With the average data breach costing companies around $7 million in lost revenue and lawsuits, small businesses can’t afford to suffer a cyber attack. When data breaches hit a company, it can damage their reputation, leading to unknown costs in sales and consumer perception.
Web security testing can help you to find places where nefarious actors could get in and block them out before they have the chance.
With the pervasiveness of ransomware and the increasing sophistication of hacking, companies of every size should be worried. It used to take massive amounts of resources or to break into a system. With the increasing use of wi-fi for sending secure data between hundreds of networked devices on one site, it’s become easier than ever.
If you haven’t prioritized web security testing for your company, it’s time to consider it. Here are 9 of reasons why.
1. Real World Experience
There’s no good way to measure how successful an attack on your system would be without running a penetration test. Running tests can reveal the strength of your system and insecurities in other places. You don’t need your system to be vulnerable in the moment of truth.
Running tests gives your IT team a chance to describe to the rest of your company what happens during an attack. You’ll be running the equivalent of a fire drill to see how good your security measures are. If your tools are in tip-top shape, you’ll be able to see what you did right.
2. Create Risk Priorities
Once you’ve run your tests, you can look back at the data gathered to understand what’s going on in your network. You can see vulnerabilities and begin to deal with them.
If you’re able to run penetration tests, you can see which of the vulnerabilities your web security testing revealed as the highest priority. Those risks that could take down your network and any important resources should be dealt with first. Once you’ve patched your network issues in the right order, you can be sure that you’ve eliminated important vulnerabilities first.
3. You Can Help Avoid Future Mistakes
Web security testing reveals issues that have been created by developers. These issues aren’t always created through negligence. Often, priorities made during the development process create backdoors for entry.
The results of your test will show your developers what mistakes to avoid in the future and how to ensure there are fewer vulnerabilities in your system. Once you’ve trained your developers, you’ve planted a seed that will make the next project even more secure.
4. Uncover Network Issues
Your security testing should be able to attack your system like a hacker would. It should see the ways that it is possible to breach your system. A third party test will give you fresh eyes.
You’ll learn about vulnerabilities in your network that you may have never imagined were an issue. Keep an eye on your server uptime to get a real sense of the health of your network.
5. Check Your Attack Vector
The work of your developers, security team, and IT is to understand how attackers might get into your system. However, there are always going to be things that nobody thought of. Your security tests will reveal how your attack vector is structured to protect or make you vulnerable.
6. Justify Spending
Anyone who has ever worked in a large enterprise knows that it’s hard to get investors or executives to increase budgets. Asking for money sometimes feels like you’re being put on trial to justify every penny. To understand the kind of budget increases you’ll be asking for, check out what this company offers.
If for some reason your company doesn’t already understand the value of investing in security tools, your testing can do the explaining for you. Tests can reveal the value of your current system and the need to expand.
By showing what you can support currently and what you can’t, you can prove the value of increased security solutions.
7. Meet Compliance
If you accept any kinds of online payments, there are likely security measures that you’re required to meet. Ongoing testing will allow you to test your compliance and make sure you don’t get notified or penalized for any violations.
If you’re going to be testing, you should ensure that your tests are calibrated to meet the regulations of the payment card industry. They require both annual and regular web security testing to stay highly rated.
Mitigate any real risk to your clients’ payment information and to your own reputation by meeting and exceeding compliance limits.
8. Analyze Incidents
If you’ve been in the unfortunate position of having had your security breached, you need to see what went wrong. Testing, even after an attack, is valuable. While you might not want to hear the information that your test reveals, it’s nonetheless important.
Testing can recreate the attack so that you can perform a forensic analysis that your security team can learn from. If you decide to take new security measures, you can prevent future attacks by studying your past issues.
9. Get Faster and Better
The number one thing you can do, even on a limited security budget, is to improve your response time to an attack. While penetration into your system should be avoided, issues can only persist if that connection remains unbroken.
If you can find ways to lengthen the amount of time it takes to get into your system, you can keep hackers out while you respond. If you keep their connections from lasting very long, they won’t be able to infect your system or gather very much information.
Web Security Testing Checks A System’s Health
Testing your security measures regularly allows you to get a diagnosis of how healthy your system is. Over time, issues with code can develop that lead to slower response times. Even the age of your server can cause a system to respond slowly in the case of a breach.
If you want to make sure you get in the way of any data breaches, contact us for more tips on how to implement smart and cost-effective solutions.
