Penetration Testing: Strengthening Your Cybersecurity Defenses

About 60% of businesses are likely to increase the cost of their product or services to make up for the loss incurred due to a data breach. Moreover, the time and effort to contain and mitigate breaches takes a toll on engineering bandwidth and impacts product launch deadlines. Thankfully, you can use various pen testing techniques to significantly reduce the odds of security breaches. 

In this article, we discuss the types of penetration testing, and the different approaches to it, and help you understand them using examples. So let’s get started!

What is Penetration testing?

Penetration testing or pen test is a cybersecurity technique used to identify security vulnerabilities within an organization’s network, applications, or API by launching a series of simulated attacks. 

Pen tests provide insight into the impact of an actual breach attempt to enable the org to prepare sufficiently by addressing the gaps. 

It provides a clear picture or a comprehensive audit of your security posture by using similar tools and techniques that malicious actors may use. 

Importance of Penetration testing 

The key goal behind conducting pen testing is to equip an organization’s IT team to prepare for any external security attacks. Pen tests evaluate if the current security posture is effective against breach attempts.

Improves security posture

Pen tests are preventive security measures that aid businesses in protecting sensitive data and intellectual property from malicious actors. By identifying the gaps in your posture, you can stay a step ahead of exploiters and prevent incidents.

Gain customer confidence

Improving your product or service’s resilience against breaches gives customers and stakeholders confidence, which gives you a competitive edge and retains them.

Meet compliance requirements

Lastly, it solves their compliance requirement. Data security regulatory standards like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) mandate strict security guidelines to protect data. While pen testing is not always mandatory, it is a good practice to systematically test applications and networks. 

Types of Pen testing 

The different types of penetration tests include applications, networks, social engineering, API, and wireless. Conducted externally or internally, types of penetration testing that help to prevent malicious actors from penetrating your perimeter. 

Here are the 5 types of pen testing you should be looking at: 

Application pen test

Application penetration testing scans for security gaps in web-based software, mobile devices, IoT devices, APIs, and more. Web applications may include some overlapping systems like network services or configurations. 

Some common cyber attacks against applications include data integrity failures, authentication failures, server side request forgery, security misconfigurations, and cryptographic failures. 

Network pen test

Network pen tests can be of two types: 

External pen tests: evaluates the effectiveness of systems hosted or accessible via the internet, such as mail, FTP servers, and the web. Few external network penetration testing examples are footprinting, system or port scanning, and IDS/IPS testing.

Internal pen tests: evaluates the lateral movement of attackers once they have entered the network. This includes access points, computers, firewalls, and local servers. 

Common methods to test internal networks include internal network scanning, firewall and ACL testing, vendor security configuration testing, and database control testing, and more. 

Social engineering

Social engineering penetrating tests aim to identify security vulnerabilities caused by human negligence, lack of judgment, or poor knowledge of security best practices. 

Social engineering attacks exploit flaws in human behavior like curiosity, trust, and gullibility to gain unauthorized access into a network or scam scam people into paying money. 

Ethical hackers use tools like USB drops, stolen credentials, eavesdropping, tailgating, impersonation, manipulation, and phishing attacks, and more to gain access into the user’s network. 

API Penetration Testing

API, or application programming interface is the backbone of an application or software. APIs transfer critical data and functions, making it susceptible to a wide range of attacks. 

API pen tests help you discover gaps in API endpoints to protect the data exchange and communication between the interfaces. Some popular tools used to test API security are Postman, OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, and SoapUI. 

Common API security risks include Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), insecure deserialization, Denial of Service (DoS), and Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR). 

Wireless pen test

Think of any business infrastructure; laptops, IoT devices, smartphones, printers, and more – all run on wireless networks. 

Wireless access points are easy targets of exploitation as it does not involve complex hacking mechanisms used in social engineering or decrypting strong passwords. 

Malicious actors can leverage physical proximity to gain unauthorized access into your wireless network infrastructure. Therefore, testers conduct wireless pen tests within the signal range of wifi. 

Wireless penetration testing identifies and assesses all wireless devices connected to the organization’s wifi. Penetration testers identify wireless networks like weak access points network layout using tools like Aircrack-ng, Wireshark, Airgeddon, Wifiphisher, PixieWPS, and more. 

Also check: List of Penetration testing methodologies

Different types of pen testing approaches

There are three types of penetration testing methods – white box, black box, and gray box. In each, the tester has a different level of knowledge on the functions, mechanisms, and code structure of the application. 

