Cybersecurity is not a choice anymore but a necessity for all sorts of organisations, even if you run a not-for-profit organisation. Getting the name of your organisation in the news for the wrong reasons may create serious repercussions for the business. So how do we secure the business and what can we do to prevent the ever increasing cyber threat? Begin with cybersecurity!
While planning cybersecurity, penetration testing plays a crucial role as without knowing the current situation one can’t fortify the system. Penetration testing is one of the foundation pillars for strengthening your security posture to help keep threat actors out of the equation. You may think that you need to conduct penetration testing for your organisation for the sake of compliance & regulations, but there is much more to gain from it. It gives insight into current security protocols and develops more effective strategies for shielding against future threats. Ignoring penetration testing can bring major setbacks to any business.
What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing is a simulated cyberattack conducted by a team of ethical hackers using real-world tactics and techniques to find security flaws in the organisation's systems, applications, and network infrastructure. This simulation helps to gain valuable insights into the state of the organisation's security health and uncovers any flaws or loopholes that may have gone unnoticed during routine security checks. Exploiting these vulnerabilities testers can further evaluate the effectiveness of the present security measures and provide recommendations.
To know more about penetration testing click Here. Now we are going to talk about the benefits that a business can derive by implementing penetration testing at regular intervals.
Why penetration testing is important for your business?
Facing the law on security breaches is just the beginning of the problems, as security once compromised can always be compromised again leading to the complete shutdown of business. Even if your business is not falling under any compliance or regulation it is your responsibility to deploy the cyber security. Here penetration testing can come very handy as you need a profound security policy and protocols to handle the cyber attacks. Hence big or small business, you can not ignore penetration testing any more. Some of the major benefits of penetration testing are as below -
1. Validating existing security controls
Are current security controls working as required? Are there specific areas where they need improvements? With the help of internal and external penetration testing the team can validate if the current security framework is serving the purpose of safeguarding the organisation from emerging threats. If not then where and how to improve can be recommended for fulfilling the desired requirements.
2. Uncovers and Explores Vulnerabilities
A penetration testing framework specially curated for the organisation's needs will help in recording where the weaknesses lie. Depending upon the requirements, the team will further exploit these vulnerabilities to see how severe these can be for the business. Once testing is complete the team will provide a complete list of prioritized vulnerabilities in your post-engagement report so you can address the most concerning issues first.
3. Lower remediation cost and downtime
It is very hard and time-consuming to detect data breaches. According to IBM's report, the average time needed to detect and stop a data breach is 277 days. Losses from downtimes, data breaches, poor network performance, loss of brand image, reputation etc. can also be avoided.
4. Ensure data privacy
Data is important for every business. Every country is employing data privacy laws to protect their citizens. Penetration testing helps in reducing the risk of data breaches from software vulnerabilities or inadequate technical controls or organizational procedures.
5. Prepare your team for threat handling
How do you know your incident response protocol and remediation process are foolproof? Penetration tests provide an opportunity for testing the response team. Testing employees will help in training them adequately for handling the real-time situation.
6. Easy deployment of new apps or infrastructure
How frequently you are making changes to your system and how easy it is to deploy? New applications and infrastructure deployment is critical for any business. with every new service and change made, there are also the chances of creating vulnerabilities. Using single-point-in-time penetration testing one can be assured of new services posing any security threat.
7. Supporting risk assessments and compliance
Risk assessments are required to do business with government agencies or with highly regulated industries. Penetration testing can easily help to meet assessment recommendations. Also, Penetration testing is critical to meet compliances such as PCI DSS HIPAA, GDPR etc. The regular and recurring testing will provide an auditable trail of security evaluation.
8. Can help organisations in prioritizing security budgets
The penetration testing will give a complete picture of vulnerabilities and their possible impact on the business. This helps the senior management clearly understand the requirements. You will know where you have to focus more to spend on. budgeting for the advanced security tools that will support and empower your security team.
Penetration testing must be conducted regularly at certain intervals. Any changes like updates or the addition of new components/applications may leave the current system vulnerable. The organizations must schedule regular penetration testing to uncover such flaws that may lead to serious problems.
Illume Intelligence understands every organisation's security needs as required by specific business domains and IT infrastructure. Additionally, we provide consulting on necessary procedures and security policies required for building a more secure environment within your organization.
