Enterprises Strengthen App Security by Involving White Hat Hackers

Last updated on January 15th, 2024 at 03:12 pm

A decade ago, white hat hackers (also known as ethical hackers), evolved and help enterprises in uncovering their app vulnerabilities. But these days, we don’t hear much about them. The increasing need for cyber security checks calls for feedback from external sources. Penetration testing is also commonly used these days to test apps and systems for security issues. The rising importance of enterprise security has reached the executive level with more tools than ever before. Huge consulting firms also offer similar services to enterprises looking for a reliable security testing company. The number of IT breaches increases each week, with 2.3 billion records leaked in June 2019 alone. Thus, it is important to strengthen security checks and partner with experts to achieve business goals. The main issue is that security consultants fail to achieve the security that is required to avoid breaches and other cyber attacks. 

So enterprises have thought about pairing up with white hat hackers to reboot their relationship with an open mind. Following are a few ways enterprises have planned to move along to ensure cyber security:

Switch your White Hat Hackers Often 

When enterprises engage with external security testing experts, they often make a mistake of sticking with the same vendor for a long time. This breeds complacency and it can also leave many system vulnerabilities undetected. White hat hackers possess different skill sets, strengths, and weaknesses. Hence, enterprises should never hire the same testers to perform the same tests each year. Instead, they should hire new testing experts who can identify vulnerabilities.

Provide Complete Infrastructure

Chief security officers refrain from providing complete infrastructure which makes it impossible for the hackers to mimic a real-world attack scenario. Thus, it is important to provide a complete infrastructure that is important to highlight all possible vulnerabilities in a system/application. Testers achieve the best results with white-box testing and need to know everything about the company. 

Time Constraints

Another challenge that penetration testers face is that they often work on a project basis. Due to a limited time frame, testers have less time and increased challenges to perform different types of testing. Testers should be engaged frequently just so that they can think like a real-attacker. The downside of pen testing is that it has just become a checkbox exercise, which means most of them don’t even know about the reports and underlying security holes, leaving their business at risk. 

Thus, it gets important for enterprises to invest in a good security testing company. Ethical hackers play an important role in reducing the growing problems of cyber security breaches. But enterprises should also provide ethical hackers with all the infrastructure they require to conduct testing. Firms should change switch their hackers every now and then, to highlight all vulnerabilities in their systems and apps. Sticking to the same vendor each year may leave security weaknesses unidentified which may not be good for the business in the long run.