What Is The Main Goal Of Penetration Testing?

What is Penetration testing?

Penetration testing, also commonly referred to as the pentest, is usually carried out to test your system’s security from a hacker’s perspective. This pentest can help discover, identify, and exploit the weaknesses and vulnerabilities associated with your organization’s apps and helps create a better defense towards any cyber attack. The main goal is to test the system, devices, websites, applications, software, or other equipment essential for any organization for any security risks and loopholes. 

The term can be pictured as a scenario in which a person is himself trying and exploring the security weaknesses of his house against any future intruder or attacker. The person looks for windows and doors and tests their locks if they are working fine. He may encounter or find a giant hole in the back window of the house that was there for quite some time, and he was aware of it. He had the notion of getting it fixed but always got carried away with the daily chores. These tactics make it easy to spot any weaknesses before time as you can fix it before it is exposed to someone else; penetration testing holds the exact same goal for the IT infrastructure of your organization. Due to the increasing trend of remote working, cloud storage, online stores, marketplaces, and virtual financial transactions, companies heavily invest in IT security by developing firewalls, buying antiviruses, and hiring experts. Penetration testing can help them test-run the measures they are taking and ensure that their security does not fail to any actual attack. Penetration testing is a type of drill for your organizational security, guaranteeing the extent to which your company can survive an attack and save brand value, financial value, and sensitive information regarding your system. 

Ethical hackers are usually hired as penetration testers to do quality assurance and evaluate the security measures taken by the companies. These hackers or testers work in a controlled environment to attack and test the servers, network, employees’ accounts, and potentially vulnerable targets to breach their security. The testing starts by gathering enough information regarding a system, usually about their customers, vendors, or employees who have access to it. Then, ethical hackers attack the weak spots within the system, i.e., they try to breach the outer firewall or utilize an employee’s compromised password first to enter the system and move onwards gaining authorization to sensitive information, essential assets, and data regarding the organization. After full exploitation, penetration testers usually generate a thorough report that is forwarded to the experts or security advisors of the organization so they can strengthen the exploited and compromised spots, eradicating as many risks as they can. Penetration testing is usually completed in five stages as mentioned below:

Stages of Penetration Testing:

• Planning and gathering information regarding the system
• Scanning and evaluating the potential response from the system
• Gaining access to data, traffic, and applications.
• Maintaining presence and access over the system
•  Analyzing and generating a report.

As the S4E team, we want you to know that we carry out penetration tests meticulously and without skipping any steps in the process. Even the smallest detail that is overlooked can lead to huge problems with your asset in the future. We know the details that can be ignored with more than ten years of experience and learning about the different security vulnerabilities we have seen in thousands of penetration tests. Therefore, we can provide you with the best pentest service to avoid these vulnerabilities.

You can also contact us about any question marks in your head. We would like to help you with every detail.