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Vulnerability Management

How To Automate Vulnerability Management

Automating vulnerability management is a process that eliminates repetitive tasks prone to human error and replaces them with data-driven vulnerability prioritization.

There are 5 best practices to keep in mind when automating your vulnerability program including:

  1. Document Data Classifications & Policies.
  2. Understand Your Business Units.
  3. Implement A Policy For Remediation Timelines.
  4. Have Complete Visibility Of Your Environments.
  5. Define Approval Gateways.

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Vulnerability management benefits cybersecurity by proactively identifying security vulnerabilities and remediating them promptly.

However, while building a vulnerability management program is a critical cybersecurity activity that guards the enterprise network against attackers, maintaining a vulnerability management program at scale is a challenging task for several reasons.

Enterprise IT infrastructure is complex and constantly changing, which makes vulnerability management activities equally complex.

Other factors that contribute to the challenge include an increasingly fast-paced and threatening cyber landscape, and a cyber security talent shortage.

How can enterprises supercharge their vulnerability management programs to overcome these challenges and maintain strong cyber risk assurances?

Automation to the rescue.

Vulnerability management automation offers productivity benefits that alleviate the burden on IT security teams and optimize the effectiveness of vulnerability management operations.

Automation also reduces the potential impact of human error and provides reliable, data-driven vulnerability prioritization.

Let’s examine what automated vulnerability management is, how to automate vulnerability management, and who can benefit from it.

What Is Automated Vulnerability Management?

Vulnerability management proactively scans IT infrastructure for vulnerabilities and remediates them, reducing an organization’s attack surface and the probability of a breach.

Automated vulnerability management automates the workflow of vulnerability management program tasks; particularly the identification, aggregation of associated information, vulnerability assessment reporting, and remediation of vulnerabilities.

Best Practices For Automating Vulnerability Management

1. Document Data Classifications & Policies

All systems and data need to be inventoried, documented, and classified according to their technical specifications and criticality to business operations.

Implement an inventory review process that includes decommissioning processes and timelines.

These key inventories, classifications, and policies allow the calculation of quantified risk scores and prioritization of vulnerabilities according to the real risk that they pose to an organization.

2. Understand Your Business Units

Risk is not distributed evenly throughout an organization.

Each organization has “hot spots” of critical systems and data.

Understanding how each department contributes to overall business operations allows the risk-based design of networks, policies, and controls to restrict access to critical systems and data by reducing the critical attack surface.

3. Implement A Policy For Remediation Timelines

Exposure time” refers to the period between scans when the publication of new vulnerabilities may allow attackers to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities.

Therefore, cyber security vulnerability management relies on scheduling continuous vulnerability scanning to reduce the average time to patch vulnerabilities.

Well-defined SLA/SLO policies help reduce exposure time to satisfy internal risk requirements, and external compliance and regulatory requirements.

4. Have Complete Visibility Of Your Environments

You can’t protect what you can’t see, so creating digital visibility is an important step in developing a vulnerability management program and reliably managing risk.

With a full inventory of systems and data, hardware and software, and a network topography in hand, ensure your scanning and other security tools have visibility of all critical assets in the environment.

5. Define Approval Gateways

Automation of a vulnerability management program still requires human oversight.

Clear communication channels, well-defined standard operating procedures (SOP) and a well-defined understanding of remediation workflows allow vulnerabilities to be patched faster, reducing exposure time and attack surface.

Why Invest In Automation?

Automation can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of vulnerability management activities by reducing the burden on human analysts and ensuring that vulnerabilities are accurately prioritized by aggregating cyber threat intelligence and leveraging the knowledge and skills of industry leading cyber security analysts.

Automated vulnerability management can turn complex processes into simple step-by-step workflows allowing more time to be spent on activities that actually improve network security.

Because cyber security is a high-stakes and fast-paced field with little room for error, it makes perfect sense to optimize cyber security programs with vulnerability management automation

Challenges With Traditional Vulnerability Management

Traditional vulnerability management is resource-intensive, costly, and prone to human error.

Qualified cyber security analysts are hard to find and retain, and the quickly evolving threat environment ensures IT security teams are constantly overwhelmed with threat intelligence data.

