A wide array of business enterprises is prone to cybercriminals attacks. Hence, business enterprises should go the extra mile to protect different external and internal web applications.

There are different businesses that have the notion that vulnerability scans are sufficient to locate various security failings within the web application.

Although vulnerability scans will highlight the weaknesses, the web application penetration testing will reveal how perfectly you can hold up in the real world attack with unauthorized users.

What is web application penetration Testing?

It includes the testing of the security integrity of the browser-based applications of the company.

Such kind of testing includes a wide array of methodological series of different steps that come with collecting information about the target systems. It is inclusive of finding different faults and vulnerabilities in them.

The OWASP or Open Web Application Security project contributes to being the community that focuses on discovering and reporting the different vulnerabilities of the web application security.

Due to the massive expansion of different web applications, many internet resources are spent on creating the software, configuration of the applications that help in working on the landscape correctly.

The frontier has now come up with the other vector of the attack, which the malicious hackers use for personal gains.

As web applications are responsible for holding sensitive data, it is a prerequisite to ensure their security during the times. Execution of the web application penetration testing happens to be an indispensable part of SDLC.

Steps for the execution of Web application penetration testing

Execution of the web app penetration testing emphasizes the web application setup and the environment.

Testing of the web app primarily focuses on collecting public details about the web application, after which the network is mapped out. After this, the investigation of the injection tampering attacks is accomplished. It is followed by the handling and actual learning of the app.

Here is a list of the steps, which are involved in the execution of the web application penetration testing:

Information gathering

It contributes to being a crucial step of the web app penetration testing. It offers a plethora of information for recognizing different vulnerabilities, after which they are exploited at a later off stage.

You should consider this as the foundation of the pyramid. There are primarily two different kinds of reconnaissance, which depend on the kind of interaction you should seek with the target system, including passive reconnaissance and active reconnaissance.

Researching and exploiting

There are a plethora of security tools to execute web application penetration testing. If you are willing to narrow down the choice, selecting a few tools will be challenging. Hence, the reconnaissance phase is considered to be crucial.

It offers a helping hand in finding the different exploits and vulnerabilities. It is also useful in narrowing the attack vectors.

Owing to this, such tools are useful in accomplishing such goals. Few of the well-renowned tools which are used during the web app penetration testing are inclusive of Watcher, Wfuzz, Ratprozy, Skipfish, Hydra, Metasploit, to name a few.

Recommendations and reporting

It is essential to write web application reports, like the writing of the penetration testing reports. The report structure should be concise and clear, along with the adequate data amount, which helps in supporting the findings.

You should ensure to stick to the methods and be very descriptive. In this context, you need to write the exploits correctly, after which you should make sure to categorize them critically.

 It offers assistance to potential clients in emphasizing the efforts to fix the system’s vital parts. There are different business organizations that ensure to write the reports so that the staff of client IT and the higher management understand the reports and the degree to which they are prone to the risks.

Ongoing support and remediation

There is a wide assortment of business organizations that cannot remedy the vulnerabilities, which are revealed in the penetration test.

Hence, the best practice is the mitigation of the high and crucial vulnerabilities after which they should concentrate on the low and medium.

Here, prioritization plays a crucial role as the chances of exploitation of vulnerabilities differ. Though the chances of vulnerability attacks are possible, it is not possible without any access to the internal system.

However, there are few vulnerabilities, that execute the remote code risks. There is a wide assortment of web application penetration testing, which provides a re-testing as the contract’s integral part.

After this, the companies offer a secondary penetration test, which verifies different mitigated vulnerabilities present in the previous test.

It is known to work with the security and IT teams closely, which helps resolve different vulnerabilities present after the first test’s execution.

Methods of penetration testing

Here is a list of the steps, which are involved in penetration web application testing:

Internal testing

It involves the simulation of an attack by the tester which has access to the application, present behind the firewall.

Blind testing

In this type of testing, the tester gets the name of the enterprise being targeted. It offers a real-time look of the security look into how the actual application assault is going to occur.

Double-blind testing

In such kind of testing, the security personnel will not have any sort of prior information of the simulated attack.

Targeted testing

In such a scenario, the security personnel and tester work and monitor each other’s movements. It is regarded as a valuable training exercise that offers real-time feedback to the security team.

Web application penetration testing is inclusive of the testing of the source code, database connectivity, environment, error data, and beta data of the application.

It helps in finding different vulnerabilities, thereby exploiting them. The penetration testing and Vulnerability assessment service involves securing the web app with the aid of various automated tools.