ips

One of the key areas of expertise Integrity-Paahi Solutions (IPS) is relied upon by its clients is to perform penetration testing and vulnerability assessments.

The IPS’ team is regularly called to perform this security work to test an organization’s IT security posture or as a 3rd party validation to ensure correlation of findings from their primary security vendor to fulfill compliance and other regulatory requirements.

Your organization can engage IPS for regular penetration testing each quarter to ensure peace of mind with its security posture, despite the constant network changes that occur during normal business operations.

Each penetration test assessment is a thorough report with easy and clear results and remediation steps in plain English, not just a massive report of false positives. It includes printed bound reports as well as DVDs of all information and raw data gathered, and a detailed follow-up meeting.

For these types of engagements, IPS follows a specific black, grey, and white approach – as this method is effective in determining the true posture of the organization.

Black Penetration Test

The initial manner of penetration testing is normally a Black attack on the network, where no information is provided beyond the name of the organization. A series of exploration penetration tests are performed to explore the network, harvesting as much information as possible. This includes Internet footprint, web, DNS, registered IP ranges, social networking grievances against the company, as well as direct social networking tests as required.

In addition, if warranted and agreed upon, direct performance, denial of service attacks, and destructive scanning (scheduled at a proper time and with the cooperation of the IT staff) can be performed along with scanning for all TCP/UDP ports that will respond based on the configuration of the external environment. This scan, in combination with the initial scan and continuous scanning of ports and IP address ranges; will help create a logical and physical diagram of the environment to determine best practices to shield the external network infrastructure.

Grey Penetration Test

The second phase of penetration testing is the Grey attack, which involves a subset of known information, such as VPN portals provided and corporate customer portals. The information will be utilized to commence the testing within the defined environment.

During these procedures and penetration test cases, IPS capture equipment on the network will collect data transferred on the segment to determine if additional information can be obtained to further penetrate via the a remote Internet site as well as posing as an known representative of the company. 

White Penetration Test

Upon completion of the Grey penetration testing phase of the attack, the third phase of penetration testing will occur which is the White phase. This phase is reliant on information provided about the network, the network devices and all pertinent elements. With this information there will be directed attacks and scans applied to each element and network security with the intent of assessing the security configuration of the application in relation to the network. This penetration testing is performed on-site with the cooperation and access provided by the IT staff.

The goal of this phase is the assessment of the network devices, servers, and workstations internally to ensure proper internal safeguards are in place to protect the organization’s critical data from its own employees.

As a result, using the above approach, a full penetration and vulnerability test assessment can be performed. This approach can be carefully customized to ensure an accurate assessment without compromising the flow of business during the engagement.

Please contact IPS for further information on any number of our penetration and vulnerability testing programs.