With the rise of the digital era, more companies are being targeted by cyberattacks and losing critical data through breaches. This has led to an increase in customers who are starting to lose trust in companies because their data can be at risk of being stolen.
Therefore, organizations must take cyber security seriously. This post outlines some of the best ways to approach cyber security to safeguard your company’s data from cyber criminals.
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Vulnerability Testing
Vulnerability testing for cyber security involves testing your organization’s current security measures. This can give you a good idea of the level of protection your company currently has and show which areas are weaker than others.
Once you better understand which areas hackers and employees could exploit, you can easily delegate resources to the areas that need the most attention.
When conducting vulnerability testing, you should note the security of all your firewalls, servers, and networks. In addition, it’s good practice to perform vulnerability scans on all connected devices to your network. This will provide you with a thorough breakdown of the current status of your security.
Cyberattacks are carried out daily, and if you need a good idea about how secure your organization is, you could be leaving yourself open for breaches. Organizations often use a website security checker in addition to hiring companies to carry out vulnerability scans so that they can be provided with clear and in-depth reports about weak spots that you may not have even known existed.
The reports provided can be categorized into low, medium, and high-risk reports. As a result, your organization can take a systematic approach to addressing the vulnerabilities, starting with the highest-risk ones and working its way down the list.
IAST
Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) involves analyzing code to find weak areas while the application is being tested by an automated system or manually by a human.
This form of cyber security testing provides real-time reposts on application vulnerabilities. Therefore, it can be incredibly valuable to understand the vulnerabilities within a current application.
Penetration Testing
Once you have a clearer picture of your company’s security status, you’ll want to consider conducting penetration testing. This is especially helpful for organizations that have yet to experience a cyberattack. If you’ve never had a security breach, you may only know which areas need improvement once it happens.
Penetration testing involves carrying out ethical hacks on your network to simulate what it would be like if a real hacker were to try to breach your system. This can be incredibly helpful for helping companies see which areas are the most vulnerable to attack.
Furthermore, since penetration testing is being carried out like a real hack, you may find that there are small areas of your network that are vulnerable, which you may have never thought of before. This is because the companies carrying out the ethical hacking approach are similar to real cybercriminals.
As a result, the reports that you get back from penetration testing can be incredibly in-depth. Many companies find that this form of testing for cyber security highlights several areas within their network that they thought were secure that ended up being breached.
Vulnerability tests are useful for estimating your organization’s security level. Penetration testing takes things further by actively attempting to hack into your system to provide you with more details about your security flaws.
Penetration testing enables companies to be more proactive about cyber security. Simply reacting to cyberattacks can leave organizations in a rough spot, as too much data may have been stolen.
After you’ve gained the reports from penetration testing, you can implement systems to add better security features for the weak areas found. This is also helpful for helping employees feel more assured about carrying out new security procedures to work better together and minimize the damage from attacks.
Ideally, penetration testing should be carried out annually. However, there are also other times when you should consider using it. Some instances when penetration testing should be carried out include when new products are being launched, changes are being made to your infrastructure, and web applications are being made.
Cyber Security Posture Test
New company vulnerabilities are always found, and hackers consistently find new ways to infiltrate networks. Organizations are at risk of creating weak spots every time changes are made to their network, which means that preparing for the possibility of a cyberattack is critical.
As a result, it’s important to conduct security posture checks regularly. This enables your organization to pinpoint weak areas consistently and fix them. The idea behind posture testing is to prevent hackers from trying to exploit weak areas as you’re fixing them regularly.
This type of testing for cyber security works best when carried out regularly. Without posture testing, you could provide hackers with small windows of opportunity to breach your system and steal data.
Conclusion
Now that you know better which methods to test your cyber security, you can start taking action. Organizations that sit idle for too long often suffer the most catastrophic cyberattacks, especially with the development of the cloud.
Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean you’re safe. Penetration, posture, and vulnerability testing for cyber security are more necessary than ever when it comes to safeguarding your company’s and customer data. So, be sure to put yourself in the best position possible and conduct thorough tests.