From the recent attack on CDK Global to the chaotic hack on Change Healthcare, 2024 has seen some of the worst cyber attacks of our lifetime.
And with new attacks happening every 39 seconds, there’s no doubt that even bigger and bolder attacks are still on the horizon.
Half of businesses (50%) and around a third of charities (32%) report having experienced some form of cyber security breach or attack in the last 12 months. This is much higher for medium businesses (70%), large businesses (74%) and high-income charities with £500,000 or more in annual income (66%).
Now that experiencing a cyber attack is no longer a question of if but when it might feel like you’re fighting a losing battle when it comes to protecting your valuable data from cybercrime.
Not only do you need to have a robust incident response plan in place, but you also need to build up your defences long before attacks strike.
Testing (pentesting) tools have emerged as one of the most effective ways to find entry points into your systems before malicious actors do, and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
What is pentesting?
testing, commonly known as pentesting, is a cybersecurity practice where ethical hackers simulate attacks on computer systems, networks, or web applications with the goal of identifying vulnerabilities or weaknesses that malicious actors could exploit.
Pentesters use a combination of automated tools and manual techniques to assess the security posture of the target environment, often attempting to breach it in ways that real attackers might.
This testing helps organizations strengthen their defenses by patching identified vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by actual threats.
Pentesting is critical in modern cybersecurity because it mimics the real-world actions of hackers, offering insights into how a system might be attacked and compromised. By regularly conducting these tests, organizations can stay ahead of evolving threats and ensure that their systems, data, and user information are properly protected.
How do pentesting tools work?
Pentesting tools are software applications that simulate cyberattacks on a target system to identify vulnerabilities and potential security threats. These tools can be used by security professionals to assess the security posture of a network, application, or system, and to identify potential weaknesses that could be exploited by malicious actors.
Pentesting tools work by sending various types of requests or data to a target system and analyzing the responses. For example, a vulnerability scanner might send specially crafted packets to a target system to see if it can exploit known vulnerabilities. A web application firewall (WAF) might analyze incoming HTTP requests to detect potential attacks, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS).
Pentesting tools can be used in a variety of ways. They can be used to perform manual testing, where a security professional uses the tools to manually test a target system. They can also be used to automate testing, where scripts or programs are used to automatically test a target system.
Types of pentesting tools
There are many different types of pentesting tools available, each with its own specific capabilities. Here are some of the most common types:
1. Vulnerability Scanners
These tools scan a target system for known vulnerabilities and report on any that are found. They can be used to identify common vulnerabilities such as weak passwords, outdated software, and misconfigured systems. Examples of vulnerability scanners include Nessus, OpenVAS, and Nmap.
2. Web Application Firewalls (WAFs)
Web application firewalls (WAFs) protect web applications from attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS). They can be used to filter incoming HTTP requests and block malicious traffic. Examples of WAFs include ModSecurity, Imperva, and Cloudflare.
3. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)
Intrusion detection systems monitor network traffic for signs of malicious activity. They can be used to detect and alert on potential attacks such as port scans, unauthorized access attempts, and malware infections. Examples of IDS include Snort, Suricata, and Bro.
4. Password Crackers
These tools can be used to passwords that are stored in a database. They can be used to test the strength of passwords and identify potential weak points in a system's security. Examples of password crackers include John the Ripper, Hashcat, and Hydra.
5. Social Engineering Tools
These tools can be used to trick users into revealing sensitive information. They can be used to test the effectiveness of a company's security awareness training and identify potential vulnerabilities in its social engineering defenses. Examples of social engineering tools include Metasploit, Social Engineering Toolkit, and Phishing Simulator.
6. Network Scanners
These tools scan a network to identify devices, services, and vulnerabilities. They can be used to map a network's topology and identify potential security risks. Examples of network scanners include Nmap, Zenmap, and Angry IP Scanner.
Why is pentesting important?
The primary reason for pentesting is to proactively identify and mitigate security risks before they can be exploited by malicious actors. By uncovering vulnerabilities, organizations can take timely measures to patch them, strengthen their defences, and protect their sensitive data and systems.
Pentesting also serves as a valuable tool for compliance with industry regulations and standards. Many regulatory bodies, such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS, mandate regular security assessments, including testing.