This makes the task of accurately prioritizing and remediating vulnerabilities impossible at scale and leads to exposing vulnerable assets to attack for longer than necessary.

Frees Up Resources

Organizations want their IT security team to spend less time trying to figure out what to do and more time doing it.

Automating the aggregation of vulnerability data, its analysis, and the calculation of security priorities supercharges a vulnerability management program.

Actionable information is delivered that can be immediately translated into time spent fixing problems.

Improves Average Time To Patch

In cybersecurity every second counts.

A patch management policy seeks to apply security patches before attackers identify the vulnerabilities and exploit them.

Automation provides immediate access to enriched vulnerability information as new vulnerabilities are disclosed and security updates are released, reducing the average time to patch a vulnerability.

Provided with the right information at the right time, organizations can reliably meet and exceed their compliance obligations, reduce their vulnerable attack surface, and achieve a greater return on security investment (ROSI) faster.

When Should You Consider Automation?

If you are unsure about your organization’s ability to manage a cyber attack or don’t have an in-house IT security team, automated vulnerability management is an opportunity to streamline security operations, strengthen operational resiliency, and gain strong cyber risk assurances.

Here are some telltale scenarios that indicate your organization will benefit from automated vulnerability management technologies:

  • You Don’t Have A Vulnerability Management Program
  • You Want Peace Of Mind
  • You Are A Rapidly Growing Organization
  • Evolve To The Next Generation Of Vulnerability Management

You Don’t Have A Vulnerability Management Program

The top priority for businesses is growth, but a successful cyber attack can be a huge financial setback and lead to a damaged public reputation.

SMEs and start-ups are not immune to cyber attacks either.

On the contrary, attackers consider them prime targets because they are less likely to have user-awareness training programs and well-developed cybersecurity programs.

For organizations of all sizes, new regulations, and compliance requirements are also pushing organizations to expand their cybersecurity programs.

In all of these cases, adding automation to a vulnerability management program provides improved efficiency and reliability.

You Want Peace Of Mind

Recent security statistics relay the increasing risk that cyber attacks pose to businesses.

How can leaders and decision-makers achieve peace of mind as digitization introduces new and complex risks?

The most effective way is to partner with qualified cybersecurity professionals to develop world-class cyber resilience supported by next-generation cybersecurity technologies.

Next-generation vulnerability management supports compliance requirements and provides on-demand risk visibility and vulnerability assessment reporting across the entire IT environment, allowing an organization to stay ahead of the bad guys.

You Are Rapidly Growing

Successful companies can grow in the blink of an eye.

However, growth comes with increased attack surface and risk.

As companies scale services they handle a larger amount of sensitive data and protect higher revenues.

Automating a vulnerability management program supercharges IT and Infosec staff, providing them with reliable the critical data they need to more quickly address a higher number of data-driven security priorities.

Personnel can spend more time remediating vulnerabilities and less time manually aggregating, researching, and analyzing vulnerability information.

Evolve To Next Generation Vulnerability Management

Traditional approaches to vulnerability and patch management rely on human analysts and their best judgment to prioritize vulnerabilities.

However, the “human factor” puts an organization at risk of arbitrary and ad-hoc prioritization.

Quantitative data-driven prioritization delivered by next-generation cyber security technologies is more reliable and actionable allowing more efficient and effective cyber security operations.

Automated vulnerability management is a next-generation technology that provides access to leading IT security professionals and delivers accurate quantitative analytics for data-driven prioritization and risk visibility

Common Challenges Of Implementing Automation

While automation can reduce the efficiencies of traditional vulnerability management, the automation of vulnerability management activities also includes unique challenges.

Let’s examine the biggest challenge to implementing more automated processes in a vulnerability management program:

  • Preparing To Automate A Vulnerability Management Program
  • Changing Your Processes
  • Network Challenges

Preparing To Automate A Vulnerability Management Program

Before an organization can automate vulnerability management activities, the best practices outlined above need to be in place.

However, these initial steps within themselves are no easy task. Enterprise IT infrastructure is a complex highly distributed architecture.

An organization’s entire business workflow and IT infrastructure must be carefully architected, inventoried, and classified before the vulnerability management automation process can begin.

