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3 Steps To Remaining Resilient Against Cyber-Attacks
Book a meeting with us to scope a customised penetration test for your business.
Get a quote within 48 hours. For more complex requirements, we will set up a consultation with you and one of our technical experts.
Enjoy peace of mind knowing that your organisation is safeguarded by certified specialists in the industry.
What is penetration testing?
Penetration testing, or ‘pen testing’, is an authorised simulation of a cyber-attack against your organisation’s network, systems, applications, and users. By employing the same tactics and techniques as adversaries, we identify vulnerabilities and exploit them to assess the impact on your business. This process is crucial for understanding how an attacker could breach your defences, providing a comprehensive evaluation of your existing security measures from both authenticated and unauthenticated perspectives.
Vulnerability Scanning vs Penetration Testing
While vulnerability scanning is an automated process that identifies potential security weaknesses, penetration testing goes a step further by exploiting these vulnerabilities. This hands-on approach not only determines the presence of vulnerabilities but also assesses their real-world impact on your organisation, offering a detailed insight into your security posture.
Benefits of Penetration Testing
Our penetration testing service offers multiple benefits, including the ability to:
Identify and prioritise vulnerabilities in systems, applications, and configurations.
Evaluate the effectiveness of security controls and the depth of your defensive strategies.
Support compliance with leading information security standards and regulations, such as ISO 27001, PCI DSS, POPIA, and GDPR.
Provide actionable intelligence to inform management about the organisation's security posture and risk priorities.
Why is Penetration Testing Necessary?
Penetration testing is essential for:
Preventing data breaches and loss by identifying and remedying vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
Offering an unbiased examination of network security, particularly valuable after significant architectural changes.
Facilitating informed decision-making regarding cybersecurity strategies, budgeting, and prioritisation of remedial actions.
Ensuring compliance with various regulatory requirements, thereby avoiding fines or business losses.
Types of Penetration Tests
Our penetration testing service offers multiple benefits, including the ability to:
Blackbox Testing
Mimics an external attacker with no prior knowledge of the system, focusing on identifying exploitable vulnerabilities from outside the network.
Greybox Testing
Provides the testing team with limited information about the target, striking a balance between blackbox and whitebox testing to offer a comprehensive security assessment.
Whitebox Testing
Offers complete transparency on the system or application being tested, allowing for a highly detailed and targeted assessment.
Web Application Penetration Test
A thorough examination of web applications or platforms to identify security vulnerabilities, including API testing, following established methodologies like OWASP Top 10 and PTES.
Social Engineering Test
Evaluates the human element of cybersecurity by testing organisation members' susceptibility to social engineering tactics, such as phishing.
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
Utilises public sources, social media, and the Dark Web to gather information that could be utilised by attackers to formulate targeted attacks, highlighting potential areas for improvement in security awareness and posture.
Why Use Saicom for Penetration Testing Services?
Expertise and Experience
Saicom brings a wealth of experience and a deep understanding of the cybersecurity landscape to every penetration test. Our team of certified professionals has extensive experience in identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities across a wide range of industries and technologies. With years of hands-on experience, Saicom ensures that your organisation's cybersecurity is rigorously tested against the latest threats and sophisticated attack methodologies. Our skilled engineers are not only versed in the technical aspects of cybersecurity but also hold prestigious certifications such as ISO 27001 Lead Implementer, Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP), and Certified ISC2, showcasing over 20 years of dedicated expertise in the cyber security domain. This depth of knowledge and certification ensures that we approach each penetration test with the highest level of professionalism and expertise, offering peace of mind that your organisation is defended by industry-leading specialists.
Customised Testing Approach
Recognising the unique challenges and requirements of each organisation, Saicom offers customised penetration testing services tailored to your specific business needs and regulatory environment. Our approach goes beyond one-size-fits-all testing to provide detailed insights and actionable recommendations that address your unique security concerns.
Comprehensive Security Insights
Saicom’s penetration testing service goes deeper than just uncovering vulnerabilities. We provide a comprehensive analysis of your security posture, offering both qualitative and quantitative insights. Our reports are designed to be accessible to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring that everyone understands the risks and recommended mitigation strategies.
Regulatory Compliance Assurance
With a deep understanding of global and local compliance requirements, Saicom helps ensure that your penetration testing not only identifies security gaps but also aligns with industry standards and regulatory requirements. Whether you're navigating ISO 27001, PCI DSS, POPIA, or GDPR, Saicom’s services are designed to support compliance and protect against legal and financial repercussions.
Long-term Partnership for Cybersecurity Excellence
Choosing Saicom means selecting a partner committed to your long-term cybersecurity success. We view each penetration test as a step in an ongoing journey towards cybersecurity excellence, offering strategic advice, technology solutions, and support to continually enhance your security posture.
faq
Frequently Asked Questions
Organisations implement various security policies, processes, and solutions to safeguard their systems, platforms, and data. However, assessing the effectiveness and resilience of these measures against potential attacks requires testing. This is where penetration testing becomes crucial. By identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities, penetration testing assists organisations in comprehending the efficacy of their security programs. It enables proactive remediation of gaps and weaknesses before adversaries can exploit them. In certain industries, penetration testing is mandated by regulations, while it serves as a fundamental security control in international standards such as ISO 27001, NIST, PCI-DSS, and others.
It is recommended to conduct penetration testing once annually, but high-risk industries might require testing more often. Penetration testing should also be considered after major changes to network, system or application architecture, functionalities or features.
The duration of a penetration test is dependent on the complexity of the environment or web application and the objectives that are to be achieved. The duration of a test with a small scope can be 2 – 3 days, with a large scope test lasting 2 weeks or more.
A complete security testing program will include internal and external penetration testing, both are essential components for complete security testing. External penetration testing assesses the external/internet facing assets including a subset of company employees through social engineering, with the aim of breaching the perimeter and infiltrating the internal network. This closely simulates attacks performed by real-world adversaries.
Internal penetration testing analyses the extent to which an adversary can laterally move through a network after breaching the perimeter and obtaining an initial foothold. It informs a defence in depth security strategy by verifying the existence or effectiveness of internal processes and security safeguards.
While penetration testing is a valuable security assessment tool, it does not guarantee absolute security. It is essential to view penetration testing as one component of a comprehensive security program that includes proactive measures such as vulnerability management, security awareness training, incident response planning, and ongoing security monitoring. Regular penetration testing, coupled with other security initiatives, contributes to improving an organisation’s overall security posture and resilience against cyber threats.
A penetration testing report typically includes an executive summary, detailed findings categorised by severity, evidence of exploitation (if applicable), recommendations for remediation, and technical details such as screenshots, logs, and exploit code. The report should be clear, concise, and actionable, enabling organisations to prioritise and address identified vulnerabilities effectively.
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