How You Can Benefit From Penetration Tests

There are many reasons to penetration test your organization – and not just to adhere to compliance protocols. Nonetheless, sometimes that’s the routine we get caught in, isn’t it? We do it just because we have to, but we don’t leverage the findings from the tests to better secure our business.

Well, today’s the day we start leveraging and seeing the true value behind penetration testing. Take a look at these four ways in which you can benefit from penetration tests.

Intelligently manage vulnerabilities.

Oftentimes, a penetration test is conducted with/alongside a vulnerability scan to help put meaning behind the data. This allows your organization to better align security strategies and tackle the biggest risks first. The information you gather from that of pen test will help you more intelligently prioritize remediation, apply needed security patches and allocate security resources where they’re needed most.

With this knowledge, you can more effectively tackle any potential vulnerabilities that exist and remediate ones that could lead to something more severe. Having this knowledge, and acting upon it, will help you lessen the gap between your organization and bad actors – allowing you to have more control over your security posture.

Avoid the cost of network downtime.

Let’s say you were to fall victim to bad actors, hypothetically speaking of course, where your sensitive material is exploited. Yes, this is definitely some bad news, but there’d be more to take care of than just trying to recover the data. Not only do breaches cost you your information (or the information of those you serve), but it could halt your business operations depending on the severity of the breach.

Some questions to ask yourself are:

  • How much damage was done?
  • How long will it take to fix and ensure that adversaries haven’t escalated through your network?
  • How will this affect the operations of the company?

It could be difficult to quickly remediate and secure your organization in order to get everything back up and running. So is it worth it to avoid pen-testing and wait for problems to arise?

Meet regulatory requirements and avoid fines.

Now we have to talk about the industry protocols because that is just as important. As a business, there are various requirements to abide by. When you complete a penetration test of your organization you avoid potentially costly fines. And yes, by completing this you are avoiding fines, but it’s encouraged that you still look beyond the requirements and use the data to enable your organization further.

Preserve corporate image and customer loyalty.

There are two potential issues here. You could have pen-tested your organization and didn’t patch the vulnerabilities OR you could have completely forgotten about needing to conduct a penetration test. Neither of these are situations you want to find yourself in – but we’ve seen it happen and the news will get out one way or another.

By taking ownership of your business and with that – your penetration tests – you establish a culture of trust within your organization that only seeps out to your customers. This speaks volumes to your customer-base and the market as a whole because it’s an opportunity to show that you care about the security of those that you work with and for.

 

via:  coresecurity


Save pagePDF pageEmail pagePrint page

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *