A development team could follow the security guidelines for coding, keep their dependencies current, and yet create a vulnerability that nobody notices. The reason is straightforward: the real attackers don’t always follow a set of guidelines. An attacker can combine a weak authorization with an exposed API, misuse a procedure for resetting passwords, or discover that data from one tenant is access by a different.
Security assurance Brisbane companies use penetration testing, which examines systems from an adversarial angle. Instead of asking if there’s security measures experienced testers will question whether those controls are able to be manipulated.
For Australian companies that handle customer information, financial data, healthcare records, or any other sensitive assets, that difference is crucial.
Scanning through automated means only tells a part of the truth
Vulnerability scanners are extremely useful. They can detect outdated software, unsecure headers, and CVEs, as well as obvious configuration issues. They are not able to know how an application must behave.
Imagine a customer portal where they can retrieve the invoices from another company and alter their account numbers. A scanner might not find anything suspicious if the server provides perfectly valid responses. Human testers can detect the authorization failure immediately.
Automated web penetration testing with manual analysis is the secret to a high-quality test. Testers look at authentication, sessions, access controls and injection risk, API behavior, weak configurations and business processes, while looking for combinations of flaws that could have a significant impact.
SaaS environments introduce security concerns of their own
Cloud applications that are multi-tenant need extra attention when testing, as a single error can have a large impact on multiple users at the same time.
Effective Saas penetration testing should examine tenant isolation, privileged functions, API authorization, role changes, account recovery, data exposure, and integrations with external services. The tester should be able to discern not just if a feature works, but whether it is possible to manipulate it in a manner that the development team would never have intended.
A user in a fundamental task, such as may not be able to see administrative functions in the interface. This does not necessarily mean that they cannot call it directly. It is essential to verify the API rather than just observing what appears.
Modern web applications offer more attack surfaces
Today’s applications combine JavaScript front end, APIs and cloud services. They also contain integrations with third party providers. Each component, and the relationship of trust between them, could be weaknesses.
A comprehensive penetration test of web apps follows these connections. Testers may examine the process of issuance of tokens and whether endpoints that are sensitive ensure authorization in a consistent manner, how user-controlled data moves between different services, and if it is possible for a flaw with a low risk to be paired with another vulnerability to create a major security risk.
Siege Cyber specializes in this type of testing of applications and works with modern frameworks including APIs, cloud-hosted system as well as complex architectures for applications instead of viewing every website as a set of URLs for scanning.
This report is a valuable tool for developers to identify the solution.
Security vulnerabilities are only half of the challenge. The most effective security testing is when the engineers can reproduce and comprehend the issue, as well as remediate the threat.
Siege Cyber’s annual reports provide specific information about evidence of reproducible steps, risk assessments, analysis of impact and remediation. Technical teams get the information needed to resolve the issue, while business stakeholders get an executive level description of the threat. Rather than waiting until the report’s final version, critical findings can be escalated to business stakeholders at the time of the course of engagement.
The retesting of the system following remediation offers an additional level of security in that it proves the original problem has been resolved without creating a brand new one.
For companies that require independent validation, evidence of compliance or more confidence prior to a major release testing, penetration testing offers something that software and policies are not able to provide give you: a safe opportunity to see how skilled attackers could actually approach the system. Finding that answer before a real adversary does is what makes this exercise important.