affected many top as well as mid-sized companies across the globe. This calls for Pen Testing from the side of the experienced testers who can check out the minute details too.
- It is important in order to secure the financial or any confidential data while transferring it to different computer systems or networks.
- Discovering the loopholes in the network system
- Finding the security weakness in the web applications
- Implementation of the effective security strategy in the industries
- Securing the end-users data
- Pen testers provide feedback on the risk channels that can become a safer way for hackers to enter into the company’s system and to invest more in those areas.
Top Penetration Testing Tools for 2018
Penetration Testing helps in identification of the security weaknesses. The Pen Test tools help in attacking the system for the network security check. If the QA testing professionals witnesses any unauthorized access while testing with these tools than they need to fix the weakness quickly. Let us have a look at the list of top Penetration Testing Tools in the year 2018.
Owasp:
The OWASP or Open Web Application Security Project focuses entirely on improving the software security. It contains many Pen test tools to check out varied protocols and the software environments. The tools under this project include OWASP Dependency Check, Zed Attack Proxy and OWASP Web Testing Environment tool.
Netsparker:
It is a web application scanner that finds out the XSS, SQL Injection and other loopholes in the security network. It is available as a solution for SaaS and on-premises. This tool helps in detecting Dead Accurate loopholes, Custom 404 Pages, URL Rewrite, tracks bugs, etc. It assists in scanning 1,000 Web Application within 24 hours.
Metasploit:
This tool works on the ‘exploit’ concept that breaches the framed security system and enters into the particular network. It creates a perfect and seamless framework for Pen testing by running a ‘payload’, which is a kind of code that performs operations on the target machine. The tool finds use in servers, networks, applications, etc.
KALI:
This tool works only on the Linux machines. It helps in creating a backup and the recovery schedule. It promotes the easiest way to find the largest database of the security tools. Moreover, KALI is best for injecting and packet sniffing. The 64-bit addition in KALI allows the brute force for cracking the password.
Aircrack:
This is one of an important tool for wireless penetration testing. It helps in cracking vulnerable wireless connections. It includes WPA, WPA2 and WEP encryption keys. Aircrack supports all platforms and operating systems, improves the tracking speed, supports more drivers and cards and much more.
To conclude, Penetration Testing helps businesses and IT industries to check out for the open vulnerabilities in their systems or applications. The inclusion of Penetration testing in the companies is on the rise to secure the business networks and minimize cyber attacks. The demand for Penetration Testers may grow at a rate of 23.7% by the year 2021.
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