What is Network Penetration Testing?

Network penetration testing, or pen testing, is a security assessment method for evaluating the network security infrastructure by simulating real-world cyberattacks. It involves simulating cyberattacks against systems to help identify any vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Network penetration tests use different hacking methods to find security holes in networks or apps. These tests use real ways and methods that a hacker could use to get into the system.

The penetration testing process, in general, is the practice of attempting to breach a computer system or network to discover security flaws. Testers use various methods to gain access to systems, including exploiting vulnerabilities, social engineering and brute force attacks

This network penetration testing guide will provide you with step-by-step procedures to effectively conduct penetration tests, assess the security of your network infrastructure, and implement robust countermeasures to mitigate potential threats.

Why Should Digital Businesses Consider Network Penetration Testing?

Attackers don’t wait, and your security shouldn’t either. Network penetration testing finds hidden weaknesses before they lead to expensive breaches. As per Data Breach Investigation Report, there has been 23% increase in breaches due to insecure network setups. 

The rules in the testing are changing at a fast pace. The UK NIS2 Directive, the EU Cybersecurity Act, and PCI DSS v4.0 are just a few examples of rules that are getting stricter. These rules compel businesses to do regular and rigorous penetration testing as part of their continuous compliance plan. 

Protects sensitive data

There is no denying the fact that digital businesses must guard themselves against data breaches. Penetration testing often functions like ethical hacks and simulates cyber-attacks as best as possible. A minor glitch can leak sensitive data, affecting customers’ trust, affecting brand value, and also violating industry regulations. Here, a helpful way to determine the level of intrusion is to identify levels of risk that the application is exposed to.

Ensures overall security

Be it the business model, sensitive data, or newly released apps, network pen testing for network ensures that no overlooked flaw compromises the business integrity. Security assessments and website security scans should be a part of any initiative that involves sensitive data. Some examples of such flaws include SQL injections, misconfigured firewalls, outdated software, virus and malware.

Meets compliance requirements

Certain security regulations insist on continuous automated network penetration testing, irrespective of the industry. New rules like NIS2 and changes to PCI DSS v4.0 mean that regular penetration testing is no longer optional. It’s required in many fields, such as finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. These tests let businesses show that they are doing their due diligence and avoid fines for not following the rules or problems with their firm. 

Continued maintenance

Network pen tests require multiple continuous runs to ensure long-term security. Penetration testers look over the security controls used for the business network, such as firewalls, layered security, encryption processes, etc.

Benefits offered by network penetration testing services to digital businesses:

Specifically, the following are ways pen testing helps understand and improve overall security

Understanding network benchmarks

• Testing security controls

• Evaluating security posture

• Identifying security flaws

• Assessing risk

• Addressing and fixing identified network security flaws

• Preventing network and data breaches

• Ensuring network and system security

Steps Involved in Network Pen Testing

In simplest terms, network pen testing simulates a real-life attack, providing critical information about potential weaknesses hackers could use as entry points to gain access to the network. Ethical hackers use a variety of methods and network penetration testing steps in attempt to compromise the network.

A typical network pen testing or penetration testing approach involves the following steps:

Planning

In the planning phase, ethical hackers discuss the scope and overall aim of the test with critical stakeholders. Testing methods and success metrics are defined in this initial discussion phase. After an introductory overview is decided upon, certified ethical hackers survey all components of the businesses’ network.

 Network Discovery & Vulnerability Scanning

In this phase, the penetration tester performs TCP and UDP port scanning to identify live hosts on the target network, open ports and services running on the ports. After that, testers perform vulnerability scanning on the discovered hosts and open ports to detect vulnerabilities.

Network Penetration Testing

After testing the network to understand its behaviour, perform automated scanning validation to manually verify the results from scanning in previous phase. Then, penetration testing is performed where testers try to exploit the network and applications hosted in the network by leveraging misconfigurations and software vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows, injection, brute force attacks, etc.

Analysis and Reporting

After completing testing activities, pen testers will analyse their results and create a report showing their findings. This report will provide actionable insight into vulnerabilities, actual exploitability and the chance for businesses to take necessary remediation action before a real hacker can exploit vulnerabilities in their system.

