We understand how dramatically the need for cybersecurity and automation has increased over the past few years. Yet penetration testing has remained the same. Although crowdsourced security testing evolved as an alternative to pen testing, it is not automated and relies on humans. However, recently, automated pen-testing tools have advanced so much so that they are usable under certain conditions. This gives birth to an important question – can these automated tools replace human pen testers? People who have worked with a pen testing company are occupied in testing these tools and comparing them to the results of those derived from manual en testing. However, we are still unsure regarding what the future holds for penetration testing.
Automated Pen-Testing Tools – How Do They Work?
The automated pen testing tools perform a pen test by uring an agent or a virtual machine (VM) that simulates the pen tester’s laptop/computer or attack proxy by plugging into the network. The bot performs reconnaissance on its environment by performing similar scans and mimic human tests such as running a vulnerability scan with a tool or a port-and-services sweep using Nmap. once these automated tools have established their place in the environment, they will filter through their findings. This is how it is different from a vulnerability scanner.A vulnerability scanner lists a series of vulnerabilities and potential vulnerabilities they have identifies, without their context about exploitability. They often use the same tests in the system to prove that it is vulnerable however they do not cater to false positives.
Benefits of Automated Pen Testing
Before a pen testing company moves further to achieve the automated pen-testing tools, it isi important to have a look at its benefits. A few of them are listed below:
The Speed of Testing and Reporting increases
First of all, the speed of testing and reporting grows faster and the reports are simple and readable. QA managers no longer need to wait for days or weeks for a report drafted by humans. This is a major weakness of human pen testers. Since the continuous delivery approach requires quick actions, many reports may be out of date before being delivered. The environment has been updated many times since the test, which gives birth to new potential vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that were not present during the pen test. This is why a traditional pen test provides a realistic snapshot of the security posture at that point in time. Automated pen-testing tools remove this limitation by running tests daily, twice daily, and delivering reports almost instantly. This means that a pen test can test an environment and detect potentially exploitable configuration changes on a daily basis, rather than waiting for a report that is delivered weeks later.
Another major advantage of automated pen testing tools is the entry point. A human pen tester may get a specific entry point into the network still an automated tool can run the same pen test multiple times from different entry points to identify vulnerabilities and monitor various impact scenarios depending on the entry point. This is theoretically possible with a human, it would require a lot of money to pay each time for a different test.
There is some downside of automated pen-testing tools. Firstly, they do not understand web apps like humans. While they are designed to detect like a web server at the ports, they will not understand that a system has a vulnerability in the internal API or server-side request forgery. This is due to the complexity of today’s web apps and even scanners like web app scanners can have a tough time detecting vulnerabilities that are not visibly exposed. This technology shows a lot of promise, however, it is still uncertain if it can replace the need for human pen testers completely.
Thus, it is important for pen testing companies to get their hands on the best possible pen-testing tools and processes to amp up their game and remain ahead of the competition. Although it may not be that easy, yet achieving automated pen testing tools may also be favorable for their business. There are many security challenges that exist in automation for pen-testing tools but it is expected that experts will find ways to provide more secure pen tests with automation in the near future. For now, we expect a blend of manual and automated pen testing to go hand in hand for a few years to come. And we also hope human pen testers to make their testing more effective and efficient.
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