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VAPT India - How Does It Help Your Business?
VAPT India - How Does It Help Your Business?

July 29, 2021

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In 2020, India saw an increase of 300% in overall cyberattacks as companies and employees transitioned to a work-from-home situation during the pandemic. This single statistic cements the importance of securing your organization’s assets from hackers and remains constantly vigilant against hacking attempts. This is where a vulnerability assessment and penetration testing (VAPT) procedure steps in to ensure security strengthening measures.

Businesses have also seen an increase in the adoption of cloud computing services and IoT devices. As you become increasingly connected to your customers, you also run the danger of exposing your vulnerabilities and risking your customers. VAPT procedures run both the detection of such security loopholes and testing them to understand their true impact before resolving them.

Does Your Business Need VAPT?

Given the time, resources, and costs involved, it’s not a surprise if you’re questioning your decision to conduct a VAPT procedure. There are probably a million things you can do with this amount to enhance user experience and increase customer retention, so why VAPT for your business?

 

  • The number of hidden vulnerabilities in a system is countless. A small flaw, when combined with other security risks, poses a great risk for your business. With VAPT, you’ll be able to evaluate the vulnerabilities that exist within the system and the impact they have on your company.

    Web Security Testing procedures are not generalized since every business’ security requirements greatly differ. From the production environment, industry regulations, level of exposure, sensitive data, to the size of the organization, everything matters. 

 

  • With VAPT, you’re granted a comprehensive and bird-eye perspective of your organization’s working and responses to cyberattacks. Depending on your preferred VAPT service provider’s skills and expertise, simulated attacks targeting the entire system and specific vulnerabilities will be planned.

    It will range throughout the system, targeting firewalls, routers, network devices, weak credentials, possibilities of SQL injection attacks, other parameter manipulation, etc. Essentially, all misconfigurations and programming inconsistencies should pop out during this process. 

 

  • Data is important - the more important it is to your organization, the more you need to protect it. A simple programming error could lead to a web service accepting requests without validating them, leading to data leaks.

    It could be confidential data relating to your organization’s processes or that of your customers, both of which could unleash permanent damage. Thus, VAPT procedures are highly recommended under cybersecurity strategies to keep your intellectual property and customer’s privacy safe. 

 

  • VAPT is also mandated by certain compliance requirements and government rules and regulations to ensure the protection of customer data. For example, ISO 27001 has a special clause for conducting this procedure. Under this, you’ll need to go through detailed testing of the network, all systems and components, and even web applications if they’re a part of the risk assessment process. 

 

  • An important extension of the VAPT procedure is that it verifies potential insider and outsider attacks through different types of testing processes. This ensures that you can protect your organization from unauthorized access on any front while leaving everyday operations uninterrupted. 
    • The black box testing is the most realistic representation of a hacker stepping into the system for the first time. Having no prior information, they discover vulnerabilities on the go. 
    • White-box testing proceeds with complete information of the system or employee credentials to reveal security risks. This is usually used when there are modifications within the company that needs to be tested for business impact or to evaluate insider attacks. 
    • Finally, grey box penetration testing is a combination of both, with the assumption that the hacker has some knowledge of the system. For web applications that are public-facing, it may not be very difficult to gain information and then exploit it.  

 

Conclusion

If you’re planning to go ahead with a VAPT in India for your organization, reading through this article is a great way to start. It’s always important - and advantageous - to do your due diligence before approaching your preferred service provider. Some organizations offer ‘VAPT services’ at prices that seem surprisingly low as compared to the industry trend. The trap falls when you realize that you’ve practically signed up for a vulnerability assessment. You’ll get your flaws pointed out to you, not exploited, tested in different environments, or resolved and retested.

Prepare a checklist as well. This can include questions about the skills and previous VAPT procedures conducted by the company. In addition, ask for sample pentesting reports to take note of their reporting style and the emphasis on individual security requirements. Those companies that combine automated and manual testing methods should score better on your marking sheet. While providing exact pricing of the procedure may be difficult, since your system is a mystery until they explore it, a rough price structure should be no trouble. 


 


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Kanishk Tagade
Marketing Manager

Kanishk Tagade is a Marketing Manager at Astra Security. Having a hawk-eyed view on the cybersecurity threat landscape, market-shifts, and hacktivism activities, Kanishk is a community member of the Nasscom and corporate contributor at many technology magazines and security awareness platforms. Editor-in-Chief at "QuickCyber.news", his work is published in more than 50+ news platforms. He is also a social micro-influencer for the latest cybersecurity defense mechanisms, Digital Transformation, Machine Learning, AI and IoT products.

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