The current corporations are dependent on interdependent digital networks to store information, facilitate remote work, and run daily affairs. Nevertheless, all these interrelated environments introduce additional vulnerabilities that a hacker could utilize. Organizations will have to invest in internal network penetration testing and cloud penetration testing to protect data and ensure compliance. The two processes enable a profound knowledge of internal and cloud-based vulnerabilities of an organization prior to their exploitation by hackers.
Knowing the Internal Network Penetration Testing.
Internal network penetration testing is aimed at mimicking an internal company network attack. This may be an unhappy employee, a compromised machine, or a phisher or malware hacker has already breached in.
In the assessment, ethical hackers will strive to gain a lateral movement on the network, escalate privileges and gain access to sensitive files.
This helps reveal:
• Weak password policies and authentication loopholes
• Weak interdepartmental or inter server segmentation
• Systems that are not patched and are old-fashioned
• Intrusion or lack of monitoring
• Poorly set up internal firewalls or access controls
Internal testing makes the company more resilient to insider attacks and vulnerable endpoints by exposing their vulnerabilities.
The Value of Cloud Penetration Testing
The demand of cloud penetration testing has increased as organizations move to AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. The simplicity of virtual machines, storage buckets, APIs, and containerized services cannot be tested in traditional network testing.
Cloud penetration testing is an assessment of cloud security, the access control, and integration points.
The vulnerabilities are common and include:
• Unsecured storage containers (e.g. open S3 buckets)
• Insecure APIs or endpoints
• Roles and policies of cloud IAM that are over-permissive.
• Exposed virtual machines
• Weak encryption practices
Such misconfigurations may readily reveal sensitive information or enable the attackers to have access to further into your environment.
How Both Tests Work Together
The internal network and cloud penetration testing work together to form one defensive policy. As an example, a black hat that has gained internal access may use misconfigured cloud credentials to access hosted databases or shared environments. However, on the other hand, an attacker using an API of the cloud may use the access to break into your internal systems.
Checking of the two environments will make sure that there is no weak point that will be overlooked in the provision of a holistic security approach within the hybrid infrastructures.
Key Benefits for Businesses
1. All Visibility: Know your full attack surface, both in your on-premises and virtual server systems.
2. Compliance with Regulations: Deliver ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR security details.
3. Operational Continuity: This is an attempt to avoid business disruption that ransomware or loss of data may cause.
4. Customer Confidence: Build a stronger reputation as a safe and trustworthy brand.
5.Less Exposure to Risk: Find vulnerabilities and block them before they can be exploited by malicious parties.
Aardwolf Security’s Expertise
At Aardwolf security, we do both internal network and cloud penetration tests. Our ethical hackers are certified and they are made to imitate advanced attacks with the help of both manual and automated tools, to expose the most hidden vulnerabilities. Each interaction will involve detailed reportage on risk ratings, evidence of concept results, and on-the-job remediation recommendations.
The methodology of Aardwolf is compliant with such international standards as OWASP, NIST and CREST. This guarantees the clients with industry-grading testing whose results are accurate and verifiable.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity is not merely about this ability to avoid attacks but rather knowing your weak points before they know them. Organizations that integrate internal network penetration testing with cloud penetration testing are able to have the full picture of their digital resilience. In the case of Aardwolf Security, this partner is a reliable and trusted partner that helps to secure your most valuable assets and make sure that the system of internal systems and the cloud are reliable and compliant, and ready to attack.