Flipping the Script – Proactive Defenses through Vulnerability Assessments and Penetration Tests

“We’ve been hacked!” The three words that no organization ever wants to hear, and an event that can bring the most sophisticated companies to their knees. Each morning, I receive a series of news feeds highlighting the most recent incident where a hacker was able to take control of another company’s network. Just this morning, I received an article about a hacker breaking into a water treatment facility in Florida to take control of the system that controls the treatment system; increasing the levels of lye added to the water from 100 parts per million to over 11,000 parts per million – an extremely dangerous level. This type of nefarious activity is a daily occurrence.

While smaller companies often believe only larger organizations are at risk, the statistics show the contrary with 43% of cyber-attacks targeting small businesses.

This begs the question, who would you rather have identifying the vulnerabilities in your network – the hackers or someone you trust? Citrin Cooperman’s TRAC team’s vulnerability management experts can act as your “simulated bad-guy,” identifying the weaknesses using the same tools and techniques a hacker would, and providing your IT team valuable information to correct those vulnerabilities. We can do this through a few impactful services:

• Vulnerability assessments: Searching for vulnerabilities or unpatched holes in your network defenses which can be used to infiltrate your system.
• Penetration tests: Exploiting vulnerabilities in your network to see how deep into your systems and infrastructure we can get before being detected.

It’s much better knowing where your weaknesses are before someone takes advantage of them. More importantly, the cost of proactively testing your network defense is a fraction of the costs you incur to rebuild that network after an attack. The average cost of a breach can be almost 40% higher when a company does not prepare.

Are you confident your network could sustain an attack from a bad actor outside your organization? Have you battle tested your defenses to ensure you’re getting timely notification of attempted attacks? Trust, but verify! For more information on how we can help you evaluate your network’s defenses before the hackers do, contact Michael Camacho at mcamacho@citrincooperman.com.