Types of Security Audits
Overview
Types of Security Audits – Black Box Audit, White Box Audit, Grey Box Audit
Our security services can be executed in various different approaches that are intended to meet the business requirements of different companies and market segments.
Each approach has its own benefits and drawbacks and the right approach for any particular organization depends on their objective for carrying out the audit along with their key concerns and risk areas.
The three key Types of Security Audits are:
Black Box Security Audit
In the Black Box Security Audit, our team will only have access to publicly accessible information about the target environment. This type of test aims to simulate the real-world scenario of external attackers targeting and attempting to compromise your systems.
Black Box testing has the benefit of perfectly simulating a motivated external attacker that has zero-knowledge of your operations and IT infrastructure. It gives you an insight of the robustness of your information security controls when under targeted attack by malicious intruders.
White Box Security Audit
In this approach our team would have as much information as possible about the target environment, such as an actual employee would possess. This approach is designed to prepare for a worst-case-scenario where an attacker has in-depth information about your infrastructure.
White Box testing allows you to prepare for scenarios such as insider threats or an attacker that has obtained detailed internal information. This process usually reveals more vulnerabilities and is much faster since the audit team has transparent access to key information and details required for attacking the organization. Additionally, it extends the testing boundaries to areas such as source code audit, application design review etc. which are not usually covered by a traditional black-box audit.
Grey Box Security Audit
In a Grey Box Security Audit our team would be given partial information about the target environment, such that could be identified by a motivated attacker. Documents provided could include policy documents, network diagrams and other valuable information. This approach aims to deliver a cost-effective audit while focusing on areas that are important to your organization.
Grey Box testing allows you to accurately simulate the threat from an attacker that has been able to gain partial information about your infrastructure. The audit prepares you for a scenario where certain details or information have been leaked by social engineering or other offline threats.
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