We would ask them to consider the fact that penetration testing will help identify entry points within your applications and infrastructure that hackers in the wild can exploit.



What Kinds Of Tools Will You Be Using?

Common Penetration Testing Tools

Burp Suite

Nessus

Metasploit

More tools are listed on this page



What’s The Difference Between A Vulnerability Assessment And A Penetration Test?

Key differences between the two

Penetration testing exploits vulnerabilities

Vulnerability assessments identify vulnerabilities but do not exploit vulnerabilities

Penetration testing goes a step further, pivoting and chaining discovered issues together

What’s Your Approach To A Pen Test?

How Do You Report The Findings?

Several Emergency contacts for the ethical hacker

An agreed upon call frequency (daily, weekly wash up calls)

How you’re planning to communicate with each other (e.g. phone, email, IM , etc.)

Final report delivery date

What Preparation Work Should We Do Before A Penetration Test?

Backups are taken (ensuring a point in time restore point, allowing for pre-test environment restore)

Applications are hardened and patched

Attack vector is reduced (by only exposing services that are required)

Why Should I Have A Penetration Test Performed?

After the discovery of XSS, the ethical hacker performing the penetration test will manually exploit the XSS vulnerability and combine the XSS vulnerability with other security issues which may lead to a CSRF bypass or cookie theft.In short, there’s nothing wrong with ethical hackers using automated tools. However, scanners and other tools typically only spot simple vulnerabilities. Pen testers can use their experience, skills, and brains to think outside the box to find and combine vulnerabilities that an automated tool would otherwise miss.Some of the most common tools that many ethical hackers utilize are Burp Suite, Nessus, and Metasploit. These three tools help along the penetration testing process, allowing the pen tester to identify issues and manual exploit the discovered vulnerabilities (as discussed above).A Vulnerability Assessment (also known as a VA) informs on whether your network environment has any vulnerabilities. A penetration test digs deeper than simply identifying security weaknesses, they actively look and hopes of exploiting any holes in your system security, exploitation of the vulnerability verify its existence. Manual testing identifies security weaknesses that a simple scan wouldn’t be able to find.Depending on the firm you hire, there will likely be a different approach, typically you can request their testing methodology. Most reputable companies will base their testing methodologies on established methodologies, such as NIST, OWASP, and PTES.Every team has a slightly different approach, but ultimately, they follow the same set of rules. Here are a few guidelines some of the best pen testers follow:: In this phase of the process, the technician gathers as much relevant information about your company as possible which is very likely, unknowingly, a part of the public domain. This information could be key to an attacker backing through your company’s cyber defenses.: Here automatic and manual scanning techniques are used to uncover vulnerabilities in the system. If the process is performed correctly, then the automatic scan should run in tandem with the manual scan at least complement each other.: Once an issue has been identified the technician must attempt to exploit it. Technicians who rely too much on tools will have trouble during this portion of the process. But, this is an important step and requires a very high level of trust between the technician and the company they are providing their service to. If you “penetration test” does not include the step of testing, then it’s a vulnerability assessment and not a penetration test.: After the vulnerabilities are thoroughly exploited the information gathered is used to gather additional information.Before beginning any security testing the following must be discussed between the technician and the business:Before penetration testing can take place the following preparation work is recommended:Obviously, the above depends on “why” you are conducting a pen test, you might be a CISO in a new organization who wants to gain an overview of the current state of the organization's security.A Pen test lets you know the kinds of issues your company network and environment may have with regards to security. It gives your company the opportunity to address the holes you may have in your security so you can address them before an attacker has the chance to use these vulnerabilities against you.