Penetration testing offers two important benefits — security and regulatory compliance. Rising cybercrime, such as the Equifax breach, has affected millions of Americans who now insist on knowing that companies will keep their data secure. And government regulators are happy to help them do it by penalizing companies that do not comply with federal guidelines.
The new European Union (EU) Regulation 2016/679 GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) have gone into effect May 25, 2018. This will have a far-reaching effect and identify many possible repercussions for any organization collecting, processing, and/or storing any EU citizen’s information. Your company need not be located in any of the EU countries; rather if your company collects any EU citizen’s information, your company must adhere to and be complaint to the new regulation.
Organizational leaders must understand that comprehensive, risk-based decisions are vital to balancing the force multiplying effects of information systems with the risk of those systems being inherently vulnerable to exploitation. If you want to prevent or reduce the likelihood of an attack, you have to risk management strategy: how your organization will frame, assess, respond to and monitor risk over time.
Audits are necessary to determine whether or not an individual, company, or organization is meeting the requirements of a specific set of regulations or controls. Since certain regulations can impose steep financial penalties or other negative sanctions for non-compliance on both organizations and employees, it is extremely beneficial for organizations to routinely have compliance requirements verified and conduct audits to ensure continued compliance.
Penetration testing – sometimes called white-hat hacking – is how companies manage risk, increase business continuity, and protect clients from data breaches. In highly regulated industries such as healthcare, banking, and service industries, it also helps companies stay compliant. SOC 2, HIPAA, and PCI DSS are three of the main regulations that require penetration testing.
PCI version 3.2 changes include penetration testing every six months, replacing SSL with TLS, having a formal process for detection and reporting critical security control failures, and multi-factor authentication for admin accounts.