Changing Your Processes

Change isn’t easy, but failure to stay up-to-date with IT security imposes huge risks.

A cyber security talent shortage, high staff turnover rate, and a fast-paced technological change impose burdens that smart businesses want to overcome.

The long-term benefits of a vulnerability management automation process far outweigh the initial burden of changing current practices and ensure that an organization’s cybersecurity efforts can keep pace with sustained technological change.

Network Challenges

It’s important to make sure your network is well architected and configured for an organization’s unique business operations and ongoing maintenance of good cyber hygiene is a must.

This includes mapping internal network topography including:

  • Wireless access points and SD-WAN.
  • Maintaining updated software inventories for accept and block lists of each asset.
  • Continuously monitor network and service configurations for unauthorized changes.

Wrapping Up

 

The modern cyber security landscape is complex and high costs are associated with even a single breach.

Many companies are not adequately protected, at a time when it’s more important than ever to retain access to leading IT security talent.

Automated vulnerability management reduces the burden on internal IT security team members, the potential for human error, and enables more efficient and effective data-driven prioritization of vulnerability remediation.

PurpleSec’s Cyber Risk Management Platform automates vulnerability program activities including scanning, data aggregation, and prioritization to deliver risk visibility, on-demand reporting, and remediation.

Our approach ensures that IT team members spend less time trying to figure out what to do and more time improving network security.

Article by

Picture of Jason Firch, MBA
Jason Firch, MBA
Jason is a proven marketing leader, veteran IT operations manager, and cybersecurity expert with over a decade of experience. He is the founder and President of PurpleSec.

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Vulnerability Management

Vulnerability & Patch Management Metrics: Top 10 KPIs

The top 10 vulnerability management metrics you should be measuring include:

  1. Average Time To Action
  2. Mean Time To Remediation
  3. Risk Score
  4. Acceptance Risk Score
  5. Average Vulnerability Age
  6. Internal Vs External Exposure
  7. Rate Of Recurrence
  8. Total Risk Remediated
  9. Asset Inventory/Coverage
  10. Service Level Agreement (SLA)

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Reporting the results from vulnerability scanning without a set of clearly defined metrics is an issue many organizations face today.

Presenting vulnerability reports to senior management without key metrics will also limit your ability to effectively communicate the overall risk of your organization.

Learn More: Cybersecurity Metrics And KPIs CISOs Use To Prove Business Value

Faulty reporting of vulnerability metrics not only creates blind spots for your security and infrastructure team, but your executive leadership and stakeholders will not understand the true value of the vulnerability program and will question the return on this security investment.

In this article, we will help you identify and define the top key metrics that your organization can implement to track the progress and state of your vulnerability and patch management programs.

We will also discuss the differences in KPI’s and demonstrate how PurpleSec can help you measure and report on successes.

Let’s now take a look at why vulnerability metrics are critical to your program.

Why Vulnerability Metrics Are Critical To Program Success

Vulnerability metrics are critical to the successful measurement of your vulnerability management program.

They measure the status of your remediation strategy and patching effectiveness.

Without a consistent system of reporting the status of your program, the likelihood of exposure to a data breach increases as reported in recent breach statistics.

When considering which metrics to report, the approach should not be to simply gather statistics and charts, but it should focus on prioritizing remediation efforts on of your most critical systems and applications.

The steps to gather the right metrics for your organization will take care planning by your IT and security teams.

This can be accomplished by understanding the importance of gathering metrics.

Note the following four areas that can help you get started:

Risk Awareness

Metrics quantify the state of risk of your organization into a format your teams and stakeholders can understand.

The right metrics can also elevate risk awareness and understanding for your business leaders to support the vulnerability management program.

Planning

A consistent program for gathering metrics can help your organization plan for reducing risk each time a new application or system is introduced into the environment.

This approach can also evaluate if business objectives are met and if additional resources are required.

Audits

If metric reporting is already an established process of your vulnerability program, your internal or third-party audits will more than likely result in success.

NIST and CMCC compliance requirements can help you identify weaknesses in your vulnerability program.

Resource Allocation

Metrics can help pinpoint areas of risk within key business applications or at the development stage.

