Using Penetration Testing to Give Boards Better Security Assurance

A development team could follow secure coding standards, keep their dependencies current, and yet release a vulnerability to the public that nobody is aware of. It’s as simple as that: real-world attacks aren’t based on an outline. A hacker could use an authentication flaw along with a weak API endpoint, exploit the process of resetting passwords or discover that a client account has access to a tenant’s details.

Professional penetration testing Brisbane businesses use for security assurance looks at systems from that adversarial perspective. Instead of asking if the system has security controls experienced testers will ask what controls could be bypassed.

The difference is crucial in Australian businesses that deal with sensitive assets such as health records, financial information, customer information or other sensitive assets.

Scanning by automated means only tells a small portion of the truth

Vulnerability scanners prove useful. They are able to quickly detect outdated code or headers that are insecure (CVEs), known CVEs and obvious configuration issues. They don’t always understand is the way an application is supposed to behave.

Consider a customer portal where customers can alter the account number inside a request and access another invoices from a company. The server may return perfectly valid responses, so an automated scanner sees nothing unusual. A human test-taker can identify the authorization failure immediately.

Tests for quality web penetration combine the automated process with manual analysis. Testers look for flaws in session authentication, sessions, API behaviour and configuration, in addition to access controls, injection risk, API behavior.

SaaS environments have security concerns of their own

Multi-tenant cloud services require careful testing because one mistake can impact many customers at the same time.

Effective Saas penetration testing should examine tenant isolation, privileged functions, API authorization, role changes, account recovery data exposure, and integrations with external services. The tester must be able to determine not just if a feature works, but also whether it can be altered in a way that the developers never planned.

For instance, a user given a role of a minimum level may not recognize an administrative function in the interface. This does not necessarily mean they can’t call directly. Active testing is required to determine this, instead of simply reviewing the display.

Modern web applications have a larger attack surface

Today’s applications often incorporate JavaScript front-ends and APIs, cloud service providers as well as identity providers and microservices. There could be flaws in every component, as well depending on the trust that exists between the two.

These connections are followed by a thorough web application penetration test. Testers will be able to examine the process of issuance of tokens, whether sensitive endpoints have a consistent authorization process and how data that is controlled by the user moves between services, and whether a low-risk flaw can be chained with another weakness to cause a significant security breach.

Siege Cyber is specialized in this type application testing. It utilizes modern APIs and frameworks as well as cloud-hosted applications and complex architectures.

An informative report can help developers fix the problem

Finding vulnerabilities is only half of the job. Security testing is of the highest value when engineers can reproduce the problem, comprehend the threat, and address it confidently.

Siege Cyber reports contain evidence of reproduction, steps to reproduce and risk rating. They also include impacts analyses as well as practical remediation tips as well as a detailed analysis of the impact. Business stakeholders receive an executive-level explanation of the vulnerability while technical teams get the specifics needed to deal with it. Instead of waiting for the final report, crucial conclusions can be passed on to the business stakeholder during the process.

The process of retesting the system following remediation offers another layer of assurance in that it proves the initial issue has been fixed without having to design a new system.

Penetration testing can be a useful instrument for companies trying to test their systems, prove conformance or increase confidence prior to a major release. Automated tools and policies don’t offer this, but it gives them a method of discovering how a skilled hacker might attack the software. It is important to find the solution before the attacker.