Software security is crucial to ensure the secrecy and protection of sensitive business data. Sometimes this can be confusing as people may use similar words to mean different things, or different words to mean the same notions. However, organizations are now taking a more strategic approach to ensure application security. They hire a cyber security testing company to validate their security testing efforts. Enterprises test systems for cyber security weaknesses using different penetration tests, assessments and audits, that allow internal teams to perform testing activities to validate security. The QA testers provide a report to the firm on their findings and also mitigate all risks they can to address the problems identified. They have a number of options for testing the effectiveness of their security controls.
Application security refers to features that are also known as controls. These features protect the confidentiality and integrity of an application. For instance, an app that encrypts its data provides protection of the data. App security also includes managing vulnerabilities that appear in an application. From this point of view, app security is all about minimizing the risks and fix as many system vulnerabilities as possible, before releasing the application.
Cyber Security Risk Assessments
A cyber security testing company offers cyber security risk assessments that are just like security audits but may go an extra mile to determine the effectiveness of security controls and the risks associated with the weaknesses. An assessment looks at a system way beyond its data encryption and tests if the overall system prevents breaches. Organizations should understand how and when the data may be in an unencrypted state. For instance, data resides in the memory while a system is processing it and who may be able to access that data at that point. Also, if these keys are not protected, the encryption may not work well.
Data Protection
Software applications entail different kinds of information such as instant messages to medical information, confidential data, nation-state secrets and everything in between. Critical information has great value and so data protection becomes a challenging part of the implementation of a software system/application. It also means that accessing information is limited to people or systems that are authorized.
Penetration Testing
Penetration testing involves intentional attacks on systems to try to break into systems or simply depict how an attacker can access sensitive data from unprotected systems. This testing type originated in the U.S. where security researchers began researching hw attackers may exploit systems. If these teams succeed in breaking into the systems, then the government would know how to fix the patching systems or take important security measures to prevent these threats from occurring.
So the main difference between penetration tests and system vulnerabilities is the fact that a pentester attempts to exploit system vulnerabilities instead of just revealing that they exist. Instead of looking at an app from the outside, a penetration test attempts to break into systems and show an organization how an attacker may compromise a system. All these testing types are used by a cyber security testing company to address vulnerabilities in a system before malicious attackers can do.
Author Bio: As a Senior Marketing Consultant at Kualitatem, Ray Parker loves to write tech-related news, articles, specifically quality assurance and information security. I have had years of experience writing in different tech niches and among some include, Dzone, SAP, Dataflop and Readwrite etc. Apart from his techie appearance, he enjoys soccer, reading mysteries, and spending long hours working over at the New York office.
