Identify weaknesses, helps rectify them and reduce the risks associated to the weaknesses 

Vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, and red team- commonly used ethical hacking techniques

Ethical hackers just like the black hat hackers also uses different tools and techniques to test the security of the system. Security of a system has different domains in which they can specialize in and they just like, the other hackers have to constantly upgrade their skillset; they have to think like an actual hacker to get effective results. Some of the techniques that are confused with one another of their tasks are vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, and red teaming; however, these strategies are totally different and are separate subdomains of ethical hacking.

Vulnerability assessment

It is a common technique used by the information security experts as well as ethical hackers to detect, define, prioritize, and categorize the weaknesses of the system to the IT team timely. This assessment can be done on the whole system, part of the system, or on the network where needed. It helps in identifying the potential risks from these vulnerabilities to the system. It is not just used by ethical hackers but it can also be used by different members of the IT team assigned with different roles at their level like software, hardware, network, or even end-user. As these are the vulnerabilities that can easily be exploited by the attackers; it is essential for the organizations to solve them. There are different types of vulnerability assessments that can be used depending on the needs of an organization like database assessment, different network assessments, application assessment. The basic and the most time-consuming way of vulnerability assessment is through the source code which can done by different automated tools.

The vulnerability assessment is not similar to the other techniques of ethical hacking because a lot of information is already provided to the ethical hacker by the IT team or the client which doesn’t create a simulation environment of actual hacking.

Penetration testing

As the word indicates, it is a technique used by ethical hackers to test the strong security of the network. An ethical hacker tries to breaks into the system like any other hacker. It helps them evaluate the time and the efforts it takes to breaks into the system. It also helps in pinpointing the assets which were accessed and which weren’t. It depicts the perfect example of how an asset be misused in a real-time situation. It is one of the best techniques to expose the security issues in the system. The two commonly used techniques of penetration testing are as follows:

Black-box testing

When an ethical hacking job is assigned to a hacker but he is given either minimum or zero knowledge about the system. This type of testing not only test the performance of the system but it is also a test case for the hacker. They act like a real-world hacker with no system, architectural, or code description. The result of this type of testing is dependent on the capability of the appointed ethical hacker. If the hacker is not able to break through the system, it doesn’t guarantee that the system is unbreakable.

White-box testing

In this type of testing, ethical hackers are given all the necessary information about the system. The information might include the architectural design, source code, etc. which will make it easier for them to penetrate. The major drawback of this type of testing is the level of familiarity with the IT team members which might affect the actual outcome of white box testing. There are different tools available for making this type of testing more transparent. 

Grey-box testing

In this type of testing, an ethical hacker is given the information that would be necessary for a user. He might also have some information of the network and the architecture of the system to provide some inside which makes it easier for the hacker to penetrate. It also provides an internal access to the system to also check the weakness and problems in case of an internal breach.

Red team

It is a form of penetration testing but it is unannounced and done by a group of white hat hackers. These hackers are used to test the system in an actual-like environment to test its sustainability and performance. It is a high-level testing which is not often done by organizations; it may also consume a lot of time and require different tools and device combinations but provides accurate results.