If you’re reading about Vulnerability Assessment and Pentesting certificates, you’re definitely looking to conduct a vulnerability assessment and penetration testing (VAPT) procedure for your business. While the reasons for a VAPT procedure may be varied (should definitely focus on increased security), compliance is an important one. Various industries dictate different standards that firms should meet to be formally accredited and be trusted by customers. This is where VAPT certification comes in handy, both for increasing customer trust and ensuring compliance.
VAPT certification includes a technical process to test for security risks and vulnerabilities within the system or network. The process ends with possible remediation measures after a comprehensive poking to strengthen the overall IT infrastructure of the organization.
A good VAPT process shouldn’t miss any loophole that could compromise the business and its customers. The vulnerability assessment takes note of the weaknesses of the system, applications, and the network, which is then analyzed during the penetration testing. If you are looking for app or website security testing in India, Astra is one of the well known security company that can help you with it.
What are the benefits of a VAPT certificate?
We could definitely go into the details of the VAPT process and its multiple testing procedures, but let’s first convince you about the advantages.
- Proof of the overall security standards maintained – and tested – in the organization
- Helps in finding out and resolving security issues on a periodic basis, subsequently defining the security strategy followed
- Provides a detailed picture of short-term and long-term threats with various risk levels associated for priority dealing
- Vulnerabilities are everywhere – if not in your own systems, then in third-party software, systems, or other components. Be it small coding flaws or lack of proper barriers for the employee login software, VAPT process makes sure to resolve them all.
- Can resolve any low-risk or high-risk issues with simple, periodic assessments. VAPT certificates are the proof of detailed security procedures conducted to visualize all possible threats.
- Existing and prospective customers will maintain loyalty and remain trusting of the company services
- Helps maintain compliance – HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR, etc.
- Finally, the most important reason is the loss of your company’s reputation in case of a data leak and the added hit to your revenues.
There’s a common misconception that all IT or software development companies need to invest in regular VAPT processes. Most regulations that demand VAPT are not necessarily involved in such fields, but due to their need to access sensitive customer data. Data protection is one of the promises of periodic VAPT, with the help of a defined IT infrastructure. You can check more about IT security audits here.
Methodology of VAPT Certification
VAPT processes usually have a list of strategies, steps, and attack methods that every company needs to decide upon. Let’s get to the actual part of gaining certification and the procedures involved.
- Goals and Scope of Testing
The most important part of the VAPT process is deciding the company’s objectives from the testing, and the scope or area that needs to be evaluated. Lack of defined goals and scope leads to an aimless testing process and wastage of time and resources.
Under scope, you’ll also need to define the kind of testing method required:
- Black Box Testing – The hacker steps into the system completely unaware of its details, the internal networks, and the kind of servers present. This is the closest possibility to a real-time attack, but is the most extensive testing method since vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited during the attack itself.
- Grey Box Testing – The hacker is partially informed on the kind of system being breached and done through external or internal networks.
- White Box Testing – Hacker steps in with complete knowledge of the system, similar to insider attacks in real life. This kind of testing specifically happens from the internal network.
- Reconnaissance
This is the stage of gathering information about the system, all its components, networks, devices, and applications. Details regarding the different IP addresses used for access, versions of operating systems, the number of users, etc are also noted.
This helps in the stage of identifying vulnerabilities so that the testing team can hack them to understand their impact. They also serve as a starting point to the testing process, where the testing plan is further designed so that it’s unique to the system.
- Attacking Process
Using the information and testing strategies convened so far, the third-party (or internal) testing team will simulate an attack. They will work with the identified vulnerabilities initially, and will delve deeper to find and manipulate further issues. For example, privilege escalation could be attempted to find the impact of misuse of access privileges. Skills, high levels of experience, quality assurances, and carefulness so as to not break the system are needed in this situation.
- Analyse Findings and Prepare Report
The report writing stage of the VAPT process is equally important as defining the scope. It must include all the details of the testing process, strategies, issues found and exploited, and remediation measures. Vulnerabilities should be assigned risk levels to prioritize solving them and steps suggested to increase overall security.
These are only a few steps building towards an extensive and detailed VAPT process. To find out if you need one and further details of the entire procedure & pricing, check out this detailed guide on VAPT pricing.
