Penetration testing: Accurate or abused?

by Steve Hunt - COO at DB Networks - Thursday, 23 January 2014.

According to a recent Ponemon study, since 2010 cybercrime costs have climbed 78% and the time required to recover from a breach has increased 130%. On average, U.S. businesses fall victim to two successful attacks per week where their perimeter security defenses have been breached.

Penetration testing (pen testing), also known as ‘ethical hacking,’ is an important and key step in reducing the risks of a security breach because it helps provide IT staff with an accurate view of the information system from an attackers point of view.

The pen test process results in an active analysis of the system for any potential vulnerabilities that could result from poor or improper system configuration, from both known and unknown hardware or software flaws, or operational weaknesses in process or technical countermeasures. In other words, through pen testing, IT teams find the holes and vulnerabilities and quickly work to fix these areas to prevent attacks.

Read more at http://www.net-security.org/article.php?id=1940