Are We Secure?
If we are stuck in the position of only having been told that we are secure but we don't really know, how do you move to that point? This is where testing comes into play. OK, but what kind of testing? There are several types of testing such as security audits and vulnerability scans, but the real action happens with penetration testing. This is when someone, under controlled circumstances, actually tries to defeat your defenses. With penetration testing, you move from someone telling you are secure to knowing you are secure because someone has tried to hack your systems, just like the bad guys would. Using the same tools, techniques, and methods as malicious attackers, they evaluate your systems and tell you the avenues of attack. With permission, they escalate and attempt to breach your protections and take control of your systems and your data. Afterwards, they prepare a report, tell you how they got in or if they didn't how they tried, how they did what they did, and how to remediate the problems so that it doesn't happen again.
With penetration testing, you not only learn if someone could get in, but also how they would do it and if your supporting infrastructure and teams could detect and handle it. Is your monitoring sufficient? Would it let you know something was going on? Would your team know what do? Could they remediate it properly and recover the systems involved in a timely manner? All these sorts of questions and more can be addressed during a penetration test.
Any operational business model relies heavily on IT support and the help desk to achieve maximum uptime for all IT systems. This white paper addresses ways for help desk analysts and IT support staff to easily and efficiently handle their workload by simplifying and automating processes to increase time and operational cost savings, enhance productivity, and boost customer satisfaction. more
