What Type of
Security Assessment
Do You Need?
In general, there are two approaches to a security assessment. The first is to do an interview-driven approach known as a gap analysis. This provides a holistic view of your policies and procedures and identifies any gaps or improvements to secure your organization and the data you are trying to protect.
The second is a tactical assessment known as a penetration test. A penetration test emulates the real-world threats and attack vectors you are likely to encounter. The goal of a penetration test is to identify the weaknesses and demonstrate the impact before an attacker does. In most organizations, a hybrid approach is the best way to find specific vulnerabilities now and improve processes to keep you secure moving forward.
Where to Begin
If you’ve never had any penetration testing or security audit performed, it can be really tough to know where to start. Let’s start off by exploring a of couple cyber security assessments that are considered a good baseline to better understand where you’re at from a security perspective:
External Penetration Test
From a tactical perspective, this is where almost every organization will start. This type of assessment is designed to test your security from outside your organization, emulating an attacker trying to break in from the Internet.
Best Practice Gap Analysis
During this interview-driven cyber security assessment, we sit down with your security team, IT team, and anyone else related to security processes to understand what controls are in place today, and what improvements can be made to increase your overall security posture.
Schedule Security Assessment
Maybe you’ve been doing external penetration testing for a few years and you have a good handle on your perimeter, but you’re not sure how to continue to improve? Where do you go next to understand security risks at a broader level? There are a lot of answers to that question. Depending on your business and the current security programs in place, we can focus our attention on more specific types of security assessments. Below are some of the penetration tests we offer that can help identify your specific needs.