Putting Your Cybersecurity Practice Through its Paces

For many organizations, conducting penetration tests on their systems is looked on strictly as a means of complying with industry regulations. Others consider pen tests an expensive exercise that provides little value because they don’t perceive themselves as likely targets of cyberattacks or they simply don’t see the need for somebody else to evaluate their cybersecurity practice because they already know their systems inside out.

Unfortunately, attacks can happen to any organization, especially if critical infrastructure is involved. As our digital workplaces grow increasingly interconnected, small oversights in users’ everyday behavior can lead to the exposure of sensitive data, and while you may have a decent grasp on your organization’s security risks from earlier reports on your environment, those insights do little good if they lack prioritization and solid remediation guidance. As for Penetration Testing being too expensive, those cost pale in comparison to the $404,000 average cost of a ransomware attack in Canada in 2020[1].

While there are more service providers than ever to provide Penetration Testing, the level of analysis and the value of the final deliverables varies widely. Low-cost providers can run a quick set of scans on your network in a day, but to justify the lower cost, they  leave the prioritization and remediation guidance to the software, leaving the plan to address the identified vulnerabilities up to you. This type of report is likely to gather dust on a shelf since it doesn’t include a well thought-out plan for what to do next. Specifically, an effective final report should provide you, the client, with a set of recommendations prioritized according to your business drivers and include practical remediation guidance to understand and address vulnerabilities as efficiently as possible. In our experience, clients have the most success improving their security posture when they receive this kind of more detailed reporting that includes solid, easy-to-understand recommendations that they can actually implement.

Key benefits of Penetration Testing

• Demonstrating business risks and vulnerabilities before they can be exploited
• Helping an organization accelerate remediation with an actionable roadmap and prioritized recommendations
• Opportunity to collaborate with implementation experts

At iON, our veteran Penetration Testing team has completed over 300 tests and possesses a wide range of experience across all security technologies to help implement the necessary changes to fix the vulnerabilities identified in any environment.

For more information on iON’s Penetration Testing service, or to schedule a test, contact us.