Friend instead of Foe: Attack & Penetration Testing in Dallas
Business owners hate investing in theories versus facts. This is one reason security budgets are deemed too small by most IT professionals within their companies. “Management” does not want to invest in what “might” happen and proactive information technology security measures fall under that realm.
We don’t blame you. Instead, we believe your business should invest in some factual data around security and your business security practices. That data will then lead you to what specifically you should invest in to properly protect your assets. You can make informed decisions for your business instead of entirely theoretical ones. And wouldn’t you rather get challenged by a friend than an unknown enemy?
High impact security breaches are occurring rampantly, and the number of victims is increasing exponentially.
Is Paying for Attack & Penetration Testing Worth It?
To evaluate if you should move forward with a security testing exercise, you should first know what any downtime costs your business including people time and lost opportunity. That is what you are assessing to mitigate. If you are like most other companies, the proactive investment in attack and “pen” testing is well worth it.
What Have Real Security Flaws Cost Other Companies?
According to IBM’s 2021 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the total average cost of a ransomware attack was $4.62 million — more expensive than the average cost of a data breach, which was $4.24 million.
As per Sophos State of Ransomware 2021, the average ransom paid by mid-sized organizations was $170,404 while the average cost of resolving a ransomware attack was $1.85 million. This cost includes downtime, people time, device cost, network cost, lost opportunity, ransom paid, etc. As per the US Treasury Department, the average amount of reported ransomware transactions per month in 2021 was $102.3 million.
The Sanapptx Approach to Attack & Penetrating Testing
At Sanapptx, we will purposefully and ethically try to attack and penetrate your information technology systems to find and assess any security weaknesses or exposures that an outside threat could use to harm your business. We intentional launch simulated cyberattacks with strategies and tools made to access or exploit your computer systems, networks, applications, and user security. Without doing these checks, you will not know your vulnerabilities and may not know how to act when a real cyberthreat occurs.
In parallel, we assess the robustness of your organizational security policies, regulatory compliance, and employee security awareness. We can also evaluate your organization’s ability to respond to security issues and incidents, such as unauthorized access, as they occur.
Our objective is to exploit a company’s cyber defenses in several areas before a real attacker does. We do this to help strengthen your security posture. For example:
- Network Goals
- close unused ports
- troubleshooting services
- calibrating firewall rules
- eliminating security loopholes
- Web Application Goals
- identify, analyze, and report application vulnerabilities such as buffer overflow, SQL injection, and cross-site scripting
- Access Goals
- attempt to gain privileged access to sensitive systems
- attempt to steal data from a secure system
For web application security, we can also use penetration testing to assess and then augment a web application firewall (WAF).
Automated Security Testing
At Sanapptx, we use automated testing tools so vulnerability identification can be performed continuously, without human intervention, and with fewer false positives. Our job is to expose:
- patch detected vulnerabilities
- security flaws allowing attackers user, system, network, or application access
- possible targets such as potential entry points
At the end of our attack and penetration testing exercises, we will identify and report all items that bring high risk to your organization that can cause costly breaches, loss of data, and compromised systems, users, and applications.
What Are the Benefits of Penetration Testing?
Sanapptx’s penetration testing allows your company to see where your security needs to be improved. By finding holes in your security before hackers do, you can better prepare for cyberattacks and protect your information.
Penetration testing services provide:
- Test of infrastructure defensive strength
- Test of security patches
- Test of digital assets like cloud services
- Test of applications defensive strength
- Insight into a company’s network defense
- Overlooked weak development areas
- Awareness to vulnerabilities
- Insight from a hacker’s perspective
- Assessment of potential damage of an attack:
- Disruption of critical processes
- Loss of key business data and backups
- Loss of infrastructure
- Damage to company reputation
- Potential to amplify privacy and security
Why Choose Sanapptx for Attack & Penetration Testing?
With penetration testing from Sanapptx, you can:
- Easily identify risks: Network penetration testing allows you to evaluate both your internal and external network security. After an evaluation, you can determine which parts of your network ought to be prioritized to strengthen their security against potential threats. With network penetration testing services, you can be proactive and fend off potential hackers.
- Stay competitive: Cyberattacks are not only a potential threat to your company’s information and data security but they’re also a threat to your business’s success. According to Forbes, cybercrime costs businesses $2.9 million every minute. Customers are less likely to work with a company that has had a significant cyberattack in the past because they don’t feel that their information is safe. With network penetration testing services, you can feel confident knowing that your business is staying competitive because your security measures are strong and well-adapted.
- Stay up to date with industry regulations: Network security isn’t just for your peace of mind. It’s also necessary to stay up to date with industry regulations such as HIPAA and FISMA. Network penetration testing services help to ensure your business is secure and up to code.
Sanapptx, headquartered in Dallas, TX, has become a trusted penetration testing service provider for companies across the United States.
A Repeat Service
As security professionals responsible for numerous organizations’ infrastructure (hardware), applications (software), and people (productivity), we know security tests should not be treated as a one-time event but happen with frequency. Identifying exposures, blocking holes, and ensuring cyber controls are working is a commonsense strategy considering the increased sophistication and frequency of cyberattacks.
If you have never had attack and penetration testing services done, we encourage you to start. If it has been more than a year since your last security testing exercise, we suggest you act. Contact us to learn more about how our services can help you make better security investment decisions and better protect your business.