How to hire an ethical hacking service to avoid a possible cyberattack

Discover some situations that merit hiring an ethical hacking service and find out why this practice is a tool to strengthen your company’s cybersecurity.

To show you in detail how the ethical hacking service can be used, we will address a specific use case in a company in the Health sector. Find out how, through our Ethical Hacking Cybersecurity consulting service, we managed to reveal crucial vulnerabilities. 

6 situations that require hiring an ethical hacking service

Hiring ethical hacking services may be necessary to ensure the protection and integrity of computer systems and data. 

Here are some common situations in which it may be appropriate to hire this service:

• Before implementing a new system or application

Before launching a new system, application, or website, it is advisable to perform penetration tests to identify possible security vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

Performing security tests to identify and correct possible vulnerabilities is crucial, especially if the company handles sensitive data or user information.

• After significant changes to the IT infrastructure

For example, when software upgrades, network changes, or new technology acquisitions are made. In such cases, it is essential to assess the system’s security to ensure that no new vulnerabilities have been introduced.

• After significant changes to the IT infrastructure

For example, when software upgrades, network changes, or new technology acquisitions are made. In such cases, it is essential to assess the system’s security to ensure that no new vulnerabilities have been introduced.

• Review compliance with rules and regulations

Many industries and sectors have specific information security requirements. Some cases may be the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union or the Payment Industry Security Standards (PCI DSS).

In this scenario, engaging ethical hacking services can help ensure compliance.

• After security incidents

If you have experienced a security incident, it is crucial to assess the extent of the damage and determine how it could have been prevented. 

To achieve this, penetration testing can help strengthen defenses and prevent future similar attacks.

• Conduct regular security assessments

Performing penetration tests regularly, even if there have been no significant changes to the system, is a good practice to ensure that security is robust. Cybersecurity threats are constantly evolving, and companies need to review whether their infrastructure is in a position to respond effectively. 

In this regard, an ethical hacking service can identify vulnerabilities and improve them before they can suffer a cybersecurity attack.

• As the use of cloud services increases

With the increased use of cloud services, it is essential to evaluate the security of cloud deployments to ensure the protection of stored and transmitted data.

Use Case: Cybersecurity analysis of all services published on the Internet

In this case, we tell you how we helped a company in the Health sector to know the cybersecurity status of its services published on the Internet. The organization, with more than ten thousand employees, needed to discover which were the vulnerable points that could allow an attacker to access their information.

A problem and a solution that met their needs

In response to the company’s request for cybersecurity analysis of all services published on the Internet, Wezen offered a complete solution. This consisted of the Ethical Hacking service, gray box, in Red Team mode.

That is, the client provided part of the information (public IP addresses) and from Wezen we took care of finding out all the services that were in those IP addresses. Then, being in Red Team mode, we carried out the ethical attack as a real attacker would do it.

How was Ethical Hacking Cybersecurity Consulting implemented in this case?

Pablo Alarcón Rivera, Security Analyst at Wezen comments: “The Ethical Hacking Cybersecurity consultancy allows us to know early on all vulnerable services, both external (website, mail, DNS, certificates, among others) and internal (servers, networks, Wi-Fi, databases, mail, among others). This service is executed in the same way as a real attacker, but with the difference that no damage is caused to the client’s infrastructure and information. In this case, it is used to deliver a report with all the findings found, ordered from most to least critical, which the client must mitigate to avoid being a victim of a cyberattack”.

What results did the client obtain when hiring the ethical hacking service?

Thanks to this analysis, we were able to detect critical vulnerabilities such as:

• HTTP Brute Force Logins With Default Credentials Reporting. That is, the detection or reporting of unauthorized access attempts through brute force attacks, specifically targeting default credentials in applications or systems that use the HTTP protocol. 
• Issues related to TLS (Transport Layer Security) or SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocols:
  • Report Vulnerable Cipher Suites for HTTPS, identifying cipher suites that present vulnerabilities in the implementation of HTTPS.
  • Certificate In Chain Expired, which made it possible to detect expired certificates in the chain that could affect not only security but also disrupt secure connections.
  • Deprecated TLSv1.0 and TLSv1.1 Protocol Detection. When reviewing the versions of the TLS protocol they were using, our experts found that they were working with earlier, less secure versions. 
  • Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information via HTTP, i.e., the transmission of sensitive or private data was transmitted over HTTP without encryption. 

These are some of the vulnerabilities that could give access to attackers and, thanks to their detection, the client was able to mitigate them and prevent a possible cyberattack. This would represent not only operational complications but also great economic losses.

In conclusion, 

Hiring an ethical hacking service is a measure that allows to protection of the IT security of companies using the same strategies that an attacker would use.

Through this success story from the health sector, we show how through a preventive and proactive approach with the intervention of experts, it is possible to detect and mitigate critical vulnerabilities. This not only avoids operational complications but also potential economic losses. 

In a context where cyber threats are constantly evolving, ethical hacking emerges as an indispensable ally to protect the integrity of corporate information.

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