As businesses engage in the digital movement, cybersecurity has become an important aspect of most boardroom discussions. In fact, a recent report revealed that cybercrime will cost a staggering $10.3 billion in total in 2022.
This is where online penetration testing tools gain traction in cybersecurity.
Today, we want to guide you through the importance, benefits, and available vendors of online penetration testing, giving you a comprehensive understanding of how effective online penetration testing can be in hardening your data and protecting your business.
8 Online Penetration Testing Tools You Need to Know
Here are some of the top online penetration testing tools to make the right choice for your security needs.
1. The Pentest stars
Astra is a leading provider of penetration testing services, ensuring zero false positive reports with comprehensive scans capable of running over 3,000 tests. These reports are reviewed by expert penetration testers, who also provide remediation assistance. This website penetration testing tool is capable of testing compliance such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001.
In addition to website pen testing, Astra also offers penetration testing services for firewalls, networks, cloud environments, mobile applications and APIs.
Over the past year, Astra has added names like ICICI, UN and Dream 11 to their already impressive client list, which includes the likes of Ford, Gillette and GoDaddy.
feature:
Scanner Capacity: Unlimited continuous scanning
Manual Penetration Testing: Suitable for web applications, mobile applications, APIs and cloud infrastructure
Accuracy: Zero false
positives Vulnerability Management: Provides dynamic vulnerability management dashboard
Compliance: Helps you comply with PCI- DSS, HIPAA, ISO27001 & SOC2
Price: Starting at $199/month & $1,999/year
Who is it for?
SaaS providers, eCommerce website owners and public offices across geographies and industries.
advantage
Provide gap analysis.
You must rescan after repair.
Provide publicly verifiable certificates.
Ensure zero false positives.
Detect business logic errors and scan what's going on behind the login.
shortcoming
There could have been more integration.
No free trial available.
2. Nessus
Nessus is a standard firewall testing tool known for its vulnerability assessment and constant updates to ensure comprehensive protection and detection of vulnerabilities. It has a free version, but the features are a bit lacking compared to commercial products.
feature:
Scanner Capacity: Web Applications
Manual Penetration Testing: No
Accuracy: False positives may occur
Vulnerability Management: Yes (additional cost)
Compliance: HIPAA, ISO, NIST, PCI-DSS
Price: Starting at $4,236.20 per year
Who it’s for use?
Cybersecurity professionals and enterprise security teams.
advantage
Rapid asset discovery.
Reduce attack surface and ensure compliance
Malware detection and sensitive data discovery are also performed through the tool.
shortcoming
Expert restoration is available at additional cost.
Large amounts of data cannot be processed while scanning.
3. W3af
W3af is a free online penetration testing framework that enhances any penetration testing tool with its guides. It can identify nearly 200 types of defects in various web applications.
feature:
Scanner Capacity: Web Applications
Manual Penetration Testing: No
Accuracy: False positives possible
Vulnerability Management: None
Compliance: No
Price: Open Source
Who is it for?
Beginners to ethical hacking and other small to medium sized organizations.
advantage
Allows brute force cracking and auditing.
Can do SQL injection and file inclusion
with GUI.
shortcoming
False positives may occur.
The GUI can be difficult to navigate.
4. Zed Attack Proxy
ZAP is one of the best online penetration testing tools, it is open source and provided by OWASP. It can be used on Linux, Microsoft and Mac systems to run penetration tests on web applications to detect various flaws.
feature:
Scanning Capabilities: Web Application Security Testing, Network Ports, API Testing
Manual Penetration Testing: Yes (performed by experts)
Accuracy: False positives possible
Vulnerability Management: No
Compliance: OWASP
Pricing: Open Source
Who is it for?
Ethical hacker, cybersecurity professional
advantage
Send automatic alerts after crawling and scanning
Great for beginners and experts alike.
Free online penetration testing tool.
shortcoming
Can be very slow.
Reports can be confusing and long.
5. Burp Suite
Burp Suite is a penetration testing tool provided by Port Swigger, which provides various services that are essential for any penetration tester. Some of these tools include Spider, Proxy, Repeater Intruder, etc.
It has a free version (called Community Edition) as well as a premium business solution (Professional Edition).
feature:
Scanner Capacity: Web Applications
Manual Penetration Testing: Yes
Accuracy: False positives may occur
Vulnerability Management: No
Compliance: PCI-DSS, OWASP Top 10, HIPAA, GDPR
Price: Starting at $449/per user/year
It is given Who uses it?
Beginners, ethical hackers, and security professionals.
advantage
Provides advanced automated online penetration testing.
Provides step-by-step recommendations for each vulnerability discovered.
Complex targets can be easily crawled based on URL and content.
shortcoming
Advanced solutions are commercialized and expensive.
