Even if a development team adheres to the strictest standards for secure coding and keeps dependencies up-to current, they could still create software that is insecure. This is because Real attacks aren’t always based on a set of guidelines. An attacker could blend a weak authorization and an exposed API or misuse a procedure for resetting passwords, or learn that data from one tenant is used by a different.
Professional penetration testing Brisbane businesses use for security assurance looks at systems from that adversarial perspective. Instead of asking whether there are security controls experienced testers will ask whether these controls can be bypassed.
This difference is important in Australian businesses that handle sensitive information like customer information as well as financial records, health records, or any other assets.
The automated scanning is only part of the story.
Vulnerability scanners are useful. They can identify obsolete code or headers that are insecure (CVEs), known CVEs, and even obvious configuration errors. They are not able to comprehend how an application should behave.
Imagine a customer portal who want to access invoices from another company and alter their account numbers. A scanner isn’t likely to detect something unusual when the server is able to provide perfectly valid results. A human tester will recognize the authorization failure instantly.
Tests for quality web penetration combine automated testing with manual examination. Testers are looking for problems in session authentication, sessions, API behavior and configuration and access control such as injection risk, API behavior.
SaaS environments have their own security questions
Multi-tenant cloud applications require special care in testing, since one mistake could result in a massive impact on multiple users at the same time.
Saas penetration tests should cover tenant isolation and privileged features. It should also cover API authorization, change of role, account recovery, data leakage and integrations to external services. The tester has to not only be able to determine if a feature is working and if it could be altered to a degree that the team behind the development did not intend.
If a user has been assigned an administrative role that does not include administrative capabilities and features, they might not be able to notice them in the interface. It does not always mean they can’t call it directly. It is necessary to test the API in order for this to be done, instead of simply reviewing the display.
Modern web applications have a greater attack surface
Applications today integrate JavaScript front-ends with APIs, cloud services and APIs. They also include integrations from third party providers. Any component, or the trust relationship between them, can have weaknesses.
A rigorous penetration test for web apps follows these connections. Testing could include looking at how tokens are generated and whether endpoints with sensitive security enforce the authentication process consistently, or the way that data managed by the user is transferred between different services.
Siege Cyber specializes in this type of testing of applications and works with the latest frameworks, APIs, cloud-hosted systems and intricate application architectures instead of treating every website as a set of URLs to be scanned.
The report will help developers in resolving the issue
Security vulnerabilities are only half of the challenge. The most useful security testing is when the engineers can reproduce and understand the problem, and then take steps to mitigate the risks.
Siege Cyber’s report contains data on evidence, reproducible steps assessment of risk, assessment of the impact and practical solutions. Technical teams get the information necessary to correct the issue while stakeholders from the business receive an executive-level description of the risk. Instead of waiting until the final report, critical findings can be communicated to the business stakeholder during the engagement.
The retesting of the system after remediation provides an additional level of security to ensure that the original problem has been resolved without creating a brand new system.
Penetration testing can be a useful tool for organizations that are looking to test their systems, show the compliance of their systems or gain more assurance prior to an important release. Policies and automated tools don’t offer this, but it allows them a controlled way to determine how a skilled hacker might approach the software. Finding that answer before an actual adversary does is what makes the exercise important.