Tool Selection for Penetration Testing

There are several types of tools for penetration testing. The number of available tools is so many that it will be practically impossible to learn all of them. Using the wrong set of tools can be a problem because the pen tester would have wasted so much time trying to gather the wrong information. As a beginner, it may take some guidance to be able to select the right tool. A poorly planned and executed penetration tool is as bad as not acting to protect your systems.

There is no room for complacency in the cyber world. As the level of threats increases in the cyber world, so does the need to understand the most effective and efficient way to combat the threats. The type of tool you select for a Pentest may depend on your utmost objective.

Assuming that you are starting initially, a vulnerability assessment is an excellent place to start. If you already know of existing vulnerabilities, you may skip vulnerability testing. However, it is vital that penetration testing is conducted at about the same time as a vulnerability assessment. This is because, if the environment of the target changes, the penetration test result may not capture what it is intended to capture.

As the cyber world never takes a vacation, I suggest that you plan the vulnerability assessment to coincide with penetration testing. Vulnerability assessment is very important to effective penetration testing. Vulnerability assessment can be automated or performed manually.

Vulnerability assessment tools may be classified according to where the activity is required. There are cloud-based vulnerability scanners, host-based vulnerability scanners, network-based vulnerability scanners, and database-based vulnerability scanners. Cloud-based scanners are best suited for cloud-based applications. The host-based scanners are best suited for single host or systems or single devices in a network. An example could be a router or a printer. The network-based scanners are best suited for scanning internal networks, while the database-based scanners are the best-suited scanning database systems.