The Benefits of Penetration Testing and When to Carry Them Out

Due to the fact that most businesses need to have an online presence in order to stay ahead of their competition, every owner should ensure they have taken all the necessary security measures to protect themselves from any threats that they may get as a result of having an online presence. That being said, penetration testing is something every business with an online network should look into.

In case you’re not familiar with penetration testing, it’s basically a proactive and authorized effort to asses the security of your company’s IT infrastructure by running tests whose goal is to exploit the vulnerabilities of your system. These tests help confirm just how effective your defensive mechanisms are. This is just a summary of the ultimate goal of penetration testing, which is a result of all the different benefits it provides.

For instance, penetration security testing estimates the ability of a business to defend its network, applications, endpoints, and users from external as well as internal attempts to evade its security measures in order to achieve unapproved or privileged access to the business’s assets. The results from penetration testing confirm whether the threat is posed by faulty processes or security vulnerabilities, thus allowing security experts and IT management to engage in remediation efforts.
So, how to get fit? Furthermore, IT departments are responsible for the overall compliance and auditing facets of many procedures, such as SARBANES, HIPAA, OXLEY, and many more. In other words, penetration security testing can help your business evade penalties for non-compliance with the procedures that are in your industry. Furthermore, it illustrates due diligence into assessors by maintaining all the necessary security controls once they come around.

Additionally, recovering from a security flaw can be extremely expensive. It can include retention programs, remediation efforts, legal activities, reduced revenues, customer protection, discouraged trade associates and dropped employee output. All of this can be easily avoided by proactively detecting and addressing threats before they become a problem. Even if you get one security breach, your company image and customer loyalty may suffer, and you may never recover from it.

Basically, whenever you have a change in the network infrastructure, you should have a penetration test carried out. It helps you avoid IT infrastructure invasions. If you don’t have an in-house IT team that can perform pen tests, you can outsource an experienced IT team that specializes in penetration testing. In the end, it’s always better to be safe and spend money on pen testers that won’t find faults, than to have your network or services compromised by a malicious third party.