The software development process includes debugging and testing to help detect and fix various errors. But not everyone understands the need for security testing of debugged software. There is an opinion that the debugging procedure already includes a list of measures to identify “gaps” in the code. Here is the improvement of the need to conduct tests for the vulnerability of code from external penetration.
What is Security Testing?
There are thousands of tools for security testing. They can be commercial and free, designed for professionals who need to evaluate network security. The difficulty lies in choosing the right tool for a particular case, which you can trust.
The network security assessment process has four main stages:
- data collection;
- binding;
- assessment;
The acquisition stage searches for network devices using real-time scanning with ICMP or TCP. In the binding and assessment stages, the specific machine on which the service or application is running is identified and potential vulnerabilities are assessed. During the penetration stage, one or more vulnerabilities are used for privileged access to the system.
Purpose of Security Testing
Nowadays digitalization is gaining momentum. The security of applications and information systems is one of the key areas. Since the main assets of companies and user data are quite often on the network, they must be properly protected. Potential vulnerabilities of applications that work with this data must be closed in time. Security testing is necessary for the timely detection of vulnerabilities. it helps to prevent their exploitation by potential attackers.
It is also important that a potential compromise of one of the applications can lead to the compromise of a nearby one along the chain. And if the first of them work only with “insignificant” data, then the second can be used to work, including with confidential ones. Accordingly, security is important in any project and any application. Cyber security testing services is an important component that controls protection.
Need for Security Testing
The activity of almost any enterprise is in one way or another related to the use of computer technology connected to the Internet. It helps to significantly simplify and speed up the performance of the required work. However, the World Wide Web poses a serious threat to the possibility of an attack from the outside to penetrate the electronic system. As a result, can be lost confidential data stored on servers or hard drives. There are following activities to eliminate the problem:
- trying to find out the password using external means;
- attack the system using specialized protection check utilities;
- try to suppress the program by analyzing its ability to continue working;
- deliberately enter erroneous data to gain access to the system during its recovery;
- analyze unencrypted data to find a key for penetration.
The results of testing of the debugged software make it possible to eliminate the detected threats. This leads to a significant improvement in the level of security of information within the system. From the enterprise using this software, the loss of control or loss of commercially important information threatens tangible financial losses.
Best Open Source Tools for Security Testing
For a high-quality test, you must initially select a reliable testing tool. Moreover, a huge number of them are presented today. It is worth paying attention to such source security testing tools as:
- NetSparker;
- ImmuniWeb;
- Vega;
- Wapiti;
- Google Nogotofail;
- Acunetix;
- W3af;
- SQLMap;
- ZED Attack Proxy (ZAP);
- BeEF(Browser Exploitation Framework).
The existing methods of program code hacking allow to penetrate the most advanced protection systems. The difference is only in the time that will be spent on this. The need to test the security of debugged software is due to a significant increase in the time spent on hacking a functioning system. If the effort expended exceeds the benefit from extracting information of interest to cybercriminals or gaining control over the system, then the degree of protection of the program is sufficient.