By demonstrating compliance through successful pentesting, organizations can avoid costly fines and penalties while improving their overall security posture. The insights gained from pentesting can lead to improvements in security policies, procedures, and technologies, resulting in a more robust and resilient security infrastructure that can better withstand cyber attacks.
Best pentesting tools
There are a range of pen testing tools on the market today designed to help you keep your business secue. But, of course, not all of these tools are made the same.
Here are ten of the best pentesting tools available today based on their features, value for money, and effectiveness at identifying flaws in your security posture.
Astra Pentest
Astra’s Pentest is a powerful hacker-style pen testing tool with an intelligent automated vulnerability scanner that works hand-in-hand with manual testing. The platform emulates hackers' behaviour to proactively find vulnerabilities in your applications, making the typically tedious process of finding vulnerabilities simple and continuous. You can automatically inspect your system for over 8000+ test cases, develop detailed vulnerability scan reports, and prepare and keep reports to identify future vulnerabilities.
With Astra Pentest, you get a complete security solution for identifying and fixing vulnerabilities and security weaknesses in your systems. That’s thanks to its automated vulnerability scanner, which provides a seamless experience for the engineering and management teams to collaborate for their security objectives. Astra’s vulnerability scanner is also designed to scan pages behind the login, making it ideal for SaaS applications.
Invicti
Invicti is an automated application security testing tool that helps organisations secure thousands of websites and dramatically reduce the risk of attack. Empowering security teams with the most unique DAST + IAST scanning capabilities on the market, the platform makes it easy for organisations with complicated environments to automate their web security with confidence. Companies can conduct automated and continuous tests on their web applications minus the expensive budgets and an army of skilled testers. You can repeatedly scan web applications within the SDLC, avoiding suffering any security breaches in live environments.
Invincti dramatically reduces your risk of attacks through accurate, scalable and automated security testing that keeps threat actors at bay. The platform makes sure no security vulnerability goes unnoticed, combining signature and behaviour-based testing to detect vulnerabilities quickly with comprehensive scanning that doesn’t sacrifice speed or accuracy.
Intruder Vulnerability Scanner
Intruder is a cloud-based vulnerability scanner that proactively scans for security threats through a unique threat interpretation system that makes vulnerability management a breeze. The platform keeps tabs on your attack surface 24/7, showing where and how your company may be vulnerable, then prioritising issues and filtering noise so you can fix the problems that matter most. It gives you a real view of your attack surface combining continuous network monitoring and automated vulnerability scanning with proactive threat response in a single, unified. platform.
With actionable results prioritized by context, Intruder helps you focus on fixing what matters, bringing easy effectiveness to vulnerability management. It gives you noise-filtered, concise and actionable results, providing audit-ready reports that easily show your security posture to auditors, stakeholders and customers.
Cobalt
Cobalt’s Pentest as a Service (PtaaS) platform delivers the real-time insights you need to remediate risk quickly and innovate securely. Combining a powerful SaaS tool suite with an exclusive community of testers, the platform delivers the real-time insights you need to remediate risk quickly and innovate securely. You can launch protests in days – not weeks – and accelerate find-to-fix cycles through technology integrations and real-time collaboration with expert pentesters at Cobalt.
Cobalt's unique PtaaS model combines data, technology, and talent to resolve security challenges for modern web applications, mobile applications, networks, and APIs. This new approach pairs with the company’s expert manual pentesting to ensure comprehensive coverage across major compliance frameworks and provide robust security that is tailored to your organisation’s needs.
Beagle Security
Beagle Security is a one-stop solution to uncovering your security weaknesses and gaining actionable insights into how to fix them. The platform’s AI-driven testing tool overcomes the limitations that many other vulnerability scanners pose through intelligence and insights that elevate your app security and keep intruders out. It also makes staying compliant easy, helping you build trust with customers and mitigate the risk of penalties with thorough compliance-mapped reports.
With Beagle, you receive customised guidance from Beagle Security’s advanced Large Language Model (LLM), which provides constant, customised suggestions tailored specifically to your tech stack. You can also identify and compare vulnerabilities against an index of over 3000 vulnerabilities to ensure you have comprehensive coverage against threats at all times. The platform is incredibly scalable too, allowing you to execute multiple security tests simultaneously for faster and more efficient pentesting of multiple web apps or APIs
OnSecurity
Scan by OnSecurity is a powerful pentesting tool that monitors your external estate to find and fix vulnerabilities before threat actors find them. The tool automatically detects and remediates vulnerabilities in your infrastructure through scans that check against over 20,000 common entry routes to drastically reduce the opportunity for attack. You can run these tests daily too. and get alerted in real-time when your attack surface changes so you can take action before hackers do. Scan will notify you as soon as a new port or service opens on your Internet-facing perimeter, so you can stay in the know and keep your business safe.