Once identified, your leadership teams can determine where and if additional resources are needed to reduce risk or close gaps within the system

Top 10 Vulnerability And Patch Management Metrics

Depending on the type of vulnerability scanner, a few of these metrics may already be pre-built into the reporting engine.

If you choose to customize your report, review the context of each metric and select as needed to fit your organization’s needs.

1. Average Time To Action

This important metric reveals how responsive your team reacts to the results of the reported vulnerabilities.

This metric should be consistently low since the security team is accountable for delivering the message and action plans for remediation to business owners.

2. Mean Time To Remediation

Mean time to remediation should be based on a documented SLA defined in your Vulnerability Management Policy.

The severity of the vulnerability should have a corresponding relative or an absolute period of time for planning and remediation.

3. Risk Score

This value is usually automatically calculated from the vulnerability report. This score illustrates the cumulative risk of your vulnerabilities per severity level, i.e. Critical, High, or Medium.

4. Accepted Risk Score

If your organizations decide not patch a specific or group of vulnerabilities within a specified time period, this is an acceptance of risk.

Acceptance of risk should be tracked, scored, and reported to help the organization understand the potential for exposure and the risk that has been accepted.

5. Average Vulnerability Age

The vulnerability age is the number of days since a vulnerability was publicly disclosed. Tracking this metric will help your organization create remediation plans that aligns with your SLA.

6. Internal Vs External Exposure

Your external internet facing applications inherently are at highest exposure to outside threats compared to internal. An organization should have separate scanners for each environment.

Although an external scan has high priority, internal scans should be prioritized as well due to the potential of a threat actor entering your network and exploiting a threat is always probable.

7. Rate Of Recurrence

A remediated vulnerability that returns on the same or different asset may indicate a problem with the baseline configuration or lack thereof.

Tracking this metric continuously will enable your infrastructure teams to closely review process errors or system configuration issues.

8. Total Risk Remediated

Total risk remediated is a key metric that illustrates the effectiveness of your vulnerability management program to your IT and executive management teams.

When your total risk remediation is trending upward continuously, this may demonstrate to your business stakeholders the effectiveness of your security investment.

9. Asset Inventory/Coverage

This metric identifies the number of assets that should be patched. The vulnerability management tool should have auto discovery functionality to detect new systems on the network.

Tracking this metric will help you identify how your environment is trending, or if new assets are added and serviced by a ticketing or inventory system.

10. Service Level Agreement (SLA)

The Service Level Agreement determines when a patch is expected to be remediated. This value should be documented within your vulnerability management policy.

This metric is the baseline tracker for remediation – i.e., Zero-day attacks may require immediate remediation, a Critical Severity finding may have a duration of 7 days.

SLA values may also be dependent on the priority of the asset as well, per your organization’s needs.

Less Important KPIs

The following metrics provide useful data on detection times, severity detail, and quantity of vulnerabilities.

They are considered less important due to their lack of direct impact on risk reduction.

Mean Time To Detect

Mean Time to Detect is the average amount of time between the beginning of a vulnerability and the discovery of the vulnerability by your IT or security team.

Although this is a useful metric, the most important takeaway from this vulnerability is the action to be performed after it’s detected.

In addition, when deploying a continuous vulnerability solution, your mean time to detect should be days or hours – not weeks or months.

Average CVSS Scores

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) provides a numerical representation of the severity of a vulnerability to help incident responders prioritize remediation efforts.

Although CVSS scoring does not directly indicate risk, it can provide valuable insight into software or systems that may be at risk.

Open Vulnerabilities

Tracking open vulnerabilities is a useful metric that illustrates your current technical debt across all of your systems. The numerical value of open vulnerabilities is not a risk rating.

The value of the metric is realized when combined with other metrics to prioritize a vulnerability remediation process for critical systems.

How To Measure Successful Vulnerabilities Management Outcomes

So far, we’ve defined why metrics are important for reporting and identified top metrics that should be included in your reports.

In this section, the goal is to ensure you are capturing data from all sources within your network.

Once this data is consumed into your reports, you will be in a position to tell the story with your results.

Obtain Reports From All Sources

It is important to understand the type and whereabouts of all assets connected to your network. Assets not accounted for may result in unpatched systems and inaccurate reporting of your risk posture in network vulnerability reports.

