The Assessment Of A Vulnerability Assessment

Companies should develop a control that requires that routine vulnerability assessment of their customer facing web sites, network infrastructure, and associated systems (such as database systems). Vulnerability assessment can help identify potential weaknesses to systems and also provide a sort of feedback to the organization’s IT department on their current operational policy and security posture. The cost of performing a routine vulnerability assessment is considerably less than that of an actual data breach.

Our company is looking for security threats inside and outside their network. The best way to see what our network is vulnerable to is to use penetration testing (pen-testing) to find the leaks in and out of our network. Penetration testing is a network security approach that simulates an attack from an intruder trying to get unauthorized access to the infrastructure. With this type of testing the intent is to discover flaws in the security settings of the system before they can be exploited. Information Assurance Research Corporation (IARC) should conduct penetration testing on a regular basis, so we have the ability to locate weaknesses in the hardware and software, check the security controls currently established and determine if the

During the reconnaissance step of the attack, describe what task Zenmap GUI performs to do passive OS fingerprinting.

This lab provided a virtual environment that simulated a corporate WAN network. Having a similar network environment at the organization I am currently employed at, I have some experience with vulnerability scanning. I do not have much experience using the nmap utility however, so I was interested to get some experience by completing the tasks within this lab. I didn’t experience many challenges following the steps in the lab itself. I was able to launch the environment successfully and perform the steps without any issue. As with any new environment, it took me a little time to figure out the layout of the simulation and how it functioned. After reading the documentation and spending about ten minutes clicking through the different areas, I felt comfortable and began the steps of the lab.

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

Provide your observations and findings for the tasks in the labs. For example your observations regarding the network packets sent by Cain for ARP poison and denial of service attacks that made the tasks for the lab possible.

A vulnerability assessment is a risk testing process which finds, quantity and rank possible vulnerabilities to threats in as many security defects as possible in a given timeframe. Depend upon organization scope there are many way to conduct vulnerability assessment. This assessment may involve automated and manual techniques.

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

vulnerability assessment. Zenmap (Nmap) is used to perform an initial IP host discovery as well

10. There are four phases of penetration testing, according to NIST. They are planning, discovery, attack, and reporting. In the planning phase, rules are identified, management approval is finalized, and testing goals are set. The discovery phase starts the actual testing. Techniques commonly used in the discovery phase include port scanning, DNS interrogation, whois queries, search of the target organizations web servers, search of the LDAP, packet capture, NetBIOS enumeration, and Banner grabbing. While vulnerability scanners only check that a vulnerability may exist, the attack phase of a penetration test exploits the vulnerability, confirming its existence. The reporting phase occurs simultaneously with the other three phases of the penetration test.

9. Which domains need software vulnerability assessments to mitigate risk from software vulnerabilities? The end point or workstation.

This deals with doing your homework. Researching your target is the most important part of an attack. Once your target has been pick out, probing for possible vulnerabilities within their network is performed. With the use of common tools found on the internet like DNS and ICMP, Standard and customized SNMP tools, Port scanners and port mappers, and Security probes to exploit a potential target.

Penetration testing is when a company pays a specialist to try and break into their network and relay back to them any vulnerabilities they may find. Now

This report contains an overview of the testing process and issues that were found, details of the testing process, results found, the risks associated with the vulnerability and recommendations for rectifying the vulnerability. The results of the test can be of assistance to Ernst & Young when making decisions regarding information security.

The purpose of a risk assessment plan, and especially this one in particular, is to analyze the threats or dangers to the Defense Logistics Information Service, which is the largest logistics combat support agency for the Department of Defense. A proper risk assessment plan is vital to protect both the information we store for the military, as well as the troops and civilians that would be in danger should this data be compromised.