To make matters worse, today’s hackers aren’t just kids sitting in their bedrooms or basements trying to break into your network for fun.

Today’s cyber criminals are an organized lot. There’s big money to be made hacking systems and mining for data and confidential info.

The upshot: Everybody secures their systems and apps, then waits.

If there are problems, IT scrambles to contain the damage.

But many companies aren’t content to just wait and see if they’re vulnerable. Instead, they test their systems for holes and weaknesses.

One of their best tools is penetration testing – an exercise in replicating the kind of action an attacker would take.

What is pen-testing?

Good penetration testing attempts to gain system access without the use of user names and passwords.

Sometimes it’s even more sophisticated. An authorized user tries to elevate status within the system for increased access to resources or data.

Pen-testing doesn’t just find holes before an attacker does. It can also:
•    test a new system before it
goes online
•    provide confirmation of vulnerabilities so IT can get resources to fix the problem, and
•    serve as training for response to an attack.