Understanding the Need for Penetration Testing

Posted by Nikita on September 13th, 2018

Globally, 7 million hacking attempts on an average are recorded every day. Hong Kong, being an international financial centre, has been at the epicentre of such attacks. All these threats and attacks provoke concern about the austerity of damage in terms of ransom, fine, and reputation. Hence, this is forcing organizations in Hong Kong to take measures in establishing their IT security team and hiring trained professionals to overcome the risk of loss as well as to strengthen the security system. EC-Council in Hong Kong works towards rendering such knowledge, courses on Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing, and training at a larger scale in the fields of network, system, and cybersecurity.

What is Penetration Testing?

Penetration tests, or pent tests, are a great way to identify vulnerabilities or loopholes that exist in a system or network having some security measures set up in place. A penetration test ordinarily involves the use of attacking methods led and administered by trusted individuals that are similarly used by malicious intruders or hackers. According to the type of test conducted, the process of Pent Test Hong Kong may involve a simple scan of the IP addresses to distinguish the machines that are offering services with known vulnerabilities or even exploiting discovered vulnerabilities that exist in an unpatched operating system. The testing team of Pent Test Hong Kong then documents the results of these tests or attacks and presents them as a report to the system owner. The vulnerabilities identified can then be resolved.

Do keep in mind that a penetration test does not persist forever. The time period for each of these tests varies, depending on the organization that is conducting the tests. A penetration test is basically, an effort to breach the security of a network or system. It is not a full security audit. This implies that it is no more than a representation of a system’s security at a single moment in time. At this time, the known vulnerabilities, gaps or misconfigured systems do not change within the time frame the penetration test is conducted.

So, there are two main reasons to conduct Penetration Testing. The first reason is to increase the upper management's awareness of cybersecurity issues. Secondly, it is to test intrusion detection and response capabilities of the system in question. The management of a company might not want to treat all the vulnerabilities found in a vulnerability assessment but might want to work upon its system weaknesses that are found through a pent test. This happens a lot, as addressing all the shortcomings found in the assessment can be expensive and most organizations in Hong Kong and worldwide, might not be able to designate the budget for this.

Furthermore, penetration tests can have severe consequences on the network they run on. If it is being wrongly conducted, it can cause congestion and systems' crashing. In fact, the worst case scenario can be it creating the exact thing it is intended to prevent which is the compromise of the systems, desired by unauthorized intruders. It is, therefore, necessary to have the management's consent before beginning a penetration test on the organization's systems or network.