The first successful hacker attack breaks confidence in the reliability of solutions and data safety. The company is experiencing losses and a blow to its reputation. They face a terrible question: "What if this happens again?"
So, please welcome penetration testing – the chance to look at your defence through the hacker's eyes and fix all the gaps based on the report received.
Below, we talked about the concept of "pentesting", the benefits of conducting an independent penetration test, the issues of choosing the right tool and the potentials of the solution from Fortra – Core Impact. 

What is pentesting  

A penetration test is an effective tool for checking IT security, rapidly gaining popularity. Its essence lies in one sentence: the company's infrastructure is tested to identify potential security holes.
The penetration test allows you to analyze the effectiveness of organizational and technical security measures. Both protection systems (classic and new attacks) and employees (targeted phishing) are subjected to verification. The whole set of actions aims to identify gaps in programs and system software and measure the effectiveness of existing protection tools.
Most pentesting solutions show you where the gaps are and recommend how to fix them.
Since the field of information security is very dynamic, it is recommended to carry out security checks as often as possible. After all, every software update, new employee or new software is a potential backdoor for an attacker. However, which pentest method is more effective?

Outsourcing vs Do-It-Yourself Pentest  

Pentesting is conducted either by a third party or by your internal department.
Penetration testing is considered a service, and often, companies apply for penetration testing to third-party organizations with expert knowledge and experience in this area. However, such a service is quite resource-intensive, and many companies cannot conduct it correctly and on an ongoing basis.
You should also consider that it is not enough to seek help only from third-party pentest specialists: the cybersecurity landscape is constantly changing, so the recommendations you were given six months ago may no longer be relevant now. Therefore, an independent pentest is often a better choice.
So, having the pentest team in the company means the ability to conduct testing as often as you want. If you reinforce it with automated solutions that check protection 24/7, you can significantly improve your security. Your specialists know exactly what problems often arise and offer an individual approach to solving them.
If you doubt whether your employees' qualifications are enough to conduct a penetration test, learn more about Fortra's Core Impact.

About Fortra's Core Impact Solution

Core Impact is a comprehensive solution that allows the organization to independently find and eliminate gaps in the cyber defence system. Core Impact tests many risk areas, including servers, endpoints, web applications, wireless networks, networking, and mobile devices.
Its fundamental features include self-service penetration testing, certified exploits, and a centralized set of tools. It makes Core Impact a reliable platform and an indispensable supplementary tool for cyber professionals. With its help, the information security department can conduct rapid penetration tests (RPT) and generate reports in a few simple steps. Moreover, Core Impact allows even a newbie security specialist to monitor the state of the security system almost continuously.

Crucial Benefits of Core Impact  

The modern market offers an impressive number of pentesting tools for every taste and budget. So let's compare specific solutions and sort through them.
Below we have analyzed the advantages of Core Impact over Metasploit and Pentera solutions.
Core Impact vs Metasploit
The first and most crucial difference is the security of exploits. Metasploit uses open-source exploits that an attacker could potentially manipulate. Regarding Core Impact, all exploits are checked and certified by the quality control department, guaranteeing their safety at 100%. Additionally, if requested, Core Impact can also use Metasploit exploits in its toolkit. Of course, after checking them first.
Unlike Metasploit, Core Impact can integrate with Cobalt Strike, the primary tool for "Red Teams", and allows you to emulate complex hacker attacks on your information security. In addition, Core Impact integrates with Beyond Security, DDI, Tenable, Qualys, and Rapid7.
Besides, Core Impact has a user-friendly interface and an improved wizard system.
Core Impact vs Pentera
Pentera is a fully automated one-click penetration testing tool. However, it has its pros and cons: although it is convenient, there is no guarantee that the results will be 100% reliable. In addition, you can overlook severe problems among a wide range of gaps.
Core Impact allows pentesters to do their own testing by offering automation of routine processes that simplifies the work. That is, all found gaps will be additionally evaluated and screened out by specialists. The product also has scheduled tasks that allow you to perform vulnerability tests, patch checks, and vulnerability scanner checks, but this is a helpful bonus.
Another product difference is quality. Pentera is an advanced vulnerability scanner with some exploitation capabilities. However, the only scope that the tool covers is vulnerability testing. It is not a full-featured penetration testing tool.
Core Impact installs an agent to validate vulnerabilities and resolve post-exploitation tasks. It makes the quality and depth of the tool's exploits higher. Core Impact focuses on several attack vectors. The solution allows you to add a Beacon object BOF file to the agent and then use this BOF to add your own scripts/platform. In addition, specialists can run the exploit through the Cobalt Strike SOCKS server in Beacon.
In conclusion, the post-exploitation tools available in Core Impact are not represented in the Pentera toolkit.

Conclusion  

Core Impact remains profitable for users. Due to it, you can avoid involving too expensive highly-qualified specialists to conduct a pentest. Now all the tools for pentesting and verifying your cybersecurity solutions are in your hands.
If you have any questions regarding the solution, its implementation or operation, please get in touch with us: moc.hcetokab%40artrof