Penetration Testing Services

This is very common question. A penetration test and a red team exercise are both used to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in an organization’s security infrastructure. However, they differ in scope, objectives, and methodology. The good news is that we also do Red Teaming. Read about these services.

Penetration Testing: A penetration test (also known as a “pen test”) is a simulated attack on an organization’s network or system to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by real attackers. The primary goal of a penetration test is to assess the effectiveness of the organization’s security controls and to identify weaknesses that need to be addressed. Penetration testing typically involves a team of security professionals using a combination of automated tools and manual techniques to identify and exploit vulnerabilities.

Red Team Exercise: A red team exercise is a more comprehensive and complex form of security testing, designed to simulate a realistic attack on an organization. The objective of a red team exercise is to evaluate the effectiveness of an organization’s security posture and incident response capabilities by testing the organization’s detection and response capabilities. The red team is typically given broad scope to simulate a realistic attack, which could include tactics such as social engineering, physical security breaches, and network and system exploitation.

In summary, while a penetration test focuses on identifying and exploiting specific vulnerabilities in an organization’s security infrastructure, a red team exercise is a more comprehensive and realistic simulation of an actual attack, with a broader scope and the objective of testing the organization’s overall security posture and incident response capabilities.

Red Team: They play as a real time attacker & try to inject the virus to break the code. The resources involved in this are bound by strict non-disclosure and employment agreements, in addition to clearing some level of background screening. Red Team exercises usually exceed injecting virus, and comprises of anything that is hypothetically doable to gain access to a organization, some cases it might be a virus, some cases it even might be a lock picking, or simply break open the gates.

Blue Team: They are experts in protecting the systems from virus (or) breaching the code. They continually try to harden security around the company’s data systems and networks – even when no testing is leading along. They also develop protection for the vulnerabilities exposed by the Red Team.

Purple Team: It’s the same team that carry out both Red Team and Blue Team activities.

All software can have vulnerabilities. When those vulnerabilities are not published or known by the software owners/vendors, they are called zero-day vulnerabilities. When hackers take advantage of a zero-day vulnerability to exploit, it’s called zero-day exploit.

It’s advisable to perform the test on production systems. The time of the test can be carefully chosen to ensure the least number of users are affected (Friday evenings, or Saturday early mornings, etc). For organizations that have a robust DevOps implementation, Pen testing can also be done on pre-production environments. We take a consultative approach with you to determine what we should test, how we should test and when we should test.

It completely depends on the Cybersecurity service provider you choose. With a provider like WATI where all consultants are certified and have years of experience, you will not experience any loss or damage. Many clients tend to do testing in a pre-prod environment for critical assets that are included in the scope.

Cloud services, by themselves, do not guarantee top level security, unless the environments are meticulously architected for high security. If you are using cloud and SaaS services, its best for you to conduct vulnerability assessment. When a cloud server is compromised, it most likely compromises far higher number of users and entities, hence the audit is far more important.

We will work with a model that suits your needs best. We give priority to the clients’ inputs on their preference, constraints, environment and the priorities. We can offer T&M rates per-hour, or fixed-price quotes for VAPT services per application, or per IP for Network. Repeat scan within 12-month periods will see a drastic reduction in price for subsequent scans. We also offer managed services on continuous basis for clients that need dedicated team of pen testers with various skills, for a fixed monthly fee for the length of the engagement.