Penetration Testing
Pentration Testing Services
Validate your cyber defenses against real-world threats. Hedgehog Security's world-class penetration testing services bring together our SOC365 threat intelligence, hundreds of security assessments completed over the last decade and our team of CREST certified cyber experts — the foundation for our sophisticated and scalable approach.
What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing, or pen testing, is a widely used testing strategy to find, investigate and remediate found vulnerabilities in your network or applications. Pen testers use the same tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) as cyber adversaries to simulate a genuine attack against your organisation.
With a routine pen testing cadence, your organisation can reduce cyber risk by finding vulnerabilities and addressing them before cybercriminals can compromise your infrastructure, systems, applications or personnel.
Our Penetration Testing Services
Penetration Testing really does help
The insights gained from penetration testing empower organisations to proactively address security shortcomings, reinforcing their defensive measures. Hedgehog Security, through its penetration testing services, aids clients in fortifying their cyber defenses by providing actionable recommendations to patch vulnerabilities and enhance overall resilience. Moreover, penetration testing serves as an invaluable tool for regulatory compliance, ensuring that organizations meet industry-specific security standards and safeguard against potential legal and financial ramifications. Ultimately, the continuous integration of penetration testing into an organization's cybersecurity strategy not only helps preemptively thwart cyber threats but also fosters a culture of ongoing improvement, enabling entities to stay one step ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats.
Our approach to Penetration Testing
We have developed a sophisticated approach that includes a comprehensive, in-house team dedicated to providing you with the structure and management background needed to scale and adapt your pen testing program based on your business drivers.
We offer a very unique pen testing advantage: the insights provided by our SOC365 platform and the SOC analyst team in their incident response practice, which feed our certified cyber experts the information they need to test against the exploits attackers are executing today.
The penetration test initiates with consultations between you and the testing team. Goals, scope, and expectations are clarified to ensure a tailored approach that aligns with your unique environment.
In this phase, the testing team gathers relevant information about the scope and your organisations digital footprint. This includes domain names, IP addresses, network architecture, and other critical details that could aid in identifying potential entry points.
Building on the acquired intelligence, the testing team develops a threat model. This involves mapping out potential attack vectors that adversaries might employ, based on the specific scoped assets, technologies, and industry vulnerabilities.
This stage focuses on scanning your systems, applications, and network for known vulnerabilities. Automated tools and manual techniques are employed to uncover weaknesses that could serve as potential entry points for attackers.
Once vulnerabilities are identified, the testing team attempts to exploit these weaknesses, simulating the actions of a real attacker. This step provides valuable insights into the potential impact of a successful breach.
In the event of a successful exploitation, the testing team explores the extent to which an attacker could pivot within the network, escalating privileges and accessing sensitive data. This phase showcases the potential consequences of a breach and emphasizes the need for containment and mitigation strategies.
The culmination of the penetration test is the generation of a comprehensive report. This document provides a detailed account of the vulnerabilities discovered, the methods employed to exploit them, and actionable recommendations for remediation. The report serves as a roadmap for bolstering cybersecurity defences and prioritizing risk mitigation efforts.
- We are a global Cyber Security company
- CREST Certified Red and Blue teams
- Focus on Quality of Service, not Quantity of Clients
- Fast, Easy service deployment
- Technology Agnostic
- High Client Satisfaction
Penetration testing is a form of ethical which ensures that any weaknesses discovered can be addressed in order to mitigate the risks of an attack. It is recommended that all organizations commission security testing at least with additional assessments following significant changes to infrastructure, as well as prior to product launches, mergers or acquisitions.
Other types of tests include web application testing, which assesses websites and custom applications delivered over the web, mobile application testing which tests mobile applications on operating systems, including Android and iOS to identify authentication, authorization, data leakage and session handling issues, and build and configuration reviews which review network builds and configurations.
With threats constantly evolving, we recommend that every organisation conducts a penetration test at least twice a year, but more frequently when making significant changes to an application or infrastructure, launching new products and services, undergoing a business merger or acquisition or preparing for compliance with security standards.
Once access to the network has been established, the pen tester will then attempt to move laterally across the network to obtain the higher-level privileges required to compromise additional assets and achieve the objective of the pentesting engagement. The final stage is the provision of a detailed report.
A vulnerability scan is an automated, low-cost method for testing common network and server vulnerabilities. This is sometimes referred to as an automated pen test. Many automated tools are available and most are easily configured by the end user to scan for published vulnerabilities on a scheduled basis. While an automated vulnerability scan is very efficient and cost-effective in identifying common vulnerabilities such as missing patches, service misconfigurations, and other known weaknesses, they are not as accurate in validating the accuracy of vulnerabilities nor do they fully determine the impact through exploitation. Automated scanners are more prone to reporting false positives (incorrectly reporting weaknesses) and false negatives (failing to identify vulnerabilities, especially those impacting web applications). Automated Vulnerability Scanning is mandated by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) as noted in requirement 11.2.
A penetration test focuses on the environment as a whole. In many ways, it picks up where the scanners leave off to provide a comprehensive analysis of the overall security posture. While scripts and tools are leveraged by a penetration tester, their use is largely limited to reconnaissance activities. The bulk of a penetration test is manual by nature. A penetration test identifies vulnerabilities scanners cannot, such as wireless flaws, web application vulnerabilities, and vulnerabilities not yet published. Further, pen testing includes attempts to safely exploit vulnerabilities, escalate privileges, and ultimately demonstrate how an attacker could gain access to sensitive information assets. Penetration testing frequently applies “test scenarios” specific to an organization as well. For example, a university may grant access to student workers, a hospital may leverage third party service providers, or a consultancy may have unique access rights for their engineers. Each of these scenarios would require different positioning of the penetration tester within the environment and requires adjustments to the methodology. Penetration testing is also mandated by the PCI DSS as noted in requirement 11.3.
Penetration testing and automated vulnerability scans both serve a purpose and both types of testing belong in a comprehensive vulnerability assessment program. Automated vulnerability scanning should be scheduled to run on a frequent basis, ideally at least weekly, with network penetration tests scheduled quarterly or when significant changes are planned to an environment.
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