Penetration Testing: Definition, Types, Tools & More in 10 Important Points

Introduction

With the advancement of technology, the world is getting uplifted in both positive and negative ways. A lot of positive effects have been seen with the help of technologies that have been updating day by day. While having a lot of advantages, there are some drawbacks like malware, virus, and hacking. A person can deal with malware and viruses somehow but hacking is also something that you need to protect yourself from.

So it is very necessary to protect your data from hackers. Cybersecurity penetration testing is something that a person can do to protect their vital data and information. There are a lot of penetration testing techniques that are used by peoples nowadays because of the increasing penetration testing scope nowadays due to the increasing use of technologies.

1. What is penetration testing or pentester?
2. Why do we need penetration testing?
3. Why penetration testing is important?
4. How penetration testing is done?
5. How to start penetration testing or how to conduct penetration testing?
6. Type of penetration testing
7. Pen Testing Tools
8. Penetration testing security analysis
9. Risks of Penetration Testing
10. What is the end result of a penetration test?

1. What is penetration testing or pentester? 

Penetration testing is also known as pen-testing and ethical hacking which is the process of gathering information ethically. Penetration testing meaning can be explained as the act of testing a PC framework, organization, or web application to discover security weaknesses that an assailant could abuse. Some of the penetration testing examples are a black box, grey box, white box, and many other penetration testings.

2. Why do we need penetration testing?

Well, a lot of people don’t know what is the purpose of penetration testing? So, here is the answer to what is the primary purpose of penetration testing. A high reputed company does not want to get hacked by someone and lose its goodwill at any cost. So to protect himself from this unethical works, he appoints an ethical hacker so that he can check if there are any chances of getting hacked. A reputed organization should know how does penetration testing work. 

3. Why penetration testing is important?

 There is a lot of importance in penetration testing. Some of them are:

Provides security:

Pen testing provides security to the organization and saves them from being victims of unethical hackers and pay a large amount of money.

Testing new innovation execution:

Going out through a penetration test on new innovations, before they go into creation regularly sets aside time and cash as it is simpler to fix the weaknesses and holes before the application goes live.

4. How is penetration testing done?

A person must have penetration testing skills to perform cybersecurity penaaz-testing. There is some penetration testing methodology for pen testing for beginners to learn How to do penetration testing. There are basically 4 phases of penetration testing that can be followed in the penetration testing methods:    

The series of penetration testing steps are:  

A) Recon

The recon stage comprises looking for open-source data on the objective of the security review. All data possibly helpful for an aggressor is gathered, for instance: IP locations, area and sub-space names, types and forms of advancements utilized, specialized data shared on discussions or interpersonal organizations, information spill.

B) Mapping

The mapping phase permits posting all functionalities of the review target. This progression empowers pen testers to have superior visibility on the most basic and uncovered components.

 C) Discovery

In this phase, the pentesters look for all the possible ways to find vulnerability as much as possible to ensure the security of the data of the organization. 

D) Exploitation

The exploitation stage comprises testing potential misuses of the imperfections distinguished in the past stage. This progression permits utilizing certain defects as “turns”, to find new weaknesses. The misuse of security weaknesses permits assessing their genuine effect and their criticality level.

5. How to start penetration testing or how to conduct penetration testing?

 An external ethical hacker is called and then he checks penetration testing requirements for carrying out the test. A lot of questions remain in the mind of the people that what does an effective penetration test consist of, so an effective test has survey, scanning, enumeration, and exploitation.

6. Type of penetration testing

There are many types of pen testing, some of them are:

• What is penetration testing in network security or Network service test:

It aims to find weaknesses in the organization through a penetration testing framework of the customers. Since the organization could have both inner and outside passages, so it is required to run tests locally at the customer site and distantly from the external world.

• Wireless network test:

Nowadays a lot of wireless items like an airport, laptops, smartphones, and many other wireless items are used by peoples, which has a high of getting hackers. So it is necessary to keep a trough pen testing for the safety and security of an organization.

• Social engineering test:

It clears ways for checking the “Human Network” of an association. This pen test emulates assaults which the representatives of an organization could endeavor to start a break. In any case, it can additionally separate into two subcategories, remote test, and physical test.

7. Pen Testing Tools

Pen testing tools frequently utilize computerized apparatuses to reveal standard application weaknesses. Pen testing devices analyze information encryption procedures and can recognize hard-coded values, for example, usernames and passwords, to check security weaknesses in the framework. Some of the penetration testing basics tools are:

A) Powershell suite

It helps in discovering weak damageable data on the cyber penetration testing network and easily navigate the systems. The PowerShell-suite is an assortment of PowerShell contents that remove data about the handles, cycles, DLLs, and numerous different parts of Windows machines

B) X-ray

 It is a superb organization planning tool that utilizes the OSINT system to help manage its strategies. Xray utilizes wordlists, DNS demands, and any API keys to help distinguish open ports on an organization from the external glancing in.

C) Simply email

As the name suggests, simply email is an email recon device used to help assemble related data found on the web-dependent on somebody’s email address.

8. Penetration testing security analysis

Penetration analyzer can bargain a framework without telling anybody about it adequately, this could be demonstrated as an inability to prepare staff on appropriate security checking successfully.

9. Risks of penetration testing

There are a lot of benefits of penetration testing but the risks of penetration testing are the main drawback of using it. It does not fully help in knowing the security of data as they may be sometimes wrong and provide the wrong information. As an external is called to check the security, the external hacker makes misuse his power and exploits the company.

10. What is the end result of a penetration test?

The end result of penetration scope is that it results in knowing how secured your companies system is and if the system is not secured properly then steps will be taken against it. And shows an effective practical result of the question of what is pen testing in security. 

Conclusion

 Ethical Hacking or Pentesting is a very effective method nowadays that are used by companies to protect and secure the data from external risks and Hacking. The end-users always expect that their data is always secured. To provide that, companies using pen testing is the best decision to opt for. 

So, have you made up your mind to make a career in Cyber Security? Visit our Master Certificate in Cyber Security (Red Team) for further help. It is the first program in offensive technologies in India and allows learners to practice in a real-time simulated ecosystem, that will give you an edge in this competitive world.

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• Manual Testing: Everything To Know In 6 Important Steps