Security Testing

How Safe Is Your Business Website – Find Out With A Simple Pen Test?

The internet plays host to multiple millions of active websites. These sites often act as a companies’ online presence and as sales platforms – and as functional as they might be within a business, the truth is that they aren’t always secure. Hackers and criminals often turn to the internet to exploit the weaknesses of certain websites and businesses.

There have been several cases of large scale hacking attempts over the past few years alone and some of the victims include industry giants such as Sony and even EBay. As newer technologies are introduced by security agencies, hackers are forced to up the stakes – and this game of cat and mouse has been going on for years.

Even with firewalls and paid security features in place, there are always ways for expert coders to get around systems and breach barriers – and when these events occur, the consequences for a website can be catastrophic. Fortunately there are ways to safeguard sites against these types of events (or at the very least minimise their likelihood) and one of the main methods is referred to as crowdsource application security testing.

What is this method exactly?

Hackers often come from backgrounds where they will have been exposed to coding and programming, although there are those that are self-taught, too. Some will dedicate hours of their time to causing damage to websites simply because they want to, but it’s not uncommon for them to do so for financial gain as well.

Crowdsourcing works by bringing these hackers together with businesses; and instead of doing so to damage the infrastructure of a site, these ethical hackers will instead offer to discover flaws and weaknesses in return for a fee. Many businesses have started to utilise this method, as it is the digital equivalent of fighting fire with fire.

Where hackers have access to advanced tools that they implement with the intention of doing damage, white hat hackers instead utilise the very same technologies to discover issues and help website owners to rectify them. This is something that can be of huge benefit to an online business and it can be even more advantageous to have a website listed on these types of sites consistently, so that if any new hacking techniques come out, ethical hackers can ensure that a site is protected by tackling it themselves first.

By working in collaboration like this, it’s possible to enhance the security of a website several times over. Failing to keep up to date with the latest security techniques and safeguarding strategies can be detrimental however, and it’s well worth investing in the services of a tester to ensure that a website remains safe throughout its operation.