Types of Penetration Testing

A few different types of testing can impact the structure and deliverables of the network penetration testing methodology described above. Specifically, there are two main categories of network penetration testing:

External penetration testing

External penetration testing evaluates the vulnerabilities to analyse the possibility of being attacked by a remote intruder and exploiting the vulnerabilities and information being exposed to outsiders. As a result, the test shows whether the cybersecurity measures implemented by an organisation suffice to secure sensitive data and assesses its potential to safeguard against external attacks.

External penetration tests include:

• Configuration testing

• Deployment management testing

• Identity management testing

• Authentication testing

• Authorization testing

• Session management testing

• Business Logic Testing

• Client-Side Testing

• Testing for error handling

Internal penetration testing

An internal pen test uses a different way of dealing with the attacks and comes into the picture after an external penetration test is completed. Internal penetration testing aims at identifying what could be accomplished by an intruder who may break into the network and gain unauthorised access. Internal network penetration testing methodology reveals that should an attacker gain access equivalent to an insider, or if any malicious internal user tries to break the security, what impact could it have on the disclosure, misuse, alteration, or damage to the confidential information. Internal penetration tests include:

• Internal network scanning

• Port scanning

• System fingerprinting

• Firewall testing

• Password strength testing

• Third-party security

• configuration testing

Wireless Network Penetration Testing 

The goal of wireless network penetration testing is to find flaws in a company’s wireless infrastructure. These tests try to break into wireless networks by taking advantage of bad settings, weak encryption, and unauthorized access points. 

Wireless pen testing shows how hackers could use open or poorly secured Wi-Fi networks to steal data or get into systems without permission. This testing is very important in places where workers use mobile devices or work from home. Wireless penetration tests include:

• Wireless access point discovery
• Packet sniffing and decryption
• Cracking weak WPA2/WPA3 encryption
• Rogue access point detection
• MAC address spoofing
• Wireless client attacks
• Wireless network configuration review

Cloud Network Penetration Testing 

Cloud network penetration testing checks the security of cloud-based infrastructure, such as public, private, and hybrid environments. It finds problems that come up when permissions are set up wrong, APIs are not secure, or virtual machines are not safe. 

These tests try to mimic real-life attacks in which an attacker tries to take advantage of weaknesses in cloud-native services, storage permissions, and Identity and Access Management (IAM). It’s important for firms that are moving to the cloud or already work there. Cloud network penetration testing includes: 

• IAM misconfiguration testing
• S3 bucket and Blob storage access testing
• Container and Kubernetes security assessment
• Virtual machine vulnerability scanning
• API and function abuse testing
• Firewall and security group review
• Privilege escalation and lateral movement testing

IoT Network Penetration Testing 

IoT penetration testing is meant to find security holes in connected devices that work on a business network. If these devices are not patched, set up with default passwords, or running insecure firmware, they can sometimes be easy to break into. 

This kind of testing simulates how attackers would use these devices to get access to important systems or steal private information. IoT network penetration testing includes: 

• Firmware analysis and reverse engineering
• Default credentials and hardcoded password testing
• Open port and insecure service detection
• API security testing
• Communication protocol analysis (MQTT, CoAP)
• Physical interface exploitation (USB, UART)
• Data leakage and encryption testing

Modern Penetration Testing Methodologies

Penetration testing needs today must keep up with how fast your system changes and how smart attackers have become. Here is how modern testing has evolved with time: 

Continuous Penetration Testing 

Continuous testing connects to your CI/CD pipeline, so you don’t have to run tests once or twice a year. Every time you push code or alter the infrastructure, it gets scanned automatically. It means you’re finding weaknesses early, before they affect your consumers or go live. 

Automated and AI-Powered Scanning 

Manual testing is still important, but it doesn’t go quickly enough by itself. AI-powered tools can now replicate thousands of attack types at once, detecting high-risk vulnerabilities and getting rid of false positives. This makes triage go faster and helps your security team focus on what really important. 

