An external penetration test is a way to assess the risk of an outside attacker gaining access to your networks and systems. This type of testing is especially important for companies that have a public-facing website or an internal portal for employees to access corporate resources remotely over the internet.
In order to conduct an effective external penetration test, a company should hire a team of security experts who know how to penetrate a target network. These experts should be able to identify vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and other cybercriminals to gain access to confidential information.
The first step in an external penetration test is to collect information about the target network, its infrastructure, and its vulnerable software. This involves studying the network diagram, gathering information about the hosts on the network, and collecting any passwords or other sensitive data that may be available.
Once the external penetration testing has collected all this information, it’s time to perform a vulnerability assessment. The external penetration tester will perform a vulnerability assessment to determine which weaknesses are most serious and likely to be exploited by hackers. This will help the security team identify potential weaknesses and quantify their security risks if they are not patched immediately.
Another thing that an external penetration tester should do is investigate the output from scanning tools to remove false positives and run exploits to verify the extent of a weakness and its impact. This will reduce the chances of an attacker compromising your network and stealing sensitive information.
This phase also aims to discover the most sensitive parts of your network and find all possible paths that an attacker can take to get access to them. The external penetration tester should be able to provide you with an overview of how long it took them to do so and the specific vulnerabilities they exploited.
During this stage of the test, an external penetration tester will use tools such as Nessus, John the Ripper, and Maltego to scan your system for potential weaknesses that can be used to penetrate your network and steal confidential information. These tools are designed to mimic the actions of a real-world hacker and can detect security issues that an attacker would use to gain access to your network.
After the vulnerabilities have been identified, an external penetration tester will then exploit them to gain access to your systems. This is a very critical step because it allows the security team to evaluate the effectiveness of their defenses against an attack and take immediate action to fix them if necessary.
The external penetration tester should then write a comprehensive report detailing their findings and the ways that they can protect your network from future attacks. This report should be sent to you and your company’s IT staff.
An external penetration test should be a comprehensive evaluation of your entire network, including all services that you offer to customers or employees. This means it should include all of your computers, servers, and other computer hardware that is accessible to the Internet. It should also include any mobile devices and other wireless networks that your company uses to access the Internet.
