Cybersecurity Penetration Testing

A penetration test is designed to exploit, or take advantage of, a vulnerability in your organization’s cybersecurity environment. Its purpose is to discover cybersecurity gaps to help you determine the weaknesses and risks your organization faces. It is critical to understand these vulnerabilities in order to proactively prevent a cybersecurity incident from harming your organization.

 

Cybersecurity and network penetration tests guide your organization to understand which steps to take in keeping your most valuable data safe from cybersecurity attacks. It is key to avoiding a business disruption or loss of sensitive data. Learn more about the SpearTip penetration testing process below.

What is Penetration Testing?

 

A network penetration test is done by cybersecurity professionals to exploit vulnerabilities in your environment and reveal to your organization the possibility of intrusion from adversaries. Cybersecurity attacks happen, and it is vital to pinpoint the security gaps prior to an attack.

 

A penetration test resembles a real-life cybersecurity attack to show how critical the situation can be. SpearTip can perform several types of penetration tests to examine the limits of your cybersecurity and network.

 

Once we are done, your organization will know exactly what to prepare for and how. It’s an important piece of the cybersecurity risk assessment process and should be done regularly to ensure the safety of your organization.

Our Approach to Penetration Testing

 

SpearTip’s assessment practice goes beyond just automated scanning to provide a true picture of your organization’s risk posture. When vulnerabilities are discovered through cybersecurity penetration testing, actionable intelligence is provided along with clear remediation steps.

 

SpearTip takes extra effort to validate important findings and reduce false positives. This provides your organization with accurate findings, as well as the high-level executive information required by leadership and the in-depth data required for technical personnel working to eliminate risks from the environment.

Types of Cybersecurity Penetration Tests

There are several types of penetration tests that can be performed based on your organization’s needs. Each is designed to address specific threats and risks, allowing you to select the option(s) that integrate well with your overall cyber risk management strategy.

The goal of a penetration test is to provide your organization a detailed technical roadmap of findings and remediation recommendations. The recommendations will enable you to harden your security posture, better positioning you and your organization against external adversaries.

External Security Penetration Test

During an external penetration test, SpearTip will assess your external security controls by simulating attacks from the public internet. The purpose of the simulations is to identify vulnerabilities that allow SpearTip to gain access to your internal environment from the outside. We not only probe for vulnerabilities but will also validate them using advanced penetration testing techniques.

Internal Security Penetration Test

This test is designed to find out how many different machines can be infected and what critical systems and data are vulnerable to a breach. We will simulate attacks from an internal perspective on the local network. SpearTip will attempt to simulate a threat actor’s behavior inside a network. This will allow you to test internal security controls to mitigate potential damage resulting from a compromise of an internal system.

Wireless Security Penetration Test

During this cybersecurity penetration test, SpearTip will gather information of existing wireless local area networks, test safeguards in place for unauthorized access and review existing organizational wireless policies. We will identify both security vulnerabilities as well as performance issues with the wireless network. SpearTip will provide detailed findings including site survey maps and remediation steps to improve or secure the wireless network.

Web Application Security Penetration Test

SpearTip will assess a website for application-related vulnerabilities. We conduct the testing from the prospective of an external, unauthenticated attacker. During the run-time assessment, SpearTip can identify numerous vulnerabilities with the code, code libraries and web application software. After the findings are documented, concrete remediation steps will be provided for IT in order to reduce or eliminate the risk associated with discovered vulnerabilities.

Social Engineering Penetration Test

During this test, SpearTip will exploit the fact that humans are susceptible to persuasion and manipulation. With employees’ ability to access the public internet from corporate technology and networks, it is more important than ever to perform these types of security assessments. It’s the unsuspecting employee that can cause the most harm by falling prey to a social engineering attack. Because it is virtually impossible to prevent these attacks, it has become imperative that organizations know how to detect, educate and respond to the scenarios.

Benefits of Cybersecurity Penetration Testing

 

SpearTip provides access to the industry’s only team of cyber counterintelligence professionals available to the private sector. From assessing the nations critical infrastructure to finding vulnerabilities in a local bank’s teller workstation, SpearTip’s assessment practice has a breadth of experience that is truly unmatched.

 

This engagement has been designed to provide your organization an assessment of the environments from several different attack venues using “black box” techniques, which implies no previous knowledge of the environment. The engagement will simulate a bad actor’s attempt to compromise your environment. From this perspective your organization is able to test current security controls and identify risks previously unknown to the organization.