Penetration testing involves evaluating a firm’s defense against hacking attempts by identifying vulnerabilities through a controlled ethical hacking environment. CEH Course provides detailed information on how penetration testing is implemented. For a successful procedure, it’s important that firms choose the right penetration testing firms that have experience, skill, and adaptability for customizing attack methods.
The penetration testing methodology typically involves the target system within the predefined scope of testing. Testers initiate a reconnaissance phase to gather as much information as possible about the system through discovery. Using this, attack methods are customized to meet the security goals of the firm.
8 Features of Successful Penetration Testing Firms
There are different services offered by various penetration testing companies such as network pentesting, application pentesting, and manual controlled pentesting. The good ones always go above and beyond with retesting after remediation and customized pentesting. Here are some of the parameters to judge a good penetration testing firm:
- Credentials, certifications, and industry testing experience
- Price and value offered through testing
- Scoping capabilities – application, network, IoT, internal or external penetration testing offered
- Retesting availability
- Manual penetration testing techniques vs. automated vulnerability reporting
- Timely responses, overall customer experience, and reviews
- Penetration testing engineering teams within the firm with proper knowledge of the procedure and the firm’s security goals
- Availability of support information, sample pentesting reports, and penetration scoping documents
When should the organization approach penetration testing firms?
When the firm wishes to go for penetration testing as a part of its security strategy, it’s usually preceded by the following events:
- Any upgrades, modifications, security patches, or changes to the firewall that are reflected in the infrastructure or the application
Any new locations within the system that needs to be pen tested to ensure that it reflects the company’s security goals - If there are changes in any policies, compliance structures, or regulations, penetration testing must be conducted to ensure that standards are met
- Addition of network infrastructure devices or applications
5 Penetration Testing Firms Offering the Best Services
The firm should have a good idea about its security goals before choosing the right service provider so that the procedure can yield optimal results. Based on the features mentioned above, let’s look at some of the top penetration testing companies:
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Secureworks Penetration Testing
This penetration testing firm assures a unique and customized approach to every testing procedure with the help of industry security experts, proprietary approaches, and high-level intelligence from the Secureworks Counter Threat Unit.
Some of their unique characteristics are:
- Penetration and Advanced Penetration tests designed through an attacker perspective by gaining unauthorized access to the company environment;
- Showcases proof-of-concept for targeted systems within the scope and backdoor opportunities from compromised hosts;
- Discussions with relevant stakeholders based on findings with a customized course of action for technical staff and the leadership
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Rapid7 Penetration Testing
The Rapid7 team targets an overall security assessment of the firm, its incident security responses, and the areas of improvement.
Some of their unique characteristics are:
- Shared visibility into testing techniques, associated analytics, and automation focused on security challenges;
- Comprehensive security platform;
- Assesses firm’s overall security posture
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Veracode Penetration Testing
Veracode combines both manual penetration techniques and automated scanning features for the complete penetration testing procedure.
Some of their unique characteristics are:
- Penetration testing focused on business logic issues and other complex vulnerabilities situated in web and mobile applications, desktop, backend, and IoT applications;
- Proven testing process for high customer satisfaction;
- Manual penetration testing provides detailed reports of findings and the attack simulations used through the Application Security Platform;
- All testing results are compared against the company security policy to ensure amicability;
- Consultants provide one-on-one sessions with developers for retesting after successful remediation and other discussions
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Redbot Security
This team’s claim to fame is its ability to customize a penetration testing scope based on any client size, project, or budget.
Some of their unique characteristics are:
- Specializes in ICS/SCADA, Wireless, Application and Internal/ External Penetration Testing;
- Penetration testing techniques reviewed and tested by a team of senior engineers with an expertise of over 20 years;
- Manages complete remediation after the exploitation phase, analyzes the results, and offers free retesting after remediation;
- Proprietary Open Source Intelligence Gathering (OSINT) with Dark-web search capabilities
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FireEye Penetration Testing
Targeted at advanced persistent threats (APT), FireEye cybersecurity products aims at reforming companies to form their own adaptive defence strategy.
Some of their unique characteristics are:
- State-of-the-art network security such as antivirus software, sandbox tools, and next-generation firewalls over traditional signature-based tools;
- Third-party penetration testing combined with remediation support
As a part of one’s security strategy, firms should choose the right penetration testing firms to carry their security goals forward. More often than not, firms conduct penetration testing as a part of compliance and regulation requirements. However, the procedure must be conducted in order to identify other vulnerabilities so that steps can be taken to strengthen the overall security of the system.
Lucy Adam