Benefits of Network Pentesting
Network penetration testing is important for keeping a company's network security resilient and ready for anything hackers might throw at it. Here's a quick rundown of eight benefits that an organization gets from assessing their networks regularly with pentesting.
1. Finding and Fixing Weak Spots: Regular pen tests help IT professionals spot problems in your networks and devices before the bad guys do. This means you can patch things up or work around them, making it harder for hackers to sneak in or steal data.
2. Catching What Other Tools Miss: Pen tests mimic real hacker attacks, finding security holes that vulnerability scans might overlook. This includes checking all of the factors that could lead to an intrusion like making sure your user permissions are tight and your security policies work in real life.
3. Spotting Where Operations Can Improve: It's not just about the tech. Pen testing can also show IT professionals where a company's security processes, staff awareness, or response times might be lacking. Fixing these areas makes an organization's overall security stronger and more resilient.
4. Avoiding Downtime and Money Loss: Catching vulnerabilities early helps organizations avoid damaging cyberattacks and dodge breaches that could cost a company a fortune in money and time offline. Think about avoiding legal headaches, fines, and the costs of cleaning up a mess, not to mention keeping your good reputation and customer trust. According to a 2023 survey by Kaseya, more than half of the IT professionals polled said that their company lost over $50,000 to cybersecurity incidents.
5. Staying on the Right Side of Regulators: Data protection regulations have proliferated on the regional and national levels. Plus, insurers can require regular security check-ups to issue and maintain cyber insurance policies. Those rules often include pen tests.
6. Getting Inside a Hacker's Mind: Pen tests give you the lowdown on how attackers think and what tricks they use, giving IT professionals the edge they need to beef up their company's defenses and get everyone on the team in a security-first mindset.
7. Putting Your Incident Plan to the Test: You can use pen tests to see if your plan for dealing with attacks works when push comes to shove. It's all about being ready to spot, handle, and bounce back from security problems. Having a tested incident response plan can save 35% of the cost of an incident.
8. Making Your Customers Feel Secure: Showing that you're serious about security by doing regular pen tests can make your customers trust you more. People like knowing their data is in safe hands.
Don't fall for the trap of only pentesting for compliance
Just doing network pen testing once per year to check a box isn't enough these days. Cyber threats move and evolve lightning-fast today. A reactive approach leaves a lot of holes in a company's defense that bad actors could slip through. Waiting too long between pen tests means a company might not catch easily fixed issues until after hackers have already taken advantage, which can lead to an expensive cybersecurity nightmare. Companies need to be ready for the deluge of novel cyber threats that are headed their way. Pen testing helps IT professionals find the cracks that bad actors could slip through before there's trouble.
At Interware, we help to bump up the quality of a company's security checks and keep track of how things are improving over time.
Learn more about Pen Test today!
Related Blogs
