Why You Should Perform Penetration Testing

Security breaches can have financial impact:  Return on Investment
Security breaches can have far reaching effects that can potentially cripple organizations through loss of corporate reputation, customer loyalty, negative publicity as well as trigger severe fines and penalties.  The recent release of the “CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey” estimates the average financial impact of a security breach to be $164,000. This does not include potential fines that may be levied and does not take into account financial impacts due to loss of reputation and customer retention.

There is no “Silver Bullet’ for security
Traditionally organizations have sought to prevent security breaches using contemporary filtering and access controls such as, cryptography, IPS, IDS, VPN, border routers and firewalls. However, due to the increasing complexity of network infrastructures and the blurring of the traditional network perimeter, many of these traditional measures are simply no longer effective. The vast majority of vulnerabilities reside in the very applications that organizations deploy in networks.

New vulnerabilities are discovered each day, and attacks constantly evolve in sophistication and automation. Only through a proven methodology and security testing process can you identify and eliminate critical security exposures. There is absolutely no better way to discover issues on your network.   

Identifying security risks and vulnerabilities
Penetration testing actively evaluates a network and its ability to protect information from unauthorized access. Test results identify and validate the risk posed by defined vulnerabilities then prioritize the results based on several factors. This enables information security professionals to prioritize remediation efforts.

Organizations should have, or be provided with, the capability to effectively and proactively anticipate and prevent unauthorized access to mission critical information assets.

Why Perform Penetration Testing
Penetration testing should be performed on a regular basis to ensure consistent network security by revealing newly discovered threats and should be part of any organizations security process.

Penetration Testing can:

• Identify the threats facing your organization’s information assets, quantify information risk and provide adequate information security expenditure
• Reduce organizational IT security costs and provide a better return on IT security investment (ROSI) through identification and resolution of vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
•  These may be known vulnerabilities in the underlying technologies or weaknesses in the design or implementation.
• Provide assurance - a thorough and comprehensive assessment and testing of organizational security covering policy, procedure, design and implementation
• Acquire and maintain certifications to industry regulations (BS7799, HIPAA, GLB, SOX).
• Adopt best practice by conforming to legal and industry regulations

Demonstrating the threat

• One of the main reasons for a penetration test is to prove security issues exist and that security vulnerabilities represent a substantial threat to business success

Let our experienced team of security professionals help you make security the high priority it needs to be.