Benefits of Pentesting

Side benefits of network pentesting

Valency Networks being a top cyber security company, is privileged to perform pentesting for tons of customers. Over the period we learnt following benefits that arise out of regular VAPT.

An organization in India realized that their operational expenses on cyber security reduced by 40% due to regular VAPT and fixations.
A bank in gulf country figured out that a frequent VAPT can help reduce the cost per data leakage.
An IT company in UK felt quick readiness to their GDPR compliance due to the security holes found in network pentesting and their fixations.
A pharma company in India realized that their data was leaked in the past, based on the logs corroborated during network vulnerability assessment.

Please refer to our case studies which show how our customers were benefited by our services.

What is a network vulnerability assessment tool ?

Network VA tool automatically scans a network for underlying threats and vulnerabilities such as outdated software version, unsupported firmware, open ports, service discovery, unpatched systems, protocols vulnerabilities etc.

Following are the list of industry recognised tools one can use to perform VAPT.

Nmap
Nexpose
Metasploit
Nessus etc.

More info can be found here: Network Security VAPT

What is the difference between exploit and payload ?

Exploit: It targets a vulnerability found on the system by executing a series of commands.

Payload: It a piece of code carefully written to the intended task. Once delivered, it gets executed on the machines and causes damage to the data.

How do I check my network security?

Listing down a few steps one can take to tighten the security around network.

Firewall: Firewall plays an important role in filtering out the traffic coming in and going out of the network. Check for inbound and outbound rules on the firewall and configure those to filter the traffic going to and from network.
Anti-virus: A good anti-virus software can help detect, prevent and remove viruses from a system.
Windows updates: Windows keeps releasing its updates on every second Tuesday of each month. It is important to patch your device so that it stays protected from underlying vulnerabilities and loopholes in the system.
VAPT: With so many tools in the market, one can do detailed analysis of the network to find out flaws and vulnerabilities in it. Tools like Nessus gives detailed description of the risk along with solutions to fix it.
Network Profile: Network profiles are of two kind, public and private. It is vital to select the right profile based on the network you are connected to.

Why is it important for companies to plan for internal threats ?

Internal threats refers to risks to data that stem from inside the organization due to poorly managed security of network, resources, assets and much more. According to Gartner, majority of attacks happen from within the organization.

Listing down a few of the factors that contribute to majority of the attacks.

Awareness: It all starts from how aware and informed employees are with respect to information security. Employees should be considered as important assets rather than weak links since they access, process and touch the data. They should be made conscious of the risks and threats that are lingering around and should be trained on how to handle data responsibly.
Access control: It is important to audit and analyse the level of access given to employees and management. Employees should be given access on least privilege basis. All accesses should be verified and terminated when an employee leaves the organization or when they are no longer necessary to an employee.
VAPT: A timely vulnerability analysis of all the network devices and infrastructure can play an important role when tightening the security. It is important to analyse what traffic is coming in and going out of the organization and blocking the malicious traffic immediately. An unpatched system and an unwanted open port is enough for an attacker to get inside the network and do the damage.

How to make my connection private ?

Private profile: When connected to a private network, your device will be discoverable by other devices on your Home or Work network. This can make sharing of files easy with other devices on the network.

Public profile: When you have a public profile, your device will be hidden from other devices on the network and won't be used for sharing of files and printer.

To make your profile private for wired network, open Start > Settings > Network & Internet > Ethernet then click your network adapter and choose the profile.

To make your profile private for wireless network, open Start > Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi then click on the Wi-Fi you are connected to choose the profile.

To customize public or private profiles, open Start > Settings > Network & Internet >Network and Sharing center> Change Advance Sharing settings.

Should my network profile be public or private?

There is no one answer to it. It totally depends on what you want to do with the network and where you are at. You can use private profile when you are in the network you trust such as home or office. Private profile makes your device discoverable to other devices on the network by default. You can use public profile when you are connected to public Wi-Fi. Public profile hides your device from being discovered to other devices on the network.

What secures IT data from internal and external attacks?

Internal and external strategies for securing the IT data are as follows:

Access data vulnerabilities:

Penetration testing tools can be adopted to check the vulnerabilities or weak areas in the software systems.

Install IDS (Intrusion Detection System) so you can be alerted if there is suspicious activity on your network.

Monitor all database activities and its usage patterns in real time to identify and detect data leakage, unauthorized SQL and big data transactions.

Identify and classify sensitive data. Set up complex user authentication and keep devices patched.

Calculate Risk Scores:

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) creates a way to capture vulnerabilities and produces a score which reflects its severity

The scores are in the form of numeric values which further gets translated into measurements of low, medium, high or critical.

This provides the organizations a holistic view of their data vulnerability.

Train Your Workforce:

Train your workforce on how to recognize common cyber threats (e.g. a spear-phishing attack). Don't open emails from mysterious senders.

