Data security is both the technique and the technology of safeguarding sensitive and valuable company and customer data, such as financial or personal information.
Think about all the valuable information that your company likes to gather, store, and manage.
Hackers love this information and treat the company’s data as a goldmine because it includes payment or financial information, sensitive and personal information about your customers and employees, including intellectual property such as your inventions, designs, assets, trademarks, patents, and your copyrights, which if it is hacked at once, then the company or as a business owner you can experience a severe loss and this situation may down your business reputation and fiscal health.
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Thus, protecting your enterprise’s security and data privacy should be your prime responsibility; after all, you use your company data for revenue optimization, risk alleviation, and overall improvement of your business.
Furthermore, your data helps you generate future benefits. And, it is a crucial asset of your business, so you must remain this information secure and confidential and protect all critical pieces of information that third parties can misuse for fraud, such as identity theft and phishing scams.
In other words, today, we live in an interconnected world wherein technologies and the internet rule almost an online business.
Furthermore, the speed of data traveling all over the globe is more than our expectations.
Due to this phenomenon, we need to understand the importance of Data Security Testing because it helps organizations ensure that their personal and sensitive data are free of any breach issues or potential threats.
Apart from this, with Security Testing Solutions, you can easy to fulfill major security requirements that include specific elements of integrity, authentication, confidentiality, authorization, availability, and non-repudiation.
Moreover, each company has its own infrastructure and associated risks that require a comprehensive analysis to cover the major topics of Security Testing such as risk assessments, security assessment, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing that the Security Testing Service Provider conducts to discover and prevent data security issues.
Below, we have explained some of the significant and worst breaches of recent history that you can consider analyzing why you should perform data security testing, data privacy testing, and keep your data safe and secure.
Significant and Worst Breaches of Recent History
In June 2021, nearly 700 million user’s data and other APIs of the very popular networking giant LinkedIn were exposed on a dark web forum by the hacker through its data scraping techniques.
In addition, the incident was a violation of LinkedIn terms and services because a scraped data sample published by God User contained some personal information from its users. Likewise, phone numbers, email addresses, genders, geolocation records, and other social media details to design convincing follow-on social engineering attacks in the aftermath of the release, as warned by UK’s NCSC.
In April 2019, Facebook came under the limelight because two datasets of its apps were leaked to the public internet with over 530 million users’ data, such as account names, phone numbers, and Facebook IDs.
On the flip side, in April 2021 (after two years), hackers posted the data for free and gave access to users’ phone numbers on the dark web.
Yahoo
Yahoo had also experienced a severe attack in 2014 when state-sponsored actors stole the data of its 500 million users’ accounts, including names, phone numbers, email addresses, date of birth, and hashed passwords.
In addition, this company took steps in 2014 and consumed two to four years to recover from the loss because, in 2016, one of its databases was sold on the black market with user details.
Therefore, we can clearly say that our online world is scary for those businesses that don’t take decisive actions against their data protection.
And, at this point, understanding the importance of Security Testing for your data can become the right option because it is the type of software testing that helps minimize the threats, risks, and any glitches from the software application.
Besides, individuals consider various types of testing, such as Cyber Security Testing and Penetration Testing, to identify potential flaws and weaknesses from the software system.
To boot, with this type of testing or Data Security Testing, one can run their business safely or without any risks.
All You Need to Know about Security Testing in Detail
Security testing is a procedure for identifying faults in information systems and, as per security procedures, ensuring that your customers’ and company’s data will be stay protected. And all the functions of an application will work as intended.
Further, it helps find all possible security risks in the system and lets the developers fix common app problems through coding.
Additionally, a security test is performed by the Security Testing Service Provider to uncover all vulnerabilities, risks, threats, weaknesses, and loopholes of the software system, which might result in a loss of revenue, information, particularly if the business data is exposed illegally by the organization’s employees or attackers.
Types of Security Testing
Here are some different types of Security Testing that one can consider and perform as per the data security needs and business demands.
- Vulnerability Scanning – The automated software requires getting the Vulnerability Scanning done of the system. It helps testers scan a system against known vulnerability signatures.
- Penetration Testing – This type of testing replicates an attack commit by hackers. Moreover, pen-testing aims to examine a specific system for security flaws in the event of an external hacking attempt.
- Security Scanning – Security Scanning is similar to Vulnerability Scanning because its aim is to detect the system’s weaknesses and identify networks that can pose risks or become a dangerous factor for your application. Moreover, there are two ways to perform security scanning – either through manual or automated testing.
- Risk Assessment – This type of testing includes analyzing security risks from low, medium, and high risks identified in the organization. Into the bargain, depending on the risk type, one can control and take future actions.
- Security Auditing – Security Auditing is an internal check for finding the security flaws in applications and operating systems. The best part of Security Auditing is it allows to inspect the code line-by-line.
- Posture Assessment – Posture Assessment is the act of applying a set of rules to posture data and helps in maintaining a level of test in the endpoint. Besides, it includes Ethical Hacking, Security Scanning, and Risk Assessments to know the overall security posture of an organization.
- Ethical Hacking – It is a procedure of finding vulnerabilities in a system, application, or organizational structure that attackers can utilize to exploit an organization or individual. By the same token, they use this process to prevent security breaches and cyberattacks and look for all weak points in which a malicious activity can be performed.
Some Benefits of Cyber Security Testing
Meet Compliance Needs
Every business needs to comply with industry-specific and general legislation such as GDPR and PSD2 for banks because even the slightest slip can lead to a damaged reputation and can cause remediation.
By performing cyber-security testing, you can ensure the security of your data and easy to fulfill the compliance needs.
Threats Identification
Many cybercriminals follow TTP (Tactics, techniques, and procedures), including proven methodologies to mimic attacks.
With testing, organizations can easily understand from which sources the significant attacks are made by hackers and what information is needed to be protected the most.
Overall, you can know that the only mission of cyber-security testing is to identify threats and fix them in a timely and productive manner.
Uncover Vulnerabilities
Patching of devices, network hardware, and devices is not an easy job. However, attackers use some known bottlenecks to deliver trojan attacks and ransomware.
Due to this, it becomes vital for organizations to understand all types of attacks and protect the companies’ systems from such illegal activities.
Conclusion
On average, about 200,000 new viruses/malicious programs are discovered every day. Similarly, nearly 30,000 websites face hacking issues on a regular basis.
On the Other hand, the major target of cybercriminals is small businesses because they lack expertise and budget.
Thus, as a company, if you are not taking any measures to protect your user’s sensitive and personal information, including if you are not making any efforts to improve your data security and data privacy, then the hacker will take access to your site and steal all those information’s that help you generate an income or sales.
Therefore, if you have any application that you are using for your business purpose, then don’t forget to get a security test as it will help you improve the quality of your app, protect your corporate’s & consumers data, and the most important thing it allows you to establish trust with your clientele and ensure them that your application is safe for their personal use.
Thence, take risks where necessary, but don’t take chances if it is a matter of your data security and protecting your site from cyber-attacks and illegal crimes.
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