Essay on Penetration Testing

In the early days of computing, a hacker was primarily referred to as a computer guru, someone who is extremely technical with a high expertise in computer also known as “Expert Programmers”. Nevertheless, as technology is advancing at a face pace, hacking has adopted a completely different definition. The modern definition is someone who access a computer system primarily to steal or destroy information. Hacking has caused major harm in the realm of technology. Over the years, hackers have become much more lethal in their craft. They manage to break into complex information systems from entities such as banks, government agencies, and private businesses. Furthermore, they often manipulate their victims through social engineering in order to obtain financial benefits. Hackers hold different label such as: black hat hacker and white hat hacker in which all have their own motives.

Penetration testing is the attempt to identify security weaknesses within the IT infrastructure of an

The penetration tools provided in this document allow us to review our network from a security standpoint. This paper focused predominantly on phase two of a penetration test, the exploitation phase; however, a successful penetration test typically starts with the reconnaissance phase. In this phase, the tester attempts to gain as much information about the target company and its network as possible. He or she will test the physical infrastructure (how do people gain access to the building?) and other organizational aspects of the company to find a weakness and a way to get in. Also during this portion of the test, the penetration tester will use tools such as NMAP, whois.com, and other resources to obtain information regarding the network

In today’s IT world every organization has a responsibility to protect the information and sensitive data they have. Protecting data is not only responsibility of security and IT staff but every individual is involved in protecting the information. The risks to information security are not digital only, but it involves technology, people and process that an organization may have. These threats may represent the problems that are associated to complex and expensive solution, but doing nothing about these risks is not the solution.

As we continue to rely more on technology, it is important to mitigate the security risks that come with

Every organization must have adequate control mechanisms in place to help protect sensitive information from the distribution or transmission outside the organization, inappropriate disclosure, and control of how the information accessed is used. Companies should have policies in place that outline the course of action to take should inappropriate usage or disclosure of data be

Essentially, performing a penetration test on a web application or web server, prior to implementation, is critical to exposing and/or correcting any existing security flaws. In fact, such penetration testing is critical to ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) of a given web application or service. Also, penetration testing should be performed on a regular basis, or whenever a given web application or service is modified, in order to detect any possible security vulnerabilities and/or flaws.

Company XYZ, a mid-sized corporation, is in the middle of satisfying their regulatory compliance needs.  The manager of security at the company has been tasked by the CIO (Chief Information Officer) to report on the company’s current security posture. You are called upon as a 3rd party penetration tester, based on your industry reputation of being both careful and thorough to report on company XYZ’s security posture. The only information available about the company is the generalized information found on its company Website which includes a contact page, home page, customer login portal,

Dougherty, C., Householder, A., & Houle, K. (2002). Computer attack trends challenge Internet security. Computer, 35(4), 0005-7.

At this time the measures available to ensure information security include organizational controls such as limiting access to data, firewalls, antivirus systems, encryption, and application controls. When the security of the business fails and the private information of individuals is compromised the company faces many legal actions that can

As technology grows and information has become a critical asset companies currently are devoted their resource and money to protect their data as important as their finance and human resource assets.

While all of these technologies have enabled exciting changes and opportunities for businesses, they have also created a unique set of challenges for business managers. Chief among all concerns about technology is the issue of information security. It seems to be almost a weekly occurrence to see a news article about yet another breach of security and loss of sensitive data. Many people will remember high profile data breaches from companies such as T.J Maxx, Boston Market, Sports Authority, and OfficeMax. In the case of T.J. Maxx, a data breach resulted in the loss of more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers. In many of these incidents, the root cause is a lack of adequate security practices within the company. The same technologies that enable managers can also be used against them. Because of this, businesses must take appropriate steps to ensure their data remains secure and their communications remain

Prevalent to the current trend now is the dependency of the society on Information technology and communication systems. Every aspect of human life is one way or the other linked and controlled by information technology tools. The importance of information technology cannot be over emphasized as its unavailability could lead to a form of disaster or the other. Pivotal infrastructures like finance, healthcare, education and security are driven by information technology. However, information technology and its benefits are accompanied by vulnerabilities and risks that can be exploited by people with the necessary technical skills. Individuals like ‘Hackers’ and ‘Cyber Terrorist’ can cause disruption to information systems, commit financial fraud and also attack computers and networks. These attacks and disruptions could result to violence against people and properties. In some cases, death, serious injuries and severe economic loss could occur as a result of these attacks.

In the computer security context, a hacker is someone who seeks and exploits weaknesses in a computer system or computer network (Wiki).

In MSIA 676 we used Patrick Engebretson’s “The Basics of Penetration Testing” (Engerbretson, 2013). Although, I found this to be more effortless to read, the information included in the text was very abstracted and high-level and did not delve into the specifics of hacking/penetration testing. It did however, prove to be more effective at describing the phases of penetration testing and incident handling, which gives the student an understanding of the organization aspects of system penetration. Conversely, the current textbook “Computer Security and Penetration Testing” (Basta, Basta, & Brown, 2014) and the related course topics provided a complete examination of penetration and forensic tools as well as interesting methods for exploiting systems and unique techniques used by attackers. In addition to this distinction, the current text’s chapter lengths made budgeting the course load more manageable while still providing a wide-range of concepts. The addition of the hands-on projects in the chapter review section, provided ample opportunity for the student to think critically about penetration techniques as well as how to use various tools in a way that promotes increased