Getting started with OnSecurity is a breeze. The platform’s automatic target detention lets you start scanning within seconds, working in real-time to let you know as soon as a new vulnerability arises. All you have to do to get started is add the targets you want to protect or better yet let OnSecurity do all the work for you and detect your targets with its OSINT technology.
AppKnox App Security Testing
Highly rated by both G2 and Gartner platform’s AppKnox it is a powerful, ‘plug & play” application security solution that can detect threats in your apps within minutes. The platform’s holistic vulnerability assessment (VA) can perform a one-click static scan with your mobile app's binary, allowing you to see how hackers interact with your apps in real time with dynamic testing and secure all endpoints with an API scan. APPknowx’s automated security testing suite then makes it easy to find all the vulnerable endpoints of your mobile apps by analysing web servers, and databases, and providing a comprehensive VA report that tells you the gravity of your vulnerabilities, their business impact and the regulatory and compliance issues related to the flaw.
With Appknox, your business’s mobile app becomes impenetrable from threat actors of any sort. Just upload your app on your personalized dashboard, and run it through our Static, Dynamic, Manual and API tests and you get a full diagnosis of your mobile app’s security with suggestions on how to fix your threats or loopholes.
Burp Suite
Portswigger’s Burp Suite is the ultimate go-to tool for testing web applications for hidden vulnerabilities and undercover threats. Incorporating full Proxy capturing and command injection opportunities, Burp Suite comes with everything businesses need to generate deeper insights into their systems. You gain unlimited access to a library of over 200+ pentesting extensions and tools that improve and accelerate your testing workflows and lead to faster brute-forcing and fuzzing and deeper manual testing. You can save configurations on a per-job basis and access tools that make it easy to automate and scale your web vulnerability scanning system too.
Burp Suite has one of the most vibrant communities of users ready to help you overcome challenges, find new vulnerabilities, and develop alongside the PortSwigger community. You can also develop your pen-testing skills by using Burp Suite’s free learning materials from world-class experts. in the Web Security Academy. Free learning materials from world-class experts.
vPenTest
vPenTest replicates manual internal and external network testing, making it easy and affordable for organisations of all sizes to evaluate real-time cybersecurity risks. The platform is essentially a hacker on a company’s network, using automated pen-testing to look for sensitive data, performing exploits, conducting man-in-the-middle attacks, cracking password hashes, and even impersonating users to find sensitive data. Unlike many other pentesting tools, It goes beyond identifying vulnerabilities by actively and continuously exploiting them to demonstrate what happens if an attacker gets access to the network.
What makes vPentest stand out is its simplicity. There are no delays, no lengthy setups, and no learning curves. You simply download an agent, run vPenTest as often as you’d like, and see your detailed report minutes after every assessment is complete. You control when assessments are launched, and how frequently this happens, and modify IP ranges as business requirements change and threats evolve. This level of control is rare with pentesting tools, making vPenTest a great choice for businesses who want complete real-time visibility into their systems but don’t have the time or money to invest in a pentesting team.
Metasploit
Powered by the world’s leading exploit testing framework, Rapid7’s Metasploit is a pentesting program created to find, exploit, and explore details about possible system vulnerabilities. It includes both Metasploit Pro and the Metasploit framework, which each contain a suite of tools that you can use to test security vulnerabilities, enumerate networks, execute attacks, and evade detection. Metasploit allows companies to use ready-made or custom code and introduce it into a network to probe for weak spots. Once flaws have been identified and documented, the information can be used to address systemic weaknesses and prioritise solutions across the organisation.
With plenty of guidance on the Metasploit website for beginners, it's easy to develop a deeper understanding of your security strategy and pinpoint any potential vulnerabilities. You can scan for issues in seconds, exploit unknown vulnerabilities, and collect important evidence for auditing purposes using the platform’s simple UI and easy-to-use dashboards. And with Metasploit’s community the over 100,000 contributors and users, you have one of the industry’s largest libraries of real-world exploits at your fingertips.
