Network VAPT Checklist

Our report makes us one of the best network security pentesting companies. This is because it carries simplicity, avoids jargon and yet provides a highly technical material pertaining to solutions. Our VAPT report is different than others because it is not an outcome of a tool, but a combination of logs, tools output and manual pentesting efforts carried out. Below are some features of our network VAPT report.

• Executive summary to narrate the report for senior management
• Detailed technical vulnerability description for network experts to understand
• Detailed network security fixation steps for network engineers to perform fixation
• Vulnerabilities categorized into Critical, High and Low severities
• Reference links and videos pointing to aid in the fixation process
• Sent in a confidential manner to protect privacy

Click here to see a sample report of vulnerability assessment

Unknown Assets on the Network
Many businesses these days fail to keep a complete inventory of all the IT assets that they own and are tied into their network. This causes a massive problem.

Abuse of User Account Privileges
According to data cited by the Harvard Business Review, "60% of all attacks were carried out by insiders." Whether it's because of honest mistakes (accidentally sending information to the wrong recipients or losing a work device), intentional data breaches and privilege escalation, or any social engineering attacks that compromise the users account data, the people in the organization/ business represent one of the greatest security threats.

Since these threats are from trusted or known users and systems, they're also the hardest to identify and stop.

Unpatched Security Vulnerabilities
Many businesses are concerned with "zero day" exploits. These exploits include unknown issues with security in programs and systems that are not yet been used against anyone. However, zero-day vulnerabilities aren't the actual problem-unpatched known vulnerabilities are the problem.

Attackers usually implement known exploits. In fact, as noted in an online article, "The Verizon Data Breach Report 2016 revealed that out of all detected exploits, most came from vulnerabilities dating to 2007. Next was 2011." In fact, Vulnerabilities that are almost a decade old have been accounted for most of the breaches.

A Lack of Defense in Depth
In spite of all best security practices, there can still be a day where the hacker succeeds in breaching your network security. However, the damage the attacker will be capable of depends on how the network is structured. Businesses that have an open network structure are at great risk, because once an attacker is inside an open network, they have free access to all systems on the network.

Not Enough IT Security Management
Many companies now face this issue of not having enough people in place to properly manage the best cybersecurity solutions which are put in place. Due to this, critical cybersecurity alerts get missed, and successful attacks gets eliminated in time to reduce damage.

Phishing is the most alarming security issue prevailing in organization and many have fallen prey to it. Statistics say, 85% of all organizations have been hit my phishing attack in the past year 2020. Phishing commonly takes place in organizations through spoofed emails. Employees respond to these phishing emails by either clinking on the link provided or downloading malicious file attachments, thinking it is from a legitimate source. Phishing attack in organizations can lead to reputational, intellectual property, and monetary losses.

Yes, Network security key is similar to a password. It is a password used to connect to a wireless network and is also known as a WiFi or wireless network password. Every access point comes with a predefined network security key that needs to be changed by the user. On failing to do so can result in data breach as can get access to the network on entering the default access point password/ security key.

Network security is essential to protect the personal data of clients existing on network and to facilitate protection of information that is shared between computers on the network. Having a secure network can prevent hacking attempts or virus / spyware attacks from the internet as the primary goal of network security is Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. To maintain secure platform for computers, users, and programs, network security is important to protect networking infrastructure from unauthorized access, misuse, malfunction, modification, destruction, or improper disclosure.

What are cyber security risks?

Network VAPT can be done in two ways, manual and automatic by using tools. To ensure the security of a network, it should be scanned thoroughly both internally and externally.

Network includes of all the network devices such as firewalls, switches, routers and all the devices that are connected within a network or outside.

A detailed assessment can shed light on the unwanted ports that are open, unsupported firmware, unpatched systems, poorly configured firewall rules, outdated software version, weak password policy so on and so forth.

Once the vulnerabilities are found, they can be further exploited to see the extent of damage they can do to the organization. This step is to be done very carefully since wrongfully executed test can do more harm than good to the network.

More info can be found here: Network Security VAPT

Different operating systems are based upon different ideologies. Linux based operating systems like Kali, Pentoo Linux, Backbox Linux are specifically made with certain inbuilt tools, which helps the pen testers to works easily and with better grasp. On the other hand, Operating systems like Windows or OS X were mainly developed on the basis of user-friendly Graphical User Interface(GUI) based features, which helps a normal user to a great extent but restricts the developers/pen testers to scan/ access their system. But with time, different scanning tools like Nessus have been developed in all possible environments but still, it becomes more help for the pen testers to work on the command line on Linux based environments.

On the other hand, unlike Windows or Mac, Linux is open source. That implies the source code of OS is open and available to everyone. Hence anyone can change and manipulate it to gain more access and more vulnerability to the system and also deploy controls to avoid the same. That leads to the point that environments like Linux are more transparent, the developers at Microsoft works hard to make it impossible for anyone outside to understand the inner workings of the operating system hence making it hard for the pen testers to work on it.

Above all, it becomes pretty clear that every environment has its own advantages, but for pen testing, Linux environments are more preferable over the other present OS in the market due to universalistic nature and opensource availability. But still, various tools are available in cross-platform basis providing similar experience making the work of pen testers easier.