Penetration Testing: A guide for business and IT managers

Book Description

Penetration testing is the attempt to professionally break in to an organisation's systems by exploiting any vulnerabilities, with the goal of determining whether an organisation's IT systems and resources are secure. As hackers and would-be cyber attackers become increasingly more brazen, penetration testing has become an essential practice. This BCS guide for business and IT managers, developed in collaboration with CREST, explains the process of penetration testing and the benefits it brings. With contributions from practising penetration testers and information security experts, the book brings together a wide range of expertise, insight, and tips for setting up a penetration testing programme, maintaining it, and responding to the results of penetration tests. - Introduces penetration testing as an exploitative test technique to check whether a target system's security controls can be defeated; - Written by a wide range of industry experts from academics to practising penetration testers to information security managers, with support from CREST (accreditation and certification body for information security industry); - Covers insights from across the penetration testing process, from initial set up to reporting results and acting on them. --- "This is the first time I’ve encountered a book which manages to combine properly researched good practice for penetration testing with the real requirements of the business community...The authors really know their stuff and I found myself nodding and smiling many times in every chapter. The case studies and examples are pithy and highly relevant. Concepts such as red teaming and intelligence-led penetration testing are clearly explained and contrasted with other forms of testing, helping demystify this complex topic. Each chapter is well laid out and the guidance provided is exactly what managers need to know to get great value from security testing exercises of all types. Over a dozen expert authors have contributed to this book and the results speak for themselves – this is a must read for those responsible for information security in organisations of all sizes." - Peter Wood FBCS CITP CISSP M.Inst.ISP , Partner, Naturally Cyber LLP and Founder, First Base Technologies LLP -