Why You Should Hire a Licensed Penetration Tester (LPT)
It is clear that the threat of cybercrime is on the rise. This is particularly so because more people are turning to technology and making it part of their daily lives, be it for personal needs or professional assistance. Cyber-attacks pose many dangers and problems. When they take place, businesses and companies are always at risk of losing important data or end up with compromised customer and transaction records. Those concerns call for the help of cybersecurity professionals like License Penetration Testers (LPT).
What is an LPT
The cybersecurity field is quite vast. As such, professionals who opt to pursue that career have to specialize in given roles and a License Penetration Tester is one of those. One needs to earn the LPT certification before starting to practice. Part of the requirements to earn the license is attempting and passing the LPTV v8 Exam. However, before become legible for this exam you must possess an ECSA credential.
There are a number of important details that you need to know regarding the LPT v8 Exam. After paying, you will have access to helpful reading resources to help you prepare for the exam as well as have an access pass to iLabs. The exam period runs for 30 days within which candidates should submit their exam reports, otherwise, they will fail. Reattempting the exam will cost you a fee. Two year later after successfully getting a license, an LPT needs to renew it at an additional cost.
Having a license officially validates the knowledge and skills of an LPT in given areas. Some of the roles that LPTs perform include:
- Penetration testing of internal and external firewall
- Web application analysis
- Password cracking
- Addressing Denial of service issues
- Social engineering
- SQL, switch and router troubleshooting
- Wireless network checking
- Fixing mobile devices, VoIP, security patches, VPN, Virtual Machines, Cloud, surveillance cameras, broadband, data leakage and email security.
The Value of LPTs
Given the roles of LPTs highlighted above, it is clear that firms and businesses need their professional services. In the process of people adopting technology, especially in business settings, the information systems present complexities. It is due to those complexities that you need a pen tester.
Licensed penetration testers will step in to demonstrate whether your network can easily be accessed or just evaluate the available software version numbers and recommend their patches. These are important pointers to note and opting to hire an LPT for regular pen testing could be a good decision.
Since the complexities of most system tend to present vulnerabilities, it would be more beneficial to have the LPT to handle the most common vulnerable areas than testing everything. The latter option could lead to a large report of vulnerabilities that could be expensive to fix.
Another reason that could convince you to hire an LPT is their knowledge base. Further, their licenses make them reliable. In turn, you could only opt to contract an LPT for a short term project to confirm whether a particular vulnerability is present or not. This approach could prove viable to many companies since it makes it almost certain that existing security problems will be fixed if the LPT’s report confirms so.
Why Hire an LPT
Various reasons exist why it is necessary for companies to hire an LPT. Since security is a thorny issue, you need to address it as early as possible. Failure to do so could expose important company data to hackers. Rightfully so, pen testers are always the first group of professionals a company requires in addressing its security concerns. LPT’s recommendation reports clearly suggest the next cybersecurity professional to hire.
Although hiring an LPT for regular pen testing requires a budget, the benefits outweigh the expenses. Their recommendations can go a long way in preventing denial of service attacks that could dent a company’s image in the eyes of current and potential clients. Such a simple showing of vulnerability can be all it takes for a firm to start reporting losses due to dwindling numbers of clients.
Apart from just thinking about hiring an LPT, companies should consider retaining one. In so doing, it will be easy to handle a wide range of vulnerabilities. Such an LPT will be familiar with past, present, and unfixed vulnerabilities hence be best placed to address them accordingly.
It is clear that License Penetration Testers play a vital role in the success of companies. At the same time, the increasing possibilities of more cyberattacks makes the job outlook for pen testers promising. As such, this is the best time to consider enrolling your employees in a Certified Security Analyst (ECSA) program at Infotec. You can contact us for more information.
For more information about Infotec or any of our programs click here: http://www.infotectraining.com/ or https://ops.infotecpro.com/course_schedule/course_schedule.cfm.