Penetration Testing

Challenging Times – Security in the Enterprise

Growing threats, increases in attack sophistication, evolving complexity of systems, continuous pressure to protect data, increased liability from security incidents and lack of due care. These are just a few of the pressures facing organizations today. Are your defenses working? How do you know?

Penetration Testing
Building on the valuable information gained from vulnerability assessment exercises, the goal of penetration testing is to determine if the protective controls of a given IT system can be bypassed by actively exploiting identified weaknesses. Penetration Testing provides evidence (sometimes to an unbelieving audience) that vulnerabilities indeed are exploitable. It brings a dose of reality and intense focus to the vulnerability assessment.

During penetration testing, attempts are made to circumvent security controls by devising penetration profiles against the most likely attack vectors based on the results of the vulnerability data correlation and analysis process. Leveraging these profiles, A2Z Computer Services security engineers drill down into specific vulnerabilities and combine vulnerabilities to exploit system weaknesses. A2Z Computer Services security engineers perform the research necessary to develop exploits specific to the highest level vulnerabilities discovered, including manual exploitation of well-known issues (such as weak or default passwords, cross-site scripting, SQL injection, etc.). Sword & Shield security engineers attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in a customer’s system or network to gain access sufficient to accomplish the customer defined objectives for testing. This can range from gaining “root” or “administrator” privileges on critical servers to gaining accessing to specific target data files (or databases).