Blog 3: Data Protection and Penetration Testing

In the third blog of the Penetration Testing (Pen Test) series (read blog 1 and blog 2) we explore data privacy and protection issues in businesses.

Businesses are amongst the biggest targets for cyber-attacks because of their access to thousands of valuable pieces of customer data, data of other suppliers and supply chain data.

Without a comprehensive assessment of your payment procedures, systems and security controls amongst other things, you could be leaving your clients’ data vulnerable. This can lead to a massive data breach, with the possibility of ICO fines and even class action suits from customers.

Pen testing for Security Compliance

Remember that big issue everyone was fussing over in 2018 that nobody seems to care much about now? The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), or DPA 2018, set guidelines for the processing and collection of personal data from people who live within the UK and the European Union (EU).

Since the regulation applies to all websites (regardless of where you are based or whether you specifically market services and goods to EU residents), if you’re attracting European site visitors, your business will need to be compliant.

With proper Pen Testing, you can ensure that your company does comply with the GDPR requirement stated in Article 32 on the need for “a process for regularly testing, assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of technical and organisational measures for ensuring the security of the processing.”

Pen Testing can also help your business be more compliant by providing a final check to ensure that your security controls are being implemented correctly.

Also, Pen Testing can aid in identifying potential security risks to your clients’ data during the early, middle and late stages of the development life cycle of your processing systems.

Pen Tests as a Preventive Security Measure

Adopting preventive measures towards information security is one of the best controls a company can have for data privacy and protection.

The advantage of Pen Testing, is that you can perform a thorough assessment of your existing security measures, detect vulnerabilities, establish proof of concepts and, most importantly, receive practical recommendations to mitigate your data security risks.

It can also help by identifying specific weaknesses and potential threats through testing. You can then take the right steps to help ensure that your environment is not overly vulnerable to unsophisticated or malicious attacks.

All this helps to put in place preventive security measures and/or strengthen the ones you have in place already, establish accountability, raise awareness among your employees and reduce the risks of data loss and the associated costs.

One of the greatest issues of detecting cyber threats is that cyber criminals and hackers are using much more evolved and sophisticated attack vectors to carry out hacks.

Regular pen tests can test for real-life attacks and methods which, in turn, help you determine your actual exploitable weaknesses that can bed use to steal personal data.

Please get in touch to chat about our Pen Testing services or any other aspect of your cyber security.