Include reporting from your blue and red team tools to provide comprehensive insights into your vulnerability management lifecycle.

The outcome will result in better prioritization of remediation plans of your most critical systems through validation.

This inclusive reporting approach will enable your teams to identify targets for further testing.

Centralize Metrics With Dashboard Reporting

Multiple reporting dashboards for each tool can make demonstrating results difficult to manage.

Centralizing your reporting into a single pane makes it easier for your organization to observe the positive impact your vulnerability program, which leads to more success.

Present Metrics Based on The Story You Need to Tell

Present the most important KPIs first based on your organization’s needs.

Your stakeholders need to know what the risk impact is to the business. Present the metrics that focus on the priority of critical systems and risk that have been accepted.

Present metrics that match the SLA’s documented in your vulnerability management policy. This will demonstrate the timeliness of patching systems to reduce your overall risk profile.

Let’s now take a look at how PurpleSec can help improve your reporting capabilities with automation.

How PurpleSec Improves Reporting With Automation

PurpleSec’s Vulnerability Management platform can help your organization improve your reporting capabilities. Note the following features of this platform and how it can complement your existing framework.

Orchestrates & Automates Reporting

PurpleSec can help you deliver and customize reports that measure the state of your vulnerability program.

Let’s examine the key components of the reporting engine that will supercharge and enhance the value of your vulnerability management program.

You can create an executive dashboard for managers or a general view for infrastructure teams or business units for up-to-date statistics.

Dashboards generally provide an export feature which allows the generation of instant reports.

Fully Managed Solution

PurpleSec’s security experts will partner with your teams to understand your objectives and setup everything you need to make informed decisions about your security posture based off reported metrics.

Our teams are made up of certified information security professionals who can consult, manage, and approve security processes by automating vulnerability management reporting.

Wrapping Up

In this article, we have reviewed the value of reporting key vulnerability and patch management metrics.

As your organization manages its vulnerability management program, it is critical to provide the right metrics that demonstrate risk to your high-priority systems along with the tracking of risks that have been accepted.

By following the recommendations of measuring risk through metrics reporting, your IT teams and stakeholders will be able to clearly observe the outcomes and successes of the vulnerability management program.

Your organization will also improve its security posture by having a continuous vulnerability management program to reduce risk.

If you would like to learn more about PurpleSec’s Vulnerability Management platform, please schedule a demo by clicking the link below and one of our security experts will be in touch.

Ready to speak with one of our experts? We want to help you with your next project. Schedule a demo.

Article by

Picture of Michael Swanagan, CISSP
Michael Swanagan, CISSP
Michael is an Information Security Professional with 15 years of proven experience. He has experience leading and supporting security projects and initiatives in the healthcare, finance, and advertising industry.

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How To Perform A Successful Network Penetration Test

You just completed a vulnerability assessment and you’ve remedied all or most of the identified vulnerabilities.

A network penetration test is often the next step to validate the risk assessment to enhance a business’s security posture.

There are four main steps to performing a network penetration test which include:

  1. Information gathering and clarifying client expectations.
  2. Reconnaissance and discovery.
  3. Performing the penetration test.
  4. Reporting on recommendations and remediation.

By the end of this article, you will understand what a network penetration test is and the benefits associated with it.

In addition, you will learn how to successfully perform a network penetration test and explain it to future clients or key stakeholders.

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What should a penetration test report include? Download our sample report to learn.

What Is A Network Penetration Test?

A network penetration test is the process of identifying security vulnerabilities in applications and systems by intentionally using various malicious techniques to evaluate the network’s security, or lack of, responses.

Network Penetration Test

Similar to vulnerability assessments, a network penetration test, also known as a pen test, aims to identify vulnerabilities in a network.

However, unlike a vulnerability assessment, a penetration test is an exact simulation of a potential attack to identify vulnerabilities that are harder to find in a network.

What Are The Benefits Of Performing A Network Penetration Test?

