Penetrating testing which often called pen testing is a form of ethical hacking. It is a deliberate cyber attack on company’s data performed by company hired hackers. In context of computational terms, external penetration testing is used to augment Web Application Firewall. You can learn these tools, techniques and many more thing about cyber security on online platforms and courses.

Purpose of Testing?

The purpose of testing is to make sure the company data is safe it is periodic check done once a yearly at least to check any vulnerabilities in the system and cyber security. Once weaknesses are determined necessary measures are taken to resolve the issue. Penetration test highlights the error in company policies and IT administration errors, it highlights the soft spots where cyber attacks can target.

Methods of Pen testing

External testing

External penetration tests target the assets of a company that are visible on the internet, e.g., the web application itself, the company website, and email and domain name servers (DNS). The goal is to gain access and manipulate valuable data from external assets that are publicly published. This also check to what extent the hacker can goes in.

Internal testing

In an internal test, a tester with access to an application behind its firewall simulates an attack by a malicious insider. A common starting scenario can be an employee whose credentials were stolen due to a phishing attack or information leak. This can give insight how much damage could happen with an attack on any employee.

Blind testing

This sort of test can require a lot of time for surveillance, it tends to be costly. In a blind test, a tester is only given the name of the enterprise that’s being targeted. This is a genuine approach and it simulates a real attack, it also does not give information about company so there are no biases.

Double-blind testing

In a double-blind test, a real scenario is acted of how the cyber security team will respond to the cyber attack if it happens. It checks the real human errors and availability of all options. It is also a drill for staff and expose how will they act.

Targeted testing

This testing is carried out by group of hired hackers and IT team of company. It is very beneficial as it gives the live feedback and it’s a lights on approach as both teams collaboratively highlights the weak points.

Tools to perform pen testing

There are various tools that helps you to perform tests on cyber security, the efficiency and effectivity of these tools alters the results of the tests, so it is important to use best tools for best purposes.

Metasploit

Metasploit tool is a popular collection of testing tools that are used by IT experts over years. It can be used on servers, online-based applications, networks, and several other places. Metasploit not only detect any new vulnerability but also analyze the improvement and fixation of previous vulnerability to cyber security.

Nmap

Nmap is a free tool for scanning and fixing your network or system soft spots. It detects many characteristics of targeted network its hosts, firewall and operating systems on that network.

Wireshark

Wireshark is useful tool that analyzes tiny details of the activities taking place in your network. It is a network analyzer, network sniffer, or network protocol analyzer for assessing the vulnerabilities of your network traffic in real time.