Most of the companies these days carry a planned attack by the third party to find out the weakness and uncover flaws in their security system. Penetration testing is exposing the weakness and gaps in your security system so that it can be plugged before any malicious actor tries to get through it. Penetration testing is carried out in different ways within an organization.

A good penetration test is carried out to find out the weakness in a network, applications, devices, and employees where the attacker can target your business. Penetration testing needs to be planned properly and executed professionally. Given below are some of the common pen testing mistakes and how to avoid them.

Failure to prioritize risks

Every organization develops a risk baseline to improve its security. After identifying the risks, you can set your penetration goal. Penetration testing should be planned whether it should be customer data, intellectual property or financial data. It is vital to prioritize the risk as it helps in focusing and improving security.

You need to think of the worst possible scenario before developing a pen testing goal for your firm. Identifying the risks before penetration test is vital.

Using the wrong tools

For penetration testing, expertise uses special tools and they know where and how to configure it correctly. Your internal IT team may use the penetration testing tools but they don’t know how to use it correctly or conduct the penetration test. You need to have an experienced team for the testing that can be from the third party with real expertise.

The pen testing team from the third party can be expensive and are mostly hired for a short period. You can also have an automated pen-testing platform that will validate your defense and provide ongoing protection. For hiring the third party for pen testing it is vital to confirm for authenticate sources.

Poor reporting

If the third-party pen testing team does not provide a clear report on the identified problems and their consequences, you may face problems in fixing them.

It is better to avoid third-party testing team or automated tools that highlight thousands of vulnerabilities without providing any solutions for fixing them.

Ticking boxes

Don’t allow your penetration testers to apply a box-ticking mentality for the test, as you may miss many things. Ticking off items during the testing will lead you to a false sense of security.