7 Sept 2024 - What is penetration testing? (ITpro.com)
- Sep 6, 2024
- 1 min read
Going beyond tooling and tech solutions with penetration testing is an effective way of achieving assurance in the security of your IT assets
By Fleur Doidge Contributions by Dale Walker
Last updated September 7, 2024In Features
Penetration testing, or "pen testing", is the practice of performing simulated attacks on a network, in order to evaluate the various cyber security controls and processes an organization may deploy to protect IT assets.
Typically performed by an external agent, a penetration test can be performed in a variety of ways, but they all involve attempts to breach an organization's defenses using the same tools that threat actors may deploy.
Despite common wisdom, the main goal of a penetration test is not to simply find vulnerabilities in an organisation's defenses. Instead, a test should be viewed as the primary way of gaining assurance in an organization's vulnerability assessment and management process.
A report from application security vendor Veracode found that automated scans failed to find 62% of Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) flaws successfully exposed by manual pen testing. It's for this reason that Mordor Intelligence analysis forecasts the testing market will reach $12.8 billion by 2029....
