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Posted by: Hasan Sameer
September 9, 2022
Representatives of most organizations show their concerns about the increasing number of cyber-attacks. Moreover, the concern is that the attacks are getting more sophisticated than ever. This is all because the attackers are exploiting emerging technologies to initiate malicious activities. These activities are quite hard to detect and even harder to mitigate. Penetration testing is the core cybersecurity process to eliminate vulnerabilities from your IT systems and make them secure. Hence, you need to empower it with the same technologies to cope with the evolving attack vectors.
of respondents conduct penetration testing on their systems with the prime purpose of meeting compliance requirements.
of organizations use pen testing processes for managing vulnerabilities within their IT infrastructure.
of businesses are using free and commercial pen testing tools in 2022.
is the ratio of phishing and password quality threats reported through penetration testing.
Penetration testing is an integral part of the endeavor to safeguard your IT systems and network from rising cyber threats. We have already established that the emerging technology has an enormous impact on the pen testing trends in 2022. Let us see how…
Penetration testing gives a detailed report to businesses about the major threats it is susceptible to. The prevailing concerns in recent years are phishing (80%), ransomware (68%), and misconfigurations (57%). All this gives a direct projection of what kind of malicious activities might haunt your security posture. Increasing threats related to phishing and password quality suggest that end user vulnerabilities for organizations are on the roll.
With API Penetration Testing a company can fairly reduce the risk of misconfigurations and resulting cyber-attacks. Similarly, with social engineering penetration testing, they can easily flag the end users and the vulnerable employees that pose a security risk.
The year 2022 has seen a dramatic increase in the number of ransomware attacks. Reports published by premier cyber security institutions tell us that the average ransom demand of the attackers to release control of the data is around $220,298. Most organizations take a substantial amount of time to recover from such a heavy loss. Additionally, most of these attacks are primarily initiated using phishing emails. The average cost of recovering data and removing the malware stands around $1.85 million for organizations globally.
Hence, it is obvious for business entities to orient their pen testing processes to discover vulnerabilities that might lead to the success of ransomware attacks.
Already a lot of businesses and individuals as well have started using multi-factor authentication instead of old-school password protection. Passwords are ridiculously susceptible to breaches. Moreover, it is the practices of password management that are riskier. People often use the same password for various accounts online and rarely change them. Therefore, if one account is compromised, or somehow the password is leaked, all the accounts having the same password is potentially under attack.
To counter this, organizations are gradually adopting multi-factor authentication. This adds a much-needed layer of protection to the mission-critical assets. Also, it eliminates the risks induced by poor password hygiene.
Crypto is crawly slowly towards the mainstream, and there are no signs of stopping. Blockchain was primarily the foundation for Bitcoin and the security mechanism for it as well. However, now security experts are seeing its potential to extend its security functionalities to the mainstream IT domain. Businesses can use crypto and blockchain technology to protect their assets and data. The increased security takes the load off the penetration testing.
A lot of organizations have adopted AI-driven technologies to lower the workload of their human resources. This helps to cut staffing costs as well as increases productivity. However, the other side of AI is that it is still a new thing for most of us. Detecting a problem or a compromise is a significantly tough task. Although AI can improve your cyber security posture, cybercriminals can leverage it as well. So, you need to get a hold of it to make it work only in your favor.
