Ensuring your Business’s Safety: An Introduction to Penetration Testing
If you were to regularly follow the news, you could be forgiven for thinking that we are in the midst of relentless and pronounced economic growth. In some respects this may be true, especially with property market growth prevalent in the wake of the great recession and the rate of employment continuing to rise in line with increased business sentiment.
This level of confidence has taken a hit in recent times, however, especially when companies appraise their financial prospects. Financial confidence in the UK has recently fallen to its lowest level since 2013, despite the latest IPA Bellwether report revealing increased spending on marketing and advertising.
Introducing Penetration Testing: What is it and why is it Important?
While financial confidence may be lower, however, it is important that entrepreneurs remain committed to investing in the long-term growth of their business. The key is to prioritise this expenditure, with investment in securing a commercial website and IT infrastructure particularly important. Without this, you will compromise the integrity of your online business proposition, while also placing sensitive consumer data at risk. When you consider the potential cost of security breaches or interruptions in service, this is a proactive investment that can save huge sums of money in the long-term.
The first and most important step in this process is to invest in advanced penetration testing, which evaluates the security of your existing IT infrastructure through rigorous testing. Industry experts such as Nettitude conduct safe and controlled tests that look to identify system weakness across OS, service applications and servers. It even analyses potentially damaging end-user behaviour, creating a full and frank account of your online security and highlighting practical areas for improvement.
There are several benefits to penetration testing, especially when you partner with a market leading firm. The first is that advanced testing explores all areas of your online venture, delving beyond web hosting platforms and domains and into a complex network of operating systems and individual applications. It also evaluates business processes and the actions of people, eliminating human error and identifying ways in which you can create a more efficient and cost-effective consumer experience.
The Last Word: Building on a Foundation of Penetration Testing
Once you have partnered with a firm and used manual and automated technologies to test your IT infrastructure, it is important that you use the acquired data to build a strong online network. This is the second stage of improving online security, as your penetration test firm will identify a plan of practical action that corrects any identified system flaws. From here, you can create a plan of implementation that protects your venture and more importantly the needs of your customers.
While this will require further investment, it is important to be prepared for this when you first liaise with potential penetration testers. After all, there is little point in identifying potential system and security flaws if you do not intend to correct them. So start by creating an estimated budget that allows for both initial testing and any subsequent amendments, and commit to this as an important example of business expenditure.
Even though financial confidence may have plummeted among business-owners, this does not mean that you should abandon your investment plans completely. This is especially true in the thriving e-commerce sector, where revenue continues to rise and competition remains fierce. With a willingness to invest in a secure and accessible site, you will lose ground to your rivals and ultimately become unprofitable as a venture.
