The Importance of Regular Penetration Testing
Penetration testing is the most comprehensive way to test your cybersecurity capabilities and find weaknesses in your system. Simply put, penetration testing (or a pen test) answers three important questions:
- How would a cybercriminal approach an attack on your system?
- What information would they target?
- Would they be successful?
How It Works
Pen testing is a simulated cyberattack performed by trained pen testers that approaches your system exactly how a cyber criminal would, looking for weaknesses and identifying areas where your security needs improvement. It measures not just how the criminal will attack, but what they stand to gain from the attack. Pen testing is the most comprehensive way to understand how your network security works, the weaknesses in your security posture, and what needs to be done to ensure your critical business data are protected.
Why You Need a Penetration Test
Any company that uses or relies on technology should have its systems tested regularly. The primary goal of a cybercriminal is to steal your business’s information. The motivation for this is most likely financial gain, but criminals may simply want to disrupt your business. And the size of your business or industry has no bearing on whether you are a target of cybercrime. In fact, a hacker may see a small or medium-size business as low-hanging fruit that doesn’t have the resources to protect its data properly. All it takes is a single security breach to have some long-reaching consequences.
These consequences of neglecting to perform periodic security testing can be disastrous:
- Monetary loss – This could be directly through ransomware or indirectly through downtime and lost productivity. The financial damage from cybercrime is difficult for any business to recover from, regardless of size.
- Damage to your brand – A company’s reputation is an intangible asset. If your customers and even vendors sense your business is unsafe or lazy when it comes to network security, your reputation as a reliable company may not be able to recover.
- Failure to meet industry standards – Cybersecurity issues are addressed by major regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, PCI, ISO, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other industry-specific standards. These organizations take security vulnerabilities, and how you respond to them, very seriously and are apt to fine your organization or shut it down if you fail to meet requirements or make adjustments when needed.
How VTG Can Help
Protecting your business, its customers, its vendors, and its employees should be your highest priority. Your business is exposed to so many threats, but a good penetration testing company can scrutinize your network, assess its integrity, identify its weaknesses, and put together a comprehensive plan to expand your defenses, improve your security processes, and allow you to conduct your business with confidence and peace of mind.
We offer complete network testing to determine the overall strengths and weaknesses of your network. We also provide application-specific testing to guarantee the security of the business-critical applications you run on your network.