Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) is a testing process to find security bugs within a software program or a computer network. VAPT is often misunderstood as two different types of testing techniques. Conversely, these two should be combined together to yield better results. The objective of Vulnerability Assessment is entire to search and find bugs. Penetration Testing is performed to see whether the vulnerability exists by exploring and exploiting the system.
Earlier this year nearly half of Norway’s population was exposed by cybercriminals in Healthcare data breach.
Topics Covered
Why would hackers target Healthcare?
These medical records are worth more than stolen credit card details for hackers. It contains information such as names, birthdates, social security numbers and billing information which is good enough for identity theft.
Cybersecurity Ventures in its 2017 annual report has predicted that global cybercrime damages will be $ 6 trillion annually by 2021.
The increased use of mobile phones and web applications are the reason behind these cyber-attacks.
Is your application secure?
As an organization, what steps can be taken to stay secure?
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How do I know if my organization requires a Vulnerability Assessment?
The necessity of Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing is usually disregarded by organizations; on the contrary every organization is a potential target for hackers.
This is clearly evident after recent ransomware attacks. Take responsibility and make sure proper security initiatives are taken to protect your application.
The best practice is to conduct a Vulnerability Assessment annually or after making substantial changes to your application.
Causes for Vulnerabilities
The main reason behind a system being vulnerable is misconfiguration and incorrect programming practices. The following are some the reasons for vulnerability.
- Poor design of hardware and software
- Poorly configured system
- System connected to an unsecured network
- Poor password combinations
- Complex software or hardware
Benefits of VAPT
When it comes to security, VAPT offers excessive benefits to an organization, let’s look at a few of its benefits.
- Providing the organization a detailed view of potential threats faced by an application.
- Help the organization in identifying programming errors that leads to cyber attacks.
- Provide risk management
- Safeguards the business from loss of reputation and money
- Secures applications from internal and external attacks
- Protects the organizations data from malicious attacks
Vulnerability Assessment Testing Methods
Active Testing
The tester introduces new test data and actively involves in the process of analyzing results.
Passive Testing
Here the tester will be monitoring the results without introducing the new test data or cases.
Network Testing
Here the tester will measure the current state of the network.
Distributed Testing
This type of testing is done for distributed applications. Basically, the applications that work with multiple clients.
Penetration Testing
In the beginning of this article we looked at the security breach that happened to Norway healthcare.
It is just one example of many cyber attacks that are happening today. Penetration testing is done to avoid such massive cyber attacks.
By performing penetration testing, one can keep the organization’s information secure from breaches.
Necessity of Penetration Testing
- To keep the financial data secure while transferring it between systems or over networks.
- To protect user data
- To identify security vulnerabilities within an application.
- To find out loopholes within the system.
- To assess the tolerance of business in cyber attacks.
- To implement effective security strategy in the organization.
Securing our assets can be an intimidating task. Every organization invests in security, but is your data safe?
Protecting your assets before the attack is the way to go. Performing VAPT and safeguarding your assets should be the goal of every organization.
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Indium is a global independent software testing company. We have close to two decades of experience with a multi-domain focus, fostered by IP-led innovation. We have vast experience in security testing.
Interested in learning more about our services? Check out our Security Testing Services.
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