subject: Website Penetration Testing - An Effective Way To Ensure You Are Secured! [print this page] Penetration testing can be compared to real life situations to understand how it is actually done. The ethical hackers of the penetration testing services providers try to hack your site to practically check the security measures. Once they are done with their testing they make a report of their findings and recommend appropriate solutions to the problems detected.
To understand the penetration testing a good real life example will be - you forgetting to lock your car after parking it while going for shopping in a mall. This is what is called vulnerability i.e. your car is vulnerable to get stolen. In the same way when your website is missing enough protection and security your data and information is vulnerable to get stolen by malicious hackers. The testers think like the hackers and try to hack your site but the only difference between the testers and the hackers is that the testers will not steal any information but will alert you towards the vulnerabilities while hackers will exploit all that they can when they hack your network.
There are basically two types of penetration test white box test and black box test. Website penetration testing through white box test will give you complete knowledge of the test and system in advance and it is a more thorough test. Black box testing is done by mimicking the actions of the hackers.
As penetration testing is a manual way of checking the system, it is able to test both known and unknown vulnerabilities. Sometimes unknown vulnerabilities are not obvious to the scanner but can cause serious damage to the system.
Penetration test is divided into 4 phases. In the first phase a thorough research is done to check the information of the network addresses and IT deployment that is available publically and can be used by the hackers.
In the second phase scanning is done to identify the system and its features. In the third stage actual attack takes place to analyze the potential of the possible attacks. Care is taken by the testers to stop before causing damage to the systems while they perform the task of penetration.
In the last phase detailed analysis is reported with proper recommendations so the client can know better how to protect the network of the website and enhance business security.
Conclusion:
There are many benefits of conducting a penetration test, but the main advantage is that it can save you from financial losses that can be caused if your system is hacked or attacked. It is vital to go for penetration testing whenever there is change in network infrastructure.
