Penetration Testing Service Providers: Understanding Penetration Testing Approaches

Serena Gray
3 min readOct 10, 2019

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Clients usually approach penetration testing service providers to do a manual penetration check for a selected application. Here we tend to try and in brief, describe a number of the benefits and drawbacks of every technique and justify a well-liked approach.

Generally, there are two approaches utilized by Penetration Testing Service Providers:

· Automated Testing

· Manual Testing

Automated Penetration Testing

Speed: Automated tools work on a far quicker rate by order of magnitude. It’s slightly more troublesome to manually check every part, service, and protocol with a similar speed that a machine or script will.

Coverage: Manual testing would need an outsized quantity of your time and talent to ensure similar coverage and comparison to notable vulnerabilities. Troublesome for machine-controlled tools to accurately check in-house internet applications and services, which might lead to incomprehensible logical vulnerabilities.

Efficiency: The process capabilities of a machine are wonderful. Machine-Controlled tools will initialize and execute an outsized variety of payloads for every check; however, they might not favor executing the payloads properly for every state of affairs.

Investment: Open supply tools and vulnerability scanners are sometimes free; however, they lack support or security. Skilled licensing for vulnerability scanners and alternative machine-controlled devices will vary dramatically in prices.

Manual Penetration Testing

Effectiveness: Automation alone isn’t capable of confirming that the application is completely tested from a security viewpoint. Machine-Controlled tools are poor at testing for logical vulnerabilities.

Logical vulnerabilities need an opinion of the scope and flow of the applying to spot any security problems. Bound findings, for instance, CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) and business logic vulnerabilities, got to expertise certified security skilled to be capable of using and validating all potential security eventualities.

Validity: machine-controlled tool results sometimes contain an outsized variety of false positives and negatives (30% to ninetieth looking on methodology and product) which will produce a false sense of security or lack of security. These inaccuracies exist because of the dearth of tool capabilities. It’s the responsibility and experience of the manual tester initializing the machine-controlled tool to validate the results and determine verify security findings.

Accuracy: machine-controlled tools are sole as reliable as their updates. If a replacement vulnerability or exploit has been introduced into the surroundings while not a notable class (i.e. zero-day), it’s not possible for the machine-controlled tools to find and determine the protection threat.

In manual testing, it’s doable for the tester to make their own exploit looking on true and vulnerability. This permits the execution of comprehensive testing methodology that machine-controlled tools can overlook and fail to observe.

Custom Reporting: Once the penetration check is complete, the checker is capable of making a comprehensive report that’s as individual as the test results.

At its most simple level, it’ll describe the vulnerabilities found, exploits used, knowledge collected, risk rating, confirming proof, affected assets, and mitigation recommendations. These reports are fine-tuned to the requirements of the shopper so that they gain the best security understanding of their infrastructure, application, or device.

Investment: the prices of manual testing depends on the scope and size of the engagement. In most penetration testing engagements, the price and licensing of extra machine-controlled tools are lined underneath the negotiated penetration check contract unless special necessities incorporate the installation of additional devices.

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Serena Gray
Serena Gray

Written by Serena Gray

I work as a Senior Testing Specialist at TestingXperts. I am a testing professional accustomed to working in a complex, project-based environment.

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