Aiming at Higher Network Security through Extensive Penetration Tests

Modern enterprise infrastructures adopt multilayer network architectures and heterogeneous server environments in order to efficiently fulfill each organization´s goals and objectives. These complex network architectures have resulted in increased demands of information security measures. Each organization needs to effectively deal with this major security concerns, forming a security policy according to its requirements and objectives. An efficient security policy must be proactive in order to provide sufficient defense layers against a variety of known and unknown attack classes and cases. This proactive approach is usually interpreted wrongly in only up-to-date software and hardware. Regular updates are necessary, although, not enough, because potential mis-configurations and design flaws cannot be located and patched, making the whole network vulnerable to attackers. In this paper we present how a comprehensive security level can be reached through extensive Penetration Tests (Ethical Hacking). We present a Penetration Test methodology and framework capable to expose possible exploitable vulnerabilities in every network layer. Additionally, we conducted an extensive analysis of a network penetration test case study against a network simulation lab setup, exposing common network mis-configurations and their security implications to the whole network and its users.