Artificial Intelligence
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Development ServicesThe success of any newly released software and web applications heavily depends on the software testing lifecycle. These include various processes and procedures that check software performance under a variety of conditions.
This can take the form of testing the software under unfavorable conditions to check vulnerability areas, security management and a whole lot more.
Security and penetration testing is critical as it’s the only way to identify loopholes that can be targeted by hackers. Ignoring these vulnerabilities can lead to system breaches, loss of personal customer data and these events can potentially kill off the product.
As a result, finding the perfect security tool to engage in security testing is important for every software company. The right choice will depend on the type of software or web app that’s being developed and how it will be used by the end-user.
There are plenty of security testing tools out there, but they might not cover all of the vulnerability issues. As a result, you may have to utilize multiple tools to cover all bases.
I've talked to Intersog testers about their most favorite security testing tools and compiled a list of Top 5. Here we go...
1. Acunetix
Acunetix is one of the best security testing tools in the market that helps you hack the system to check security levels. It’s also equipped with many other security features and it generates detailed reports.
Acunetix is a fantastic tool to test your website’s vulnerability. In fact, it boasts the highest detection of WordPress vulnerabilities in core themes and plugins.
2. IronWASP
IronWASP (Iron Web Application Advanced Security Testing Platform) is a powerful GUI based scanning tool that’s ideal for checking over 25 different kinds of web vulnerabilities. Furthermore, it can be used to detect both false positives and false negatives.
It’s a great security tool that’s built on Python and Ruby and is set up to generate HTML and RTF reports.
Take me to IronWASP: Introduction
3. John the Ripper
John the Ripper is a free open source password cracker and penetration testing tool which was originally developed to test applications running on UNIX. However, it has since evolved significantly to run on all major operating systems.
John the Ripper is a part of the Rapid7 family of penetration testing/ hacking tools whose main goal is to detect weak passwords in UNIX systems and handle NTLM hashes used to store passwords on Windows, Kerberos and other systems. The tool is also compatible with modules that protect MD4 hashes, LDAP and MySQL passwords.
Learn more about how John The Ripper works
4. Vega
Vega Vulnerability Scanner is another free open source security testing tool for web software products made for Linux, Macintosh, and Windows operating systems. Built by Subgraph, this tool can be used to verify SQL Injection, security of sensitive data, cross-site scripting, and much more.
Vega Vulnerability Scanner is written in Java that has grown into a popular tool for web security testing. These days a lot of applications are built on JavaScript based stacks, so you can expect this security testing tool to play a prominent role in the years to come.
5. Wireshark
Wireshark can be described as the world’s most popular network protocol analyzer that provides a detailed review of traffic. It achieves this by placing your application in promiscuous mode which is then monitored in real-time.
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This penetration testing tool can run on FreeBSD, OSX, Linux, and Windows based systems.
As stated earlier, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot more tools available in the market to engage in security and penetration testing. These are just six security testing tools that can help you identify glitches in the system (that can make your application vulnerable to security breaches). What other tools do you use / would you recommend?
