VAPT Services
Vulnerability assessment is the assessment of a system to determine if it has vulnerabilities or weaknesses that need to be resolved or patched. Also known as a security audit. Often known as a flaw or weakness that could be exploited by an outside attacker or compromised by internal personnel. Vulnerability assessment is necessary because many organizations, companies, and health facilities are required to meet certain compliance.
Vulnerability Assessments do not involve any steps to fix or apply patches to a system. The objective of a vulnerability assessment is to determine the vulnerabilities and report them to the client. The assessment must be requested and authorized by the client prior to the performance of the assessment.
Penetration Test
Penetration Testing includes the actual exploitation of the vulnerabilities that are discovered during the phases of the vulnerability assessment. It includes vulnerability assessment; however, vulnerability assessment does not include penetration testing.
Rules of engagement (ROE) are signed and understood by both parties before the beginning of a penetration test. The ROE limits the penetration testers from touching targets that are not permitted by the client.
Business Benefits
Manage Risk Properly
For many organizations the foremost benefit of commissioning a penetration test is that it will give you a baseline to work upon in order to mitigate the risk in an structured and optimal way. A penetration test will show you the vulnerabilities in the target system and the risks associated to it. An educated valuation of the risk will be performed so that the vulnerabilities can be reported as High/Medium/Low risk issues. The categorization of the risk will allow you to tackle the highest risks first, maximizing your resources and minimizing the risk efficiently.
Increase Business Continuity
Business continuity is usually the number one security concern for many organizations. A breach in the business continuity can happen due to a number of reasons. Lack of security is one of them. Insecure systems are more likely to suffer a breach in their availability than secured and hardened ones. Vulnerabilities can very often be exploited to produce a denial of service condition which usually crashes the vulnerable service and breaches the server availability. Penetration testing against mission critical systems needs to be coordinated, carefully planned and mindful in the execution.
Minimize Client-side Attacks
Penetration testing is an effective way of ensuring that successful highly targeted client-side attacks against key members of your staff are minimized. Security should be treated with a holistic approach. Companies only assessing the security of their servers run the risk of being targeted with client-side attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in software like web browsers, pdf readers, etc. It is important to ensure that the patch management processes are working properly updating the Operating System and third party applications.
Protect Clients, Partners And Third Parties
A security breach could affect not only the target organization, but also their clients, partners and third parties working with it. Taking the necessary actions towards security will enhance professional relationships building up trust and confidence.
Comply With Regulation or Security Certification
The compliance section in the ISO 27001 standard requires managers and system owners to perform regular security reviews and penetration tests, undertaken by competent testers. PCI DSS also addresses penetration testing to relevant systems performed by qualified penetration testers.
Evaluate Security Investment
A snapshot of the current security posture and an opportunity to identify potential breach points. The penetration test will provide you with an independent view of the effectiveness of your existing security processes in place, ensuring that patching and configuration management practices have been followed correctly. This is an ideal opportunity to review the efficiency of the current security investment. What is working, what is not working and what needs to be improved.
Why Penetration Test?
- A penetration test helps organizations to understand their current security posture by identifying gaps in security. This enables organizations to develop an action plan to minimize the threat of attack or misuse.
- A well-documented penetration test result, helps managers in creating a strong business case to justify a needed increase in the security budget or make the security message heard at the executive level.
- A penetration test and an unbiased security analysis enable organizations to focus internal security resources where they are needed most.
- Penetration testing tools help organizations meet regulatory and legislative regulatory and legislative .
- Organizations sometimes allow partners, suppliers, B2B exchanges, customers and other trusted connections into their networks. A well-executed penetration test and security audits help organizations find the weakest links in this complex structure and ensure that all connected entities have a standard baseline for security.
- Once security practices and infrastructure is in place, a penetration test provides critical validation feedback between business initiatives and a security framework that allows for successful implementation at minimal risk.
What Should be Tested?
- Testing should be performed on all hardware and software components of a network security system.
- Test should be carried out on any computer system that is to be deployed in a hostile environment.
- Testing should be done safely to exploit system vulnerabilities, including OS, service and application flaws.
- Tests the defensive mechanisms, as well as end-users’ adherence to security policies.
How Often?
- On regular basis, at least annually
–Internal penetration test
–External penetration test
- Vulnerability scanning at least quarterly
- New network infrastructure or applications are added
- Significant upgrades or modifications are applied to infrastructure or applications
- New office locations are established
- Security patches are applied
- End user policies are modified
Cyber Security Assessment Services
Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) Services
Application Security Assessment (AppSec) Services
Network Security Architecture Review (NSAR) Services
Compliance Consulting Services
Security Resource/Staff Augmentation