There are numerous benefits to performing network penetration tests on your systems including:

  • Understanding the network baseline
  • Testing your security posture and controls
  • Preventing network and data breaches
  • Ensuring network and system security

Acting as an in-depth test of the network, the network penetration test will allow businesses to better understand their network baseline, to test their network and system security controls, prevent attacks and breaches, and ensure network security in the future.

A network penetration test is typically performed when a business has a mature security posture, or they believe they have strong security measures in place.

Understand The Network Baseline

Most of the time, the network’s baseline is identified through the use of scanning tools like port scanners, network scanners, and vulnerability scanners.

Understanding a network’s baseline allows the business owner to understand what security controls are working, identify existing vulnerabilities, and provide them additional information about their network.

Test Your Security Posture And Controls

Unlike a vulnerability assessment, a network penetration test will put your security controls to the ultimate test. A network penetration test’s goal is to breach your network and exploit those vulnerabilities to understand the areas that need improvement.

Prevent Network And Data Breaches

When a successful penetration test is performed, the results assist a business owner in designing or adjusting their risk analysis and mitigation strategies.

This helps the business prevent future data breaches because the network penetration test simulates a real-world attacker attempting to break into your systems.

Ensure Network And System Security

A network penetration test helps to ensure system security in a variety of ways.

For example, a business may have a mature security strategy with strong external defenses but its internal defenses, such as a host-based Intrusion Prevention System (IDS) that prevents attacks from trusted hosts on the network, have been neglected.

Now, we have an idea about what a network penetration test is and the benefits that it has for businesses – let’s go through the process of performing a successful network penetration test.

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What Are The Steps In The Network Penetration Testing Process?

Network penetration testing and vulnerability assessments are often used interchangeably.

However, there are some notable differences, most security practitioners view network penetration testing as a step that follows your vulnerability assessment.

Particularly, after the vulnerabilities identified in the vulnerability assessment have been remedied and the business owner would like to further test the security of their network.

To perform a successful penetration test, 4 steps must be completed:

Step 1: Information Gathering And Client Expectations

When you are discussing the goals of the network penetration test, there are a few important things to consider.

Penetration tests fall into three main categories:

  1. Black box testing
  2. Gray box testing
  3. White box testing

Black Box Testing

A network penetration test that is performed from the position of an average hacker, with minimal internal knowledge of the system or the network, is known as black box testing.

black box penetration testing

This type of test is typically the quickest as it employs tools to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in the outward-facing network.

It is important to note that if the perimeter cannot be breached in this type of penetration test, any internal vulnerabilities will remain undiscovered.

Gray Box Testing

A network penetration test that is performed from the position of a user, that has access to the system, potentially including elevated privileges, is known as gray box testing.

grey box penetration testing

This type of test aims to provide a more focused assessment of the network’s security, with insights into the external and internal vulnerabilities.

White Box Testing

A network penetration test that is performed from the position of an IT or IS user, that has access to the source code and architecture documentation, is known as white box testing.

white box penetration testing

This type of penetration test typically takes the longest, with the most challenging aspects being the large amounts of data that must be scrutinized to identify vulnerabilities.

It is important to know the types of network penetration tests that can be performed, whether you are a penetration tester or a business owner because they all provide specific benefits to the businesses.

Understanding Client Expectations

On top of deciding on the type of penetration test for your network, you must also discuss and set a date and time for the penetration test to occur, whether the test will be performed on a production or staging/testing environment, and if the client wishes for vulnerabilities to be exploited or simply identified and reported on.

It may seem inconsequential, however, if there are security measures currently in place on a network, it could shut down mission-critical systems on a network.

Finally, a network penetration test could be performed in a “live” setting, which would be during normal business operation hours, or performed after normal operating hours, which may occur during the night or over the weekend, depending on the business’s schedule.

At this stage, you should have documentation that records the information that will be used during the penetration test.

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Step 2: Reconnaissance And Discovery

Now, it is time for you to put your penetration tester hat on.

After you have discussed the goal of the network penetration test, including the information that will be used during the test and the time and date in which it will occur, the reconnaissance and discovery step begins.

Reconnaissance

During your reconnaissance, you will begin by employing port and network scanners on the network and systems to get a view of the network, the devices on the network, and existing vulnerabilities.

Your goal will be to see where the vulnerabilities are located in order to begin your exploitation of those vulnerabilities.