Promote a security conscious work culture.

Alert them about social engineering attacks and not be the victim by clicking without thinking, just out of curiosity.

Block malicious web requests.

Remove excessive privileges:

The database privileges are to be determined beforehand according to the person's job requirement and access of database should have restricted access.

Also, if the ex-employees depart on bad terms, the privileges can be used for bringing damage and the data can be used to bring a loss to the company.

Encrypt Data:

Encryption helps in securing data by using special algorithms that convert the plain text data into code values before being sent to the recipient.

The data is then decoded by the receiver with an authorized key.

Currently, encryption is one of the most popular and effective data security methods used by organizations.

Embrace the cloud:

Cloud-based architectures are more disaster-tolerant to protect data.

Cloud employs encryption that keeps the data secure, both while the data is in transit and while it is "at rest" on the cloud servers. Each file is split into chunks, which is encrypted separately and stored in different places.

Thus, if someone succeeds to break in and decrypt the data, they get access only to the random block.

What are internal attacks?

An internal attack takes place within an organization when an individual or a group within an organization seeks to disrupt operations or exploit organizational assets.

Since insiders are already inside the organization, one can't rely on security measures to protect the company. Furthermore, since it's an insider - who is primarily responsible for dealing with the situation, creating and socializing a policy to act on potential insider threats needs to come from the top of the organization.

What are the 2 main types of internal threats to the network?

The two main types of insider threats are turncloaks which is malicious insiders and pawns, which is unwilling participants.

A turncloak is an insider who is maliciously stealing data. In most cases, it's an employee or contractor - someone who is supposed to be on the network and has legitimate credentials but is abusing their access for fun or profit.

A pawn is just a normal employee - a do-gooder who makes a mistake that is exploited by a bad actor or otherwise leads to data loss or compromise. It can be a lost laptop, mistakenly emailing a sensitive document to the wrong person, or executing a malicious Word macro, the pawn is an unintentional participant in a security incident.

What is network security?

Network security is a broad term that covers a multitude of technologies, devices, policies and processes.

It consists of the policies and practices adopted to prevent and monitor unauthorized access, misuse, modification, or denial of a computer network and network-accessible resources.

In other words, it is a set of rules and configurations constructed to protect the integrity, confidentiality and accessibility of network devices and data being used on both software and hardware technologies.

Every organization, needless of size, industry or infrastructure, requires guidance on network security solutions which are in place to protect themselves from the growing cyber threats in the world today.

Network security typically consists of three different controls: physical, technical and administrative.

Physical Network Security: are designed to prevent unauthorized personnel from gaining physical access to network components such as routers, cabling cupboards and so on. Controlled access, such as locks, biometric authentication and other devices, is essential in any organization.

Technical Network Security: protect data that is stored on the network or which is in transit across, into or out of the network. Protection is 2 sides on a coin; it needs to protect data and systems from unauthorized personnel, and it also needs to protect against malicious activities from insiders.

Administrative Network Security: consist of security policies and processes that control user behavior, including how users are authenticated, their level of access and also how IT staff members implement changes to the infrastructure.

Why to do a network pentesting?

Pen testing of networks (also called VAPT) helps to identify the vulnerabilities which are present in the system. This system actually helps us to identify and prove the type of security issues present in the network. Therefore penetration tests are meant to go beyond a vulnerability assessment which is done by performing a simulation of the similar scenario a hacker would usually follow to penetrate to a network. Hence providing a real-world experience in dealing the attacks to the system.

Pen-testing helps us to prioritize risks. Scanner data is great for telling us what vulnerabilities lie in our network. However, without any prioritization, it would be difficult for a team to identify which vulnerability to patch first. With the help of penetration testing one can see what are the vulnerabilities present and which one of them will have the greatest impact and thus we can prioritize resources and time accordingly.

One of the apparent the main reason to pen-test is to uncover holes in a network. It attacks a network and does whatever method possible to breach the system. This is one of the main reason to let a third party run a penetration test, even once or twice a year, to put fresh eyes on your network. Hence upon proper evaluation, it helps an organization to get a prioritized list of vulnerabilities in the system with the feasibility of the attack vectors on the network of the system providing sufficient evidence to support the deliverables. This process on the other hand helps the developer to make fewer mistakes as this process also identifies potential backdoors to a system. Other than that, it also helps an organization to check their requirements for compliances they are abiding to hence bridging the gap with security ops to understand the lateral movements and its flaws and block those to secure the network.

Valency Networks is one of the top VAPT companies in India, with offices in Pune, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Dubai, Kuwait, USA, UK and Kuwait. We are an award winning cyber security company who performed thousands of VAPT security testings for our customers.

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for 3+ yrs

Hardly goes a day when I have not learnt anything new in cyber security space and IT technologies.