The Importance of Penetration Testing and What it takes to be a Penetration Tester

“What is penetration testing?” is a commonly asked question. Penetration testing is a complex process that involves testing applications for security vulnerabilities. Easier said than done, penetration testing has become a major part of ethical hacking. People with above ordinary hacking skills hoping to make a living out of them legally are applying for penetration tester positions across a host of different companies.

Understanding the Importance of Penetration Tests

• Big companies throughout the world rely on ethical hacking methods and penetration testing to give them results in terms of their security deficiencies. Is a company’s security policy in line with requirements? This question is best answered through conducting penetration tests.

• Penetration tests can be used to confront and catch hackers before they cause the damage. It has been seen that a lot of companies spend resources on damage control, whereas it would be better if they followed an old saying; “Prevention is better than cure.”

• Penetration testers use all their ethical hacking skills to see whether they can inflict damage to your system. In this way, their final reports can help future security investments in being more effective in dealing with threats. Developers can be improved with the help of these tests as well, as they would do away with writing code that is vulnerable to hacking attempts.

The Job of a Penetration Tester

To tell you the truth, a penetration tester is not really mandatory for every company. Nowadays, a host of automated tools have been developed for conducting penetration tests in a really short amount of time. These tools deliver results within a few days as well, but the main problem of these automated tests is the uncertainty regarding future attacks.

Personalized tests are always more recommended because of the better security they offer. While personalized penetration tests do not assure 100% success rate in terms of potential future attacks, but hiring quality penetration testers can definitely give your company a much needed advantage.

Quite simply, a penetration tester’s job requires him to use all his ethical hacking experience to use a variety of penetration tools to infiltrate his company’s security system. The easier the infiltration process is, the more security problems the company has to deal with.

The following points underline the key responsibilities of a penetration tester:

• Creating and designing a variety of penetration tests and tools.

• Conducting security assessments of various network devices, servers, and systems.

• Running penetration tests on a wide range of computer systems, networks, and web-based applications.

• Identifying hacking methods that may be used by attackers in potential future attacks.

• Assessing both standard and web applications for identifying vulnerabilities.

• Uncovering loopholes in security using social engineering.

• Documentation and research of security findings, and discussing them with IT and management teams.

• Incorporating business considerations such as cost of engagement and loss of earnings.

• Work on improving existing security services.

• Providing feedback on fixes for various security issues, along with verifying them as well.

Pre-Requisites and Scope of a Career in Penetration Testing

An aspiring penetration tester needs a few basic academic qualifications under his belt. An Information Technology Bachelor’s Degree is a fundamental requirement, and it is also great to familiarize with various operating systems such as Linux, OS X, and Windows. The aspirant must also be familiar with the latest developments in the world of hacking, and should have thorough knowledge regarding network security.

In terms of career growth, penetration testing is set to be an important part of information technology in the coming years. With the continuous evolution in technology, penetration testers would be required to showcase their ethical hacking techniques to bring benefits to a ton of companies around the world.

Salary wise things are not too bad either, with junior penetration testers earning somewhere between $85,000-90,000 and senior testers earning over $130,000 per annum. Such financial rewards have resulted in a lot of people signing up for ethical hacking trainingcourses in recent years, and the trend is set to continue.