Peak inside a hacker's mind

Threats on companies' systems are growing immensely, especially with technologies, such as 5G and IoT, that evokes security challenges that your business must meet, with hackers waiting to exploit any flaws in your security.

One of the current extensive concerns is that enterprises are not aware that they need to be securing each device on their network to avoid any possibility for cyber-criminals to get into their systems. It is no longer the question of making sure your main workstation is protected, as most of the time the threats come from 3rd party apps and places you wouldn't even expect which are the places most often overlooked by pen test firms and developers. Companies give a lot of attention to how secure their application is but overlook the 3rd party apps they are using. These 3rd party apps such as Jira, Confluence, Zendesk,etc are not given enough attention because most companies assume that as it's a well-known 3rd party and it should be safe to use. However, nothing is safe on the internet and those places are for sure an area where a hacker would want totry and exploit the opportunity to attack.

Hackers will concentrate on security breaches in the infrastructure of a company and will typically target four main industries,which are healthcare, government, non-profit, finance and insurance. However,small and medium size businesses are also under a great risk, as typically hackers are aware that defence systems of a small company are not going to be as great as of a large enterprise thus providing them a great chance to penetrate.

Think of the mind of a hacker like something you haven't experienced. People tend to be under the misconception that hacking is all based on technology and technological knowledge only, but that is far from the reality. Skilful hackers will study your company behaviour, patterns, what apps are you working with... even analyse social media profiles of your employers and study psychology of any similar patterns that they can use to break in.This is exactly why relying on only AI or technology based software’s for your defence is nowhere near as effective as letting a skilful white hat hacker simulate an attack on your systems, as if it was a real attack.

What companies often don’t realise is that every organisation has its own individual unique threats it can be impacted by that you might not even think of. You can have all the security measures in place, with the most up to date cybersecurity software installed, with data backup and recovery plan in place, but there is still a chance your systems can be accessed through less obvious ways that only a hacker can spot.

We use years of methodical experience to try and cover every possibility a hacker might think of to attack your company. Black hat hackers will use every door they can find to try to hack a company, and so do we, but ethically. White hat hackers are driven by a want to put their talent to honourable use and make sure that your company is protected.

We carefully study and collect insights about every client and company that we are working with as that is exactly what a skilful hacker would do. We think a lot about the business logic - we spend a lot of time USING the app or the product we're going to hack to get familiar with the flow. From there, it's easier for us to know what is valuable for the company to protect. We tend to be highly creative in our approaches and think of all the possible ways an unethical hacker would try to get into the system.

We take the "know your enemy" approach and use the same thinking processes to establish where companies' weakest points are to make sure we cover it before the hacker does. It's what we call a “threat-informed defence.”

So, what can you do as a business to make sure your assets are protected? First of all, make sure you work with a reputable and reliable pentest company that will thoroughly study and try to hack your systems by using penetration testing approaches.

As the cyber threats and attacks continuously grow and become more diverse,understanding why and how your business can be targeted and ensuring company security is vital. With that knowledge, you can create a unique defence, tailored just for your company that will ensure proper protection and business security for your assets, including irreplaceable reputation damage that hacker attacks can cause.