Penetration Testing

Pentesting ’tools’ are used as part of engagements to help assess, identify and exploit commonly found vulnerabilities. There are numerous different kinds of tools used within every engagement, each with a different use and varying popularity.

Whilst these tools are effective at finding what they’re able to, it’s important to ensure your provider does not simply run automated tools and issue a report. Many vulnerabilities cannot be identified simply by running an automated tool without some form of manual verification and, in some cases, manual exploitation too. Our consultants at Echo Secure focus on manual testing where possible and whilst some of these tools are used to aid assessments, they will never be the focal point of the engagement.

Commonly seen tools include NMap, Metasploit, SQLMap, Nessus, Qualys, Nikto, SSLScan, Cobalt Strike and many more.

The end goal of a Pen Test varies from client to client and has many underlying factors, such as complexity of application and/or network, whether there have been previous tests, what kind of data the application/network holds and the size of the organisation.

The most frequent goal we are given by clients is “Can you obtain our customer information?”. However, it is also important to not overlook other issues which could lead to things such as loss of business reputation if the customer facing website is compromised.

Penetration Testing should NOT become a Pass/Fail assessment for your organisation. It should be seen as an exercise to evaluate your current security posture with the aim to make as many improvements as possible.

At Echo Secure, we ensure the client is able to extract as much value from the assessment as possible. As such, our reports contain sections for both the executive team which is aimed at the risks to the business and a technical section for the development and IT teams. We provide enough information for the C-Level staff members to fully understand the report and enough information for the technical team to be able to locate, reproduce and fix all issues discovered.

Initiation / Scoping — Ensuring the delivery of work is exactly as you require and the correct amount of time is allocated to your engagement.

Pre-Assessment — Confirmation that your environment is accessible and ready for testing and all requirements have been completed.

Assessment — Conducting the engagement as per the Scope of Work.

Post-Assessment — Collection of all results and ensuring the tested environment has been tidied up where possible.

Reporting — Compilation of results for the final deliverable.

Remediation Discussion and Support — Discussion and explanation of all issues where required and further support for implementing changes as recommended within the deliverable.

The main benefit is the proactive approach to finding serious vulnerabilities before attackers do. These vulnerabilities can lead to numerous scenarios such as reputational damage, loss of user data and financial fines.

Compliance — Pentesting is also a key factor to becoming compliant in multiple standards, such as Cyber Essentials Plus, PCI DSS and ISO 27001.

Evaluate Current Security Controls — A pen test allows you to evaluate current security controls which are in place. These could be Intrusion Prevention Systems (IDS), Intrusion Protection Systems (IPS), Firewalls and Web Application Firewalls (WAF). We commonly see mis-configuration of these devices, sometimes rendering them ineffective at their main job, keeping your data safe.

Avoid The Cost of Network Downtime — Have you ever worked out how much it would cost your business if you had even a day of downtime because of a cyber attack? This is not simply the loss of a day’s wages for all employees, it may also include legal fees, incident response, customer protection and damage control activities.

The kind of assessment you require has many underlying factors. Some questions such as “We’re about to deploy a new web application, what kind of testing do you recommend?” are much easier to answer than “We’ve never had a Penetration Test before, what do you recommend?”.

For the latter question, there are a series of questions which need to be answered first. Such as: What are your key assets? What would cripple your business if stolen? How many employees do you have? What is your budget?

It is important to have all of the information to be able to evaluate what would have the best return on investment for your Penetration Test. If you would like to talk through the different paths you could take, please get in touch.

A vulnerability assessment is a largely automated assessment using a suite of tools to uncover a trove of vulnerabilities when armed with credentials on a network. The aim is to gain an overarching understanding of the network’s security posture and focuses on things such as patch levels and local misconfigurations.

A penetration test is typically more goal-orientated and is usually undertaken to simulate a real-world attack which, in most cases, acts as a ‘zero knowledge’ pentest, whereby the consultants are not provided credentials and rather must aim to achieve access without any help. Pentests are more in-depth and focus on real-world attacks rather than focusing on items such as patch levels.

However, penetration testing is most effective when an organisation’s security posture is already high. It is recommended a vulnerability assessment is always carried out first to identify and remediate “low hanging fruit” on the network and a pen test is conducted when identified risks have been remediated.