Social engineering, the use of deception to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential or personal information that may be used for fraudulent purposes, could be used as a tactic to identify vulnerabilities in the network that will allow you to gain access more easily.

Discovery

Discovery is when you find the information that you were seeking during reconnaissance.

By aggregating the information found a path can be identified to breach the network.

Now, let’s put this step into action.

During a gray box penetration test on a client’s network, tools like a port scanner, a tool that identifies open ports on a system, and a vulnerability scanner, a tool that identifies vulnerabilities on a system, are used to begin to identify ways to gain access to the network.

External VS Internal Network Penetration Tests

Step 3: Performing The Network Penetration Test

During step 3, the pen tester will perform the network penetration test based on the vulnerabilities that you identified in step 2.

This step often uses tools that include exploit scripts or custom scripts you may code yourself.

In many cases, the pen tester will choose the vulnerability they deem the easiest or most critical to exploit and begin the process of exploiting it.

However, this approach is not foolproof, requiring multiple vulnerabilities to be tested to successfully gain access to the network.

This information is important when relaying the results to the client as it will be beneficial for them to know the strong and weak points in their network security.

Take a look at the example below on how a successful penetration test could be performed.

Technical Approach

During reconnaissance and discovery, a pen tester runs a port scanner and vulnerability scanner tools on the network.

You saw that there was a client system that has an open port on Port 80, which is unusual for that system as it typically doesn’t need to connect to the internet, which is on Port 80.

You deduce that this system may not have the proper defenses for an attack that originates from Port 80.

You run an SQL Injection or Buffer Overflow attack to attempt to gain access to that system.

You then use the pivot method, using the compromised system to attack other systems on the network, and a Brute Force attack, as you believe that the internal security defenses are not prepared for an attack from a trusted host on the network.

Why Are Social Engineering Attacks On The Rise

Human Approach

During your reconnaissance and discovery, your scanning tools revealed that there no technical vulnerabilities existing in the systems.

However, you noticed that social engineering and the use of phishing attacks may be the best approach in this penetration test as you easily identified key employees and their contact information in the company through the social media search.

You then craft a phishing email that looks like a company email from Human Resources, asking them to download the file and fill out for HR purposes, and embed Key Logger or Rootkit malware in the attachment.

You then send it to the key employees in the Accounting Department that you identified on social media and wait for them to take the bait.

Once you are notified that an Accounting employee downloaded the malware, you are able to breach the network and gather sensitive financial information and possibly escalate account privileges to gain administrator-level access.

When you have successfully gained access to the sensitive data or critical systems that you were targeting, you have successfully breached the network.

If you are unable to gain unauthorized access to the target systems, your network penetration test is not necessarily unsuccessful.

Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of a network is just as important to the client, and if this were the case, you could recommend a more in-depth test, like a white box test, in the future.

It is important to remember that to perform a complete network penetration test for a client, you will need to provide them the results and recommendations from your test.

Vulnerability remediation best practices

Step 4: Reporting, Recommendations, And Remediation

Following a penetration test, a report is written specific to the type of network penetration test performed for the client, that details the process, the vulnerabilities and evidence collected, and recommendations for remediation.

It is vital to a data owner to understand the risk to their business that the vulnerabilities pose, and it is the job of the pen tester to provide them with a risk analysis that assists them in making the appropriate decision.

Remediation may include implementing patches and updates.

However, it can also include the implementation of specific policies like Employee Use policies and IT security policies if internal vulnerabilities.

Remember, a successful network penetration test is not just one in which a successful breach occurs.

If the tester is unable to breach the network, then it validates that the existing security posture of the organization is sufficient in deterring, detecting, or preventing attacks.

Conclusion

Network penetration testing is a crucial part to a business’s security plan.

In this article, you learned how to perform a successful penetration test and provide the results to your client.

Network penetration tests are important to enhance a business’s cyber security posture and it is your job to identify their vulnerabilities before the real attackers do.

Article by

Picture of Jason Firch, MBA
Jason Firch, MBA
Jason is a proven marketing leader, veteran IT operations manager, and cybersecurity expert with over a decade of experience. He is the founder and President of PurpleSec.

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