Does not provide vetted online penetration testing and scanning reports
6. Probely
Probely is one of the leading online penetration testing tools designed for web application scanning and API scanning. It provides partial and incremental scans, automatically prioritizes vulnerabilities based on risk, and provides proof of legitimacy for each issue.
feature:
Scanner Capacity: Web Application and API
Manual Penetration Testing: No
Accuracy: False positives are possible Vulnerability
Management: Yes, patch management and zero-day mitigation are available
Compliance: PCI-DSS, ISO27001, HIPAA, GDPR
Price: Free Basic plan and Professional plan starting at $1198/year
Who is it for?
Developers, security teams and DevOps.
advantage
Detailed management reporting to assist with compliance audits
Interactive dashboard
Scalable application scanning
shortcoming
Limited ability to detect vulnerabilities
Custom vulnerability scores are inconsistent with general scores.
7. Intruder
Intruder is an elite online penetration testing software and vulnerability scanner for cost-effective data protection. It ensures continuous monitoring, compliance reporting, and attack surface scanning, and provides easy scalability for enterprises of all sizes and industries.
feature:
Scanner capacity: website, server and cloud.
Manual Penetration Testing: No
Accuracy: Possibility of false
positives Vulnerability Management: None
Compliance: SOC 2 and ISO 27001/27002
Price: Basic plan starts at $1,215 per target per year
Who is it for?
Developers, cybersecurity teams and DevOps.
advantage
Provides comprehensive security assessment
Automated scanning ensures real-time alerts on exposed ports
Vulnerability risk assessment and prioritization
shortcoming
No publicly verifiable certificates
Lack of assurance of zero false positives
8. Acunetix
Acunetix is a vulnerability scanner that provides effective website penetration testing services online. It promises to get 90% of the scan results even halfway through, and works with different settings to help you focus on the most important issues.
feature:
Scanner Capacity: Web Application
Manual Penetration Testing: No
Accuracy: False positives possible
Vulnerability Management: No
Compliance: OWASP, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, NIST
Price: Custom Quote
Who is it for?
Developers and security professionals
advantage
Reduce false positives by leveraging proofs
Automate periodic scans
Agile testing with detailed reporting
shortcoming
Lack of transparency, no official pricing plan
Failure to provide expert remedial assistance with professionals.
What is online penetration testing?
Online penetration testing is a proactive cybersecurity practice designed to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses in a computer system, network, application, or infrastructure. Think of it as your digital security guard. It can be operated remotely to check a system's defenses by prodding real network intrusions, all over the Internet.
Unlike traditional pen testing, which often requires physical access to a location, its online counter-agent can span the globe and seamlessly adapt to dynamic cybersecurity environments. It focuses on protecting your digital assets, maximizing efficiency, and providing realistic walkthroughs of potential cyber threats while keeping your budget in check.
7 Benefits of Using Online Penetration Testing Tools
1. Utilize automated security scans
In fast-paced DevOps environments, security often takes a backseat due to the focus on releasing new features and feature updates. By automating security scans with online penetration testing tools, you can ensure the security of all major updates before they are released.
2. Conduct regular online penetration testing
Regular penetration testing is crucial to maintaining strong security. Inconsistent online testing can bring several disadvantages:
Vulnerabilities can slip through between scans conducted months apart.
Your website or application can be vulnerable to various attacks, such as SQLi, cross-site scripting, and more.
Since online network penetration testing is infrequent, the pressure to remediate can be intense.
3. Seamlessly monitor and manage vulnerabilities
Penetration testing reports are valuable for risk management and resolving security issues. However, they don't have the same impact as dynamic dashboards. Dashboards with graphical representations of vulnerability data allow for better management of their status and remediation process.
Online penetration testing platforms like Astra feature interactive dashboards that make vulnerability scanning and management easier while also helping you through the remediation process.
4. Obtain continuous feedback for developers
If you choose an online penetration testing tool that can integrate with your company's CI/CD pipeline, it can send feedback to your developers about the security status of specific code updates.
It helps you create a DevSecOps environment where security testing is an integral part of software development, minimizing the gap between vulnerability discovery and remediation.
5. Enhance customer confidence
Security is slowly but surely becoming one of the key factors influencing business owners’ choice of vendors. When you are continuously protected by defensive and offensive security measures, you inspire trust among your customers.
Integrating security with your regular business functions demonstrates your approach to protecting customer data and their privacy.
6. Promote rapid remediation
Online penetration testing is easy, cheap, and fast. Therefore, you can allocate resources to fix the problems that are discovered in a timely manner. Some penetration testing providers, such as Astra, offer options to create collaboration channels between security engineers and developers to facilitate such patches. This also prevents bugs from piling up.
7. Compliance preparation
With paperwork, reports, and detailed assessments of security protocols, compliance audits are worrisome events that can send a chilling wind of anxiety throughout an organization.
A regular online penetration testing program can reduce this anxiety by identifying vulnerabilities and giving development teams time to address them, thereby improving a company's attitude and confidence in auditing.