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Accessing websites through mobile phones is prone to more frequent attacks and hence compromising data.
If you look at the current market demand, there has been a sharp increase in mobile usage, which is becoming a major potential for attacks.
Helps in finding loopholes that can lead to the theft of sensitive data. Let users find the most vulnerable route through which an attack can be made. Help in testing the components exposed publicly like firewalls, routers, and DNS. Helps in checking the effectiveness of the overall security policies. Pentest Helps in identifying unknown vulnerabilities. Importance and the need for Web App Pen Testing: If you are clear on the objective, you can very well define if you need to do a vulnerability scan or pen-testing. Though both methods have their importance, it will depend on what really is expected as part of the testing.Īs testers, it is imperative to be clear on the purpose of the testing before we jump into testing. Hence, Vulnerability Scanning is a detective control method that suggests ways to improve security programs and ensure known weaknesses do not resurface, whereas a pen test is a preventive control method that gives an overall view of the system’s existing security layer. Pen Tests mainly simulate real-time systems and help the user find out if the system can be accessed by unauthorized users, if yes then what damage can be caused and to which data etc. It basically finds out if security patches are installed, whether the systems are properly configured to make attacks difficult. Vulnerability Scanning lets the user find out the known weaknesses in the application and defines methods to fix and improve the overall security of the application.
So, what is Vulnerability? Vulnerability is a terminology used to identify flaws in the system which can expose the system to security threats. When I initially started working as a security tester, I used to get confused very often with the word Vulnerability, and I am sure many of you, my readers, would fall in the same boat.įor the benefit of all my readers, I will first clarify the difference between vulnerability and pen-testing. When we talk about security, the most common word we hear is vulnerability.
#3) Post Execution Phase (After Testing):. #2) Attacks/Execution Phase (During Testing):.