Owasp Top Vulnerabilities And How Penetration Testing Can Mitigate Them

In fact, in 2021/2022, 81.4% of organisations in the UK experienced at least one cyber attack, which makes the need for stringent cyber security more important than ever. Data breaches don’t just cost businesses money; they can also mean reputational damage, and this makes it imperative for businesses to stay ahead of potential vulnerabilities. This is where OWASP pen testing comes into the big picture. Wondering what it is and how network penetration testing can help enterprises fortify their defences? Here you go!

Understanding OWASP Penetration Testing

OWASP, short for the Open Web Application Security Project has flagship initiatives for web application security that include a framework for penetration testing. The primary goal of OWASP pen testing is to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses in an organisation’s digital infrastructure before they can be exploited by cybercriminals. To help you comprehend what OWASP does, here are top vulnerabilities and how pen testing can effectively mitigate these risks:

• Injection: This occurs when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as a part of a command or query. Injection vulnerabilities can lead to data leaks, data loss, or even complete server compromises. Common types of injection vulnerabilities include SQL injection, LDAP injection, and XML injection. With penetration testing. Businesses actively probe the application for such vulnerabilities by injecting malicious code and observing the system's response.
• Broken Authentication: When authentication mechanisms are not implemented by organisations correctly, they can be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorized access to sensitive IT systems. Broken authentication vulnerabilities often stem from weak password policies, session management flaws, or insufficient authentication methods. Through penetration testing, security professionals can assess the robustness of authentication mechanisms and identify weak points before attackers exploit them.
• Sensitive Data Exposure: When businesses fail to protect sensitive data, such as financial information, personally identifiable information (PII), or credentials, it can lead to devastating consequences. This data breach or system vulnerability is a result of inadequate encryption, improper data storage, or insecure transmission channels. Here, pen testing helps to evaluate the effectiveness of data protection measures and identifies potential loopholes that could lead to data exposure.
• XML External Entities (XXE): XML External Entities vulnerabilities occur when an XML input containing a reference to an external entity is processed by a weakly configured XML parser. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to read sensitive data, execute remote code, or perform denial-of-service attacks. However, when you reach out to professionals for pen testing, they can craft malicious XML payloads to assess the application's susceptibility to XXE attacks.

Conclusion

Believe it or not, in today’s dynamic world of cybersecurity threats, conventional cybersecurity measures such as antivirus and firewalls no longer work to thwart sophisticated attacks. Hackers constantly brainstorm and devise new techniques to bypass defence infiltrating systems, and businesses need to keep up with these attacks to safeguard their digital infrastructure. By conducting OWASP network penetration testing, businesses can uncover vulnerabilities in web apps, networks and systems, mitigate the risk of costly data breaches, comply with regulations such as GDPR and protect their reputation.