Network Penetration Testing And Its Importance

By Author: Martin Lobo
Total Articles: 355
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In today’s fiercely competitive business environment with ever-present and pervasive cyber-threats, it is becoming increasingly difficult for enterprises to keep their corporate image intact. The following are some data breach statistics that prove it beyond doubt.

• As per Identity Theft Resource Center’s ‘2011 Breach Report’, malicious attacks (defined as a combination of hacking and insider theft) accounted for nearly 40 percent of the recorded breaches in 2011. Hacking attacks were responsible for more than one-quarter (25.8 percent) of the data breaches recorded.

• According to Symantec’s ‘Internet Security Threat Report’, approximately 1.1 million identities were exposed per breach worldwide, mainly owing to the large number of identities breached through hacking attacks. More than 232.4 million identities were exposed overall during 2011. Deliberate breaches mainly targeted customer-related information, primarily because it can be used for fraud.

• As per Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s ‘A Chronology of Data Breaches’, total number of records containing ...
... sensitive personal information involved in security breaches in the U.S. is 562,943,732 in 3,241 data breaches since January 2005.

With new vulnerabilities emerging each passing day, enterprises need effective security solutions to continuously monitor and manage their security network and systems. That is where network penetration testing comes useful. Wikipedia defines it as “a method of evaluating the security of a computer system or network by simulating an attack from malicious outsiders (who do not have an authorized means of accessing the organization's systems) and malicious insiders (who have some level of authorized access).” It helps to ensure the highest safety levels by initiating a real world attack on the network and systems.

Thanks to managed service providers, enterprises today can perform network penetration testing easily without making any upfront investment. The vulnerability assessment and network penetration testing service being an on-demand solution makes it convenient to run tests over the Internet anywhere, anytime. The following are some of its features.

• Covers all WASC, OWASP Top 10, CVE / NVDB / SANS Top 20 vulnerabilities including data-in-motion leakages
• Coverage of all attack paths through loophole correlation
• Threat Modeling and expert validation along with automated exploitation
• Automated Testing
• Business logic verification
• Online vulnerability management dashboard
• Transparent, monthly/quarterly charges
• PCI and ISO27001 compliance friendly reporting
• Research driven delivery

Such IT infrastructure management and monitoring services are necessary for enterprises to ensure that their infrastructure is always up and running 24x7.

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