Red Teaming 

Red teaming acts like an attack in the real world; sneaky, persistent, and unexpected. Its goal is to see how successfully your team can find and deal with real dangers. It’s not only about discovering holes but also about putting your whole defense plan to the test. 

Cloud and Container Testing 

Testing has to keep up with enterprises moving to cloud-native systems. Today, pen testing encompasses settings for Kubernetes, container registries, cloud IAM policies, and serverless functions, where mistakes are often missed and easily taken advantage of. 

Zero Trust Validation 

It’s not enough to just make rules for a Zero Trust model but you also must check them. Testing now checks that microsegmentation, access control enforcement, and identity verification function across users, devices, and workloads. 

Best Network Penetration Testing Tools

NMAP

Key Features

• Helps map a network by scanning ports, discovering operating systems and creating device inventory

• Easy to navigate

• Easy Wide range of networking features

Metasploit

Key Features

• Used by security professionals to detect systematic vulnerabilities

• Contains portions of fuzzing, anti-forensic and evasion network pen testing tools

• Currently includes nearly 1677 exploits

WireShark

Key Features

• Capture and analyse network traffic

• Inspect and decrypt protocols

• Capture live data from Ethernet, LAN, USB, etc.

•Export output to XML, PostScript, CSV, or plain text

Nessus

Key Features

• Allows efficient vulnerability assessment

• Accurate identification of vulnerabilities

• Integrates with the rest of the product portfolio

ZAP

Key Features

• Available for Windows, Linux and Mac

• Detects a variety of vulnerabilities within web applications

• Easy to navigate UI

• Supports many pen-testing activities

Indusface WAS

Key Features

• Pause and resume feature

• Enables manual penetration testing

• Checks for malware infection, the reputation of the links on the website and defacement and broken links

• Unlimited POC requests to provide evidence of identified vulnerabilities and remove false positives

Astra

Key Features

• 3000+ tests scanning for CVEs in OWASP top 10, SANS 25

• Testing for ISO 27001, HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR

• Integration with GitLab, GitHub, Slack and Jira

• Zero false positives ensured by manual pen-testers

• Scans progressive web apps and single-page apps

• Scan behind logged-in pages

• Intensive remediation support

Conclusion

Network penetration testing, or pen testing, is a crucial practice for digital businesses in the United Kingdom to ensure their cybersecurity. It is an effective way to view the application or network security from a hacker’s perspective. Once the security has reached a particular stage, pen testing is essential to a business’s security plan. Network penetration testing services provides visibility, confidence and increased security to the network. It improves the network’s security, identifies attack vectors and tests incident response procedures. Network pen testing requires specialised knowledge and skills in network security testing tools, so it’s essential to understand the requirements and have professional penetration testing experts perform effective testing to meet the desired security outcomes.

How can TestingXperts Help with Network Penetration Testing?

TestingXperts (Tx) is one of the five largest global pure-play software testing services providers. Tx, one of the top pen testing companies in the UK, has been chosen as a trusted QA partner by Fortune clients and ensures superior testing outcomes for its global clientele. We have rich expertise in enabling end-to-end security testing services for global clients across various industry domains like healthcare, telecom, BFSI, retail & eCommerce, etc.

With our domain knowledge and with over a decade of pure play experience in automated network security penetration testing, the company has been serving the UK clientele with high-quality next-gen software testing services to deliver superior enterprise network security testing solutions to clients.

TestingXperts Differentiators:

• Large pool of CEHs (Certified Ethical Hackers) for specialized penetration testing.
• Conformance with international standards, including OWASP and OSSTMM.
• Vendor independence coupled with deep expertise in key security technologies.
• The report classifies each vulnerability into appropriate categories along with mitigation strategies.
• Ensuring zero false positives with snapshots of exploitation.
• Complete coverage of regression testing and penetration testing best practices.
• Vulnerability-free application with an iterative penetration testing strategy for further release
• Supported Tools: Hp Web Inspect, IBM App Scan, Acunetix, Cenzic Hailstorm, Burp Suite Pro and other open-source tools.