Why should you focus on conducting pen testing?

 With the increasing revolutions of technology, our lives have been positively yet negatively influenced. There are plenty of benefits that technology brings for us. But simultaneously it has given birth to some of the most deadly threats to the organizations and individuals as well. When it comes to a crucial and complex industry like the software development industry, adversities of technology can be seen in form of the birth of malicious attackers or hackers.  In today’s world, cyber threats are rapidly evolving at their best while the business world is at a great stake and is increasingly under intense pressure by the stakeholders in order to prevent their sensitive data, information, and credentials against security threats like ransomware, malicious attacks, phishing, etc. 

Strengthening the quality of software products is the main aim of every organization in the software development industry for the sake of fulfilling the product expectations set by customers. For this purpose, many organizations rush to implement the use of large-sized, heavy costs software testing tools without even knowing how to use it. However, organizations must rush to the penetration testing companies, for their professional ethical testing abilities to dig out the errors and glitches in the software products. Although organizations are constantly chock-full with the latest and considered the best tools and technologies, penetration testing is still one of the most popular and critical tools to strengthen security defenses.

Without wasting any second, let us delve you into some of the key rationales for why you should focus on conducting pen testing;

Exposition of crucial and complex vulnerabilities in the testing environment - Just like vulnerability assessment, penetration testing aids in exposing whether an organization is likely to suffer from a cyber-attack and provide suggestions on how to enhance its security posture. Via scanning the operating system, network devices, and application software, penetration testing helps in identifying known and unknown vulnerabilities in the test environment and generate reports, listing the loopholes found according to the criticality.

However, penetration testing goes beyond vulnerability assessment and take action on the vulnerabilities found. It aims to determine the methods of exploiting discovered vulnerabilities "to prove (or prove) the true attack vector against the organization's IT assets, data, personnel, and/or physical security."

In short, penetration testing aids in providing an insight into the extent to which an organization’s vulnerabilities can be exploited by hackers.

Prioritizing risks according to their intensity of exploitation - Nicely performed penetration tests provide an in-depth view of overall organization’s vulnerabilities that are easy to exploit and also provide useful suggestions to fix the problems while optimizing your levels of protection. Loopholes or vulnerabilities that are discovered will be then listed according to the priority from most exploitable to the least exploitable ones. 

By following the so-called "risk-oriented priority" approach, quality assurance professionals will be able to prioritize these risks based on their severity, plan about their corrective actions, and allocate their security resources accordingly. For instance, testers may want to prioritize solving the most critical problems or glitches that have the most adverse impact on the company and delay processing vulnerabilities that have little impact and are difficult to exploit.

Meeting compliance and Industry standards - If you want your organization to meet the industry standards, then it is important to conduct penetration tests regularly. Some of the common compliance standards include ISO 27001, HIPAA, NIST, FIMAA, etc. If penetration tests are conducted frequently on your environment, your organization will demonstrate due diligence on information security and avoid huge fines for non-compliance with regulations.

Upper management must know about the level of risk involved - Managers or leaders of today are much more concerned about the digital security health of an organization as compared to the past. Why this enables them to be conscious of security? The answer is simple i.e the rapid advancements in technology and the birth of cyber attackers.  

No doubt top management may not have extended hours to read every page of the penetration test report but with the help of an executive summary of the report, they can analyze the severity of vulnerabilities and risks involved. It is here recommended that when you select a penetration testing company for its services, be sure to get the preview of their reporting practices to ensure that the final report includes relevant information both for technical personnel as well as executives.

Final Thoughts 

There are many more reasons to answer a simple question like why you should focus on conducting pen testing? But the aforementioned ones are the highlighted ones. Pen testing is crucial for a business to strengthen its cybersecurity posture, to allow testers to dig out the errors and glitches before a hacker exploits them to get into your system.