Penetration Testing: A Review

Abstract

Network Security is becoming more and more crucial as the volume of data being exchanged on the Internet increases. When people use Internet, they have certain expectations. They expect confidentiality, data integrity and authentication (CIA Standards). In 1980’s most organizations had only a physical boundary that needed protection of the assets. Today, due to the changes in the way resources are made available Organizations are forced to verify that their assets are protected from both the external and internal threats that our working environment has enabled. Due to the increasing dependency of our society on networked information system the overall security of these systems should be measured and improved. The most accurate method to evaluate organization’s information security stance is to observe how it stands up against an attack. Network administrators have often tried their best by improving their network security, however with rapid surface of new exploits; the best way of ensuring that the system is secure is to attempt penetration testing. This would be the most effective way to find exploits and to proof whether a system is vulnerable. Penetration test ing often allows the security analyst to find new vulnerabilities.