About social engineering and penetration testing

Do you know what social engineering is all about? If not, then this article could be very beneficial for you. Social engineering is actually the act of manipulating an individual to gain some useful information that could lead to a corporate system compromise. In other words, it is a non-technical type of invasion that depends heavily upon the interaction between humans and involves creating trusted relationships to trick individuals to break certain normal procedures of security. The end result is gaining access to systems, getting the target or obtaining information which may lead to a compromise. In fact, you can also say that social engineer uses techniques similar to con men. Any person using social engineering for breaking into computer networks might also try to achieve the credentials of an authoritative network user and make them to reveal their credentials to log into the network.

Apart from this, social engineering is an element of different types of exploit. Like many virus writers, the tactics of social engineering often attempt to convince people to open email attachments that contain malware. Email phishers make use of this technique to induce people to divulge sensitive information and on the other hand vendors of ‘scareware’ use social engineering techniques that can frighten people into running software and extract money from their victims. In comes the role of penetration testing, which is an exercise that tries to simulate the methods that would be implemented by an attacker in order to gain access to your systems. This helps in highlighting certain vulnerabilities that might be exploited by a distant attacker who is not unauthorized to access your systems.

Penetration testing servicesare creative in their nature and consultants are constantly trying to discovering new vulnerabilities and the presence of existing vulnerabilities. In fact, penetration testing provides evidence of weak points in the systems and networks and highlights the possibilities of gaining access to information from the boundary of system by an unauthorized user. You can find various network penetration testing service providers that provide independent and comprehensive services, performed by a team of qualified and experienced penetration testers.

One such type of service includes IT health check that provides various public sector clients with comprehensive and thorough penetration plans on their entire IT infrastructure. More penetration services include as remote access testing, mobile device testing, security code review, web application testing, wireless penetration testing and many more. There is a wealth of information about penetration testing on the internet from which you can gain a better understanding of social engineering and other penetration testing services.

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