As businesses are increasingly digitizing their operations and processes, they tend to assume new technological risks they get exposed to. One of such risks is scammers trying to exploit vulnerabilities within their IT systems.
To be able to prevent any security breach and avoid incurring costs of cyber attacks, organizations need to be able to identify, prevent, respond, and recover from them. One of the methods to achieve this is to perform security assessments such as penetration testing to see the loopholes and prevent them beforehand.
Read through this article to learn about penetration testing and why it is important in an organization.
What is penetration testing?
Also known as ethical hacking or pen test, this is a security process that is performed to evaluate the computer systems’ applications and data system for the susceptibility or vulnerability to security threats like cyber attacks and hacking.
Examples of these threats include design flaws, software bugs, configuration errors, information theft, etc.
Penetration testing is also referred to as a white hat attack because it entails the benevolent party’s attempt to breach their own system. Organizations need to perform this test at least once a year to ensure that their IT systems are strong and well protected.
Importance of penetration testing to an organization.
Here are some of the benefits of performing pen tests in your organization you need to know.
1. Risk assessment
Before you begin, you need to get answers to the following questions. What is the current worth of your business? How crucial is your IT system to the business? And how much can you lose if you experience a system breach?
Basically, ethical hacking is a risk assessment method for your business. It helps uncover the risks you are exposed to and what impacts they can have on your bottom line. You can decide to hire an expert to do it or perform it yourself.
The results of this audit should give you the risks of all the things you need to do to achieve a secure IT infrastructure. And based on the likelihood of the risks occurring and the impact it has, penetration testing should be one of the top priorities.
2. Company reputation and customer trust
Reputation is everything. It is the main driver of the world and the focal point of most businesses. Simple information about an organization’s data system breach can lead to a massive loss of customers regardless of how well you worked towards boosting your content reach and customer engagement.
Ensuring your computer system is secure and free of vulnerabilities and cyber attack breaches, you build a positive brand image for your customers and get a competitive advantage among your fellow businesses. It builds more trust when a business has a secure live chat solution where customers get assistance in case they’ll need help.
3. Decrease the number of errors
Penetration testing results can also help IT experts make few to no errors. When these experts learn exactly how scammers launch attacks on software, or applications they developed. They’ll be more dedicated to comprehending security details and avoiding making various mistakes moving forward.
4. Regulations and compliance
Performing ethical hacking will enable you to identify and become compliant with various regulations and compliance laws in your state. This will prevent the effects of non-compliance such as fines, revocation of your business licenses, and even jail terms.
It is advisable to get legal counsel to get a grasp of the local and state laws and regulations that the business needs to comply with. After which, you should ensure you remain compliant with them.
Conclusion
Ethical hacking or penetration testing is the process of performing a security threat assessment on your business IT system to cover up possible loopholes for cyber attacks and breaches.
It can help you build a good business reputation, identify, prevent, and respond to threats, decrease the number of errors, and make the business compliant with the set regulations and policies in your state
