What is Penetration Testing and How Does it Help Secure a Network?

In today’s world, where online dangers keep changing, protecting your computer networks is essential. Penetration testing, or ‘pen testing’ for short, is a crucial way to defend against these dangers. It helps organisations find and fix security weaknesses before they can be exploited. This detailed article will explain what pen testing is, why it’s essential, how often it should be done, and how it helps protect against specific online attacks like DDoS attacks.

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What is Penetration Testing?

Penetration testing is like a practice test to check a computer system’s security. It is done with permission and uses an ethical hacker. This hacker uses different methods to look for weak spots that bad hackers could use to cause trouble. The goal is to find and fix these weak points without damaging the system.

Detailed Steps of Pen Testing:

Scanning and Checking: After choosing which computer systems to check, pen testers use special tools to look for weak spots in the network they are testing. This can involve automatic scanning to find known problems and hands-on testing to discover less apparent issues the automatic tools might not catch.
Exploitation: In this part, the tester tries to use the weak spots they found to get into the system without permission. This step checks if these weak spots can be used and looks at how bad a break-in could be. This could mean getting more access than allowed, watching the data moving in and out, or taking information.
After Breaking In and Reviewing: Testers might keep their access to pretend to be a long-term hacker threat once they get in. This step looks at how far an attacker could get into the network and how much damage they could do. The last part is putting together a report explaining what they found and advising on how to fix these weak spots.

Why Regular Pen Testing is Important

Regular penetration testing is more than just following rules or security steps—it’s a pivotal action to ensure your cybersecurity is strong. It’s essential for many reasons:

Following the Rules: Companies need to follow rules to keep information safe. By doing these tests, companies ensure they’re not breaking any laws and avoid getting fined.
Protecting Important Stuff: These tests help secure all a company’s important information. This way, hackers can’t access it to steal or alter it, which could hurt the company’s reputation.
Keeping Business Running Smoothly: If hackers disrupt a company’s operations, it could lose money and struggle to provide services. Regular checks help prevent this, ensuring everything runs as it should.

Best Times for Pen Testing

If you update or change your computer systems frequently, you’ll want to do these checks more often. Every change could accidentally create new ways for hackers to sneak in, so catching those potential problems early is vital.

Have you ever had a security scare? If so, it’s also essential to make thorough checks after fixing the issue. This way, you can learn from what went wrong to strengthen your defences for next time.

Conduct checks even more frequently if you are handling private data. This helps keep sensitive information locked away against any attempts to steal or expose it.

While once a year is a baseline for some, if you’re working in a fast-paced or high-risk area, aiming for a security check every three months is a more intelligent move to keep everything secure and running smoothly.

DDoS Attacks and How Pen Testing Helps

Imagine a group of cars trying to get into a car park simultaneously, but it’s too small for all the cars. This jam keeps everyone from getting in or out. That’s like a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the internet. It’s when too much traffic from different places floods an online service, making it crash or freeze up. Though it might sound simple, a DDoS attack can mess up businesses and hurt their good names.

This is where penetration testing, or pen testing for short, comes in handy. It’s like a practice drill to prepare for and lessen the damage from these DDoS attacks. Here’s how it helps:

Finding Weak Spots: Like looking for cracks in a wall, testing helps find the vulnerabilities a DDoS attack could break through. It’s about spotting these issues before they turn into more significant problems.
Testing Strength: Pen testing simulates a DDoS attack to see how your system holds up. This can show whether your defences are strong enough or if you need to improve them.
Advice for Protection: After identifying these vulnerabilities, pen testers can advise you on how to reinforce your security. This might mean adding new tools to catch these threats sooner or upgrading your network to handle a sudden flood of traffic better.
Check out the best practices for IT Infrastructure security >

So, pen testing is critical in ensuring your online services can stand firm against DDoS attacks, keeping your business running smoothly and maintaining your reputation.

Customised Commercial IT Solutions with CAB IT

Penetration testing is more than just a technical need; it’s a crucial strategy to protect online information in a world where cyber threats are increasing. Pen testing helps organisations strengthen their defence against online dangers by carefully finding, evaluating, and fixing weaknesses. Doing thorough pen testing regularly is critical to staying ahead, ensuring networks are safe now and ready for future problems. As online threats change, we must also change how we protect against them. Penetration testing is an integral part of keeping up with these changes.

Partner with IT experts today who are specialists in pen testing and can help you reach your full potential. At CAB IT Services, we aim to keep your business ahead in the digital era. With over 100 years of combined experience, we will provide you with customised IT solutions. We’ll assess your industry needs and tailor our service to you. Don’t wait; take the next step with us today toward all-in-one connection and efficiency. Click here to contact us, and we’ll guide you through the process every step of the way.