As hackers are exploiting IT vulnerabilities, ransomware is becoming very pervasive and sad to say, rewarding for them in manipulating unsecure environments. As organizations, are getting more and more focused in counteracting potential threats, a typical proactive first line of defense is to perform a cyber security “IT Penetration Test”, commonly referred to as a “Pen Test” (in other words – an Ethical Hacking Test).
A Pen Test identifies potential weaknesses and possible entry points into an IT infrastructure. With the use of sophisticated tools, approaches and methodologies, organizations can perform simulated cyber-attacks, to fully understand current strengths and weakness of their security systems and policies…so they can ultimately harden their infrastructure.
Pen Test Highlights
- Recon (reconnaissance) is where the penetration tester gets to know the environments, what are your public IP’s, what ports are open on them, what operating systems are Internet facing, etc.
- Vulnerability Scanners purpose is to identify vulnerabilities residing in operating systems, and third-party software packages using a predefined list of known vulnerabilities.
- During the discovery phase, the penetration tester manually customizes attacks specific to the vulnerabilities identified in the automated test.
- This is where the attacks happen. The exploitation phase is where we leverage any/all vulnerabilities to obtain unauthorized access.
- This stage documents all of the identified vulnerabilities and exploits with remediation recommendations.
Interested in learning more, click here to sign up: The Anatomy of a Pen Test
It was the 3rd night before Christmas. The elves were busy working, building, and assembling everything to do with the “Big Day”. The toys would travel down the line with each adopting their own expertise to the required task at hand, along with similes, songs and the hand off “high fives”.
The inevitable happened at 12:13pm as everything suddenly stopped! The line was idle, the toys were stationary, the elves confused, and then all of them simply looked at Tommy. Tommy was the Grand Elf. He was responsible for the entire workshop; everything from children’s requests, inventory management, manufacturing, packaging and labeling, right down to the toy placement into the sleigh. Any other month, everyone would be on lunch now, but there are no lunch breaks in December. Just shorter hours with more shifts.
Bobby thanked him for his confirmation and continued with “It’s the Wish List Server. Everything we do revolves around it. The children’s wishes are maintained on it, along with all their information, addresses, language, right down to proper positioning on the sleigh for organized for drop offs. That’s why the line stopped.”
Suddenly, the alarm clock sounded 6:30 and Bob reached over to shut it off.
Last year he encountered a server malfunction in his office and even though he maintained daily backups, the recovery process was a major headache! The full recovery took over well over 10 hours. He will never forget it as he had internal challenges with personnel that day regarding the data loss, work stoppage, customers that were confused and THE CHAT with his boss…as he thought he was going to get FIRED.