Let’s understand what these types of pen tests entail. 

Black box testing 

Here, the tester conducts the test without any prior knowledge of the internal mechanisms or functionalities of the system. The process involves giving an input and evaluating the system generated output. 

Black box testing provides unbiased results as it is performed by engineers who didn’t develop the application. It is conducted from an end users perspective to ensure that it meets the requirements like functionality and usability. 

The goal of black box testing is to discover missing functions, interface errors, issues in accessing the database, errors in initiating or terminating functions, and performance or behavioral gaps. 

There are three types of black box penetration testing:

• Functional testing: Tests the applications’s functional requirements
• Regression testing: Ensures compatibility of old code with new one
• Non functional testing: Evaluates the application’s performance, usability, and scalability

Examples of black box penetration testing tools are Appium, Selenium, Microsoft, Coded UI, Applitools, and HP QTP. 

White box testing

Contrary to black box testing, here the tester has complete knowledge and deep visibility into the application. Testers know about its internal code structure, source code, design documents, and architecture flow. It scans for bugs and vulnerabilities by checking the source code.

This level of transparency helps to identify sections of code that are not tested, if the system components are functioning as expected, identify areas of improvement and redundant code. 

While black box tests evaluate the functionality of an application, white box tests its internal structure. 

White box tests are typically performed for three purposes:

• Unit testing: Ensures optimum performance of each component and checks for design requirement gaps
• Integration testing: Checks if the components perform effectively in isolation as well as together
• Regression testing: Tests code performance after major security or function updates 

Common tools for white box testing are PyUnit, Sqlmap, Nmap, Parasoft Jtest, Nunit, VeraUnit, CppUnit, Bugzilla, Fiddler, and more. 

Gray box testing

Combining the principles of black and white box testing, gray box pen testers have limited knowledge of the application. They have partial knowledge of the source code and design documents, data structures, and other components. 

This testing method focuses on finding defects caused by poor structuring or incorrect application use. The lack of complete knowledge helps testers boost efficiency and avoid bias by using an approach that combines the knowledge of developers and testers. 

Gray box testing methods include: 

• Matrix testing: Evaluates program variables for analyzing the risk each possesses 
• Regression testing: Analyzes if new updates pushed to an application have caused errors in its existing code repository
• Pattern testing: Evaluates previous errors to identify defective patterns, what caused it and how to fix it 
• Orthogonal array testing: Used for application with a low number of complex inputs that are too heavy to run comprehensive tests. It uses statistics to build cases that provides an acceptable level of balance without the need for exhaustive testing

Some tools used for gray penetration techniques are Burp Suite, Nessus, Acunetix, AppSpider, Nikto, Arachni, Wapiti, and more. 

Conclusion

Are you looking for pen testing solutions due to a security framework requirement? Are you managing various parts of compliance requirements using siloed tools?

Pen testing is an important aspect of meeting compliance requirements. It helps you find gaps within your product or network that can be a hurdle to meet the requirements of your compliance framework. 

Sprinto is a compliance automation solution that proactively and continuously monitors your security controls, automates evidence collection, and completes audits faster. It leverages AI to assign you quickly and proactively fix those gaps. 

It periodically checks third-party solutions for non compliance and patches vulnerabilities in real-time. With Sprinto you’ll have access to a network of best penetration testing service providers.

Contact us to boost your security program now!

FAQs

How often should pen testing be conducted?

You should conduct pen tests at least once every year and up to twice a year if your type of product or service has a high number of exploitable vulnerabilities. 

What is physical penetration testing?

Physical penetration testing is a process in which testers attempt to bypass physical access to an organization’s physical barriers like doors, locks, keys, and other security protocols. 

What are some penetration testing examples?

Examples of pen testing by security professionals are the use of social engineering to gain unauthorized access into a network perimeter, use of phishing emails for financial gain, and encrypting a database (ransomware). 

What are the common types of penetration tests?

Examples of common types of penetration tests are mobile application pen test, social engineering pentest, API pentests, wireless pen tests, and network penetration tests. 

What are the different types of pen testing, and how do they relate to actual attacks, vulnerability scans, and other types of security testing like application testing?

Penetration testing types encompass a range of security assessments that simulate actual attacks to identify vulnerabilities. These include vulnerability scans and application testing, all vital components of a comprehensive security strategy to safeguard against real-world threats.