“We have taken good precautions and I believe that we are well protected.” This often-uttered sentence creates a false sense of security. Although many companies have invested in cybersecurity, they only find out in an emergency whether security resilience actually delivers what it promises in all areas. IT security vulnerability assessments and penetration tests are more important than ever.
Studies like the current one Sophos Threat Report show that despite all efforts, there are still too many loopholes for cybercriminals. Almost 50 percent of all malware cases analyzed targeted small and medium-sized companies and 90 percent of all cyber attacks involve data or identity theft. Cybercriminals later use this stolen information for further actions such as unauthorized remote access, extortion or installing ransomware. In addition, insecure IoT devices are often a gateway for cybercriminals.
Undetected vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure
The problem is rarely the security solutions, but rather unrecognized vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure that cannot be secured without clear identification. Therefore, regular vulnerability assessments and penetration tests are important. Only they provide reliable feedback about the actual status of security and cyber resilience in the company.
Vulnerability assessments and penetration testing have different goals. According to NIST, vulnerability assessments provide a “formal description and assessment of the vulnerabilities of an information system,” while penetration testing uses a methodology “in which auditors, typically working under certain constraints, attempt to circumvent or overcome a system’s security features.” Only the results of both measures provide companies with information about the existing risks and allow conclusions to be drawn as to which priorities should be set when eliminating these risks.
The frequency of both measures depends on the company's IT behavior and legal regulations (e.g. payment card industry). Companies with low technological fluctuations (e.g. code changes, hardware upgrades, personnel changes, topology changes, etc.) cannot do without testing, but with a lower frequency. Organizations experiencing high technological change increase their cyber resilience with more frequent testing.
Stages of vulnerability assessments and penetration testing
🔎 Comment from John Shier, Field CTO Commercial at Sophos (Image: Sophos).
Conducting vulnerability assessments and penetration testing involves 12 key steps - from discovery to assessment to remediation and final reporting:
- Definition of scope: Clearly define the scope, including the systems, networks and applications to be tested and any specific goals or objectives.
- Exploration: Gathering information about the target systems, networks, and applications using passive means, such as publicly available information and social engineering techniques.
- Vulnerability scanning: Use of automated tools to check target systems for known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. This can include both internal and external scans.
- Vulnerability assessment: Analyze vulnerability scan results to identify and prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity, impact, and likelihood of exploitation.
- Manual tests: Conduct manual testing to validate and verify the results of the automated scans and identify additional vulnerabilities not detected by the automated tools.
- Penetration testing: Actively exploiting vulnerabilities to assess the security posture of target systems, networks and applications. Various techniques can be used, e.g. B. network exploitation, attacks on web applications and social engineering.
- Post-exploitation: Once a foothold is established in the target environment, further exploration is carried out and privileges are increased to determine the extent of potential damage that a real attacker could cause.
- Documentation: Collect and compile all findings, including the vulnerabilities discovered, the exploitation techniques used, and any recommendations for remediation or mitigation.
- Reporting: Produce a comprehensive report for both security officers and management with the results of the assessment, including a summary, technical details of the vulnerabilities, risk assessments and recommendations for remediation or mitigation.
- Remedial action planning: Establish priorities and plan remedial actions based on the results of the assessment as well as the organization's risk tolerance and business priorities.
- Re-evaluation: Conduct follow-up assessments to verify that the vulnerabilities have been effectively remedied and to ensure that the security posture of the company's systems, networks and applications has improved.
- Continuous monitoring: Implement regular monitoring and testing processes to identify and remediate new security vulnerabilities as they arise.
About Sophos More than 100 million users in 150 countries trust Sophos. We offer the best protection against complex IT threats and data loss. Our comprehensive security solutions are easy to deploy, use and manage. They offer the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry. Sophos offers award-winning encryption solutions, security solutions for endpoints, networks, mobile devices, email and the web. In addition, there is support from SophosLabs, our worldwide network of our own analysis centers. The Sophos headquarters are in Boston, USA and Oxford, UK.