Penetration testing involves breaking into your network or computer system to identify potential risks and find areas that hackers could exploit. It’s a simulated cyberattack that tests the security of a system or network, looking for weak points and finding ways to break in.

Penetration testing isn’t easy, but it can also help you find out where your security is weakest. The sooner you discover these vulnerabilities, the easier it will be to fix them before a real hacker exploits them.

Here are some reasons why penetration testing should be included in your company’s cybersecurity plan:

1. You Can Find Out Which Areas of Your Network Are Vulnerable

The single biggest reason for performing penetration testing is to identify which areas of your network are vulnerable. Virtual attack simulations can help you figure out how likely it is a hacker could gain access to your systems and what they might be able to do once they’re in.

By knowing what areas of your network are especially vulnerable, you can prioritize your security efforts by plugging the gaps in your network’s defences.

2. You’ll Know Exactly Where to Focus Your Security Efforts

Penetration testing will also show you exactly where you need to focus your security efforts. This will be especially clear if you use a specialized penetration testing tool. You will be able to see precisely which protocols are being targeted and the level of difficulty associated with exploiting a vulnerability.

For example, you may find that many attempts to break in target a specific server. This is an indication of a vulnerability that needs to be fixed, and you can be sure that real attackers will find it.

The same goes for internet-facing websites. You can use penetration testing to find out which pages are most vulnerable to attack, allowing you to prioritize your security efforts.

3. It Helps Build an Incident Response Plan

Penetration testing can also help you build an incident response plan. This will help you prepare for the worst and decide how to respond to a real attack at different points in your network.

You’ll learn how quickly you can identify the source of the attack, how long it takes to shut down the source and how quickly you can contain the damage. This will help you determine where to place sensors and how to tune your security systems so they respond as quickly as possible.

4. It Helps Establish a Culture of Security Awareness

Another reason to perform penetration testing regularly is to establish a culture of security awareness. This is particularly important in organizations with employees who have access to sensitive data.

Penetration testing can simulate a real attack, forcing your employees to respond to a simulated breach in the same way they would respond to a real one. This will help them understand how important it is to follow security procedures and to be aware of potential threats.

In Conclusion

Penetration testing can be an important part of any company’s cybersecurity efforts. It allows you to identify vulnerabilities in your network, prioritize security efforts and prepare for potential attacks. The sooner you find out about these vulnerabilities, the easier it will be to plug them.

Cyber Risk Management – Many companies rely heavily on an online component to help organize data as well as collect payments. This can prove to be enticing to hackers who are intent on undermining the security of your organization.

Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that you ensure that your security measures are current. It becomes essential to ask the question, what is cyber risk and what can be done to mitigate it? This is a complicated question that requires a thorough assessment of your company’s needs.

In addition, the assessment process includes reviewing controls and making changes as necessary. Because there is no way to completely eliminate risk, the process must continually evaluate the risks and control measures to ensure that they are adequate.

While risk cannot be completely removed, it can be reduced through acceptance and transference. When there is a high probability of a cyber-attack, mitigation measures may be required.

Impact of Attacks on your Organization

Cyber-attacks can impact your entire organization in a variety of ways. Depending on the severity of the attack, it can disrupt operations and cause a complete meltdown. In addition to financial losses, the consequences can last weeks or even months.

To mitigate these risks, organizations should implement Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (DRBC) plans. DRCB plans outline the steps a business must take in the event of an online attack. This includes preparing for business continuity and disaster recovery, including a comprehensive list of assets, personnel, and services required to restore operations.

As a result of the growing use of cloud services and the internet, businesses have an enormous attack surface. Online attacks affect organizations of all sizes, and small and medium businesses may not have the resources to absorb the downtime and resulting costs.

They also present a number of interrelated problems. Not only does downtime result in financial losses, but it also leads to regulatory investigations and damages to a business’ reputation and productivity.

When a company experiences a cyber-attack, its reputation is immediately tarnished. Consumers will move away from a business that cannot maintain its security. The reputation of a company is also at stake if hackers get sensitive information.

The dark web is full of open markets for sensitive information. Click the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_web for more information about the dark web. In addition, if other companies gain access to the organization’s credit card and banking information, this may violate privacy laws and affect brand equity. There are numerous high-profile cases of cyber-attacks each month.

Ways to Assess Risk in your Organization

There are many different ways to assess cyber risk in your organization. There are a few ways to do it in a hypothetical sense and then some more practical methods for evaluating actual threats.

For example, if your organization was the target of a ransom ware attack, the impact would be the loss of productivity, costs associated with data recovery, and the risk of exposing trade secrets and customer data. Threats can also involve legal fees and compliance penalties.

If your organization is relatively small and does not have the staff to perform an in-house cyber security assessment, you can look for third party providers. They can be companies or individuals with specialized expertise.

Check with your partners or local Better Business Bureau for recommendations. Click here for more information about the Better Business Bureau. Also, ask for references from other companies that have performed such assessments.

A good risk assessment should be updated on a regular basis. The most important factor in ensuring a thorough cyber security assessment is organizational transparency.

In conducting a risk assessment, you must determine the greatest threats to your organization. Look at every piece of information, system, software, and device to determine where vulnerabilities exist.

Once you’ve determined where these weaknesses are, you can determine how to mitigate them. If necessary, you can use vulnerability scanners to locate vulnerable hardware.

These tools can help you determine if you have any physical vulnerabilities or flaws in your security policies. You’ll need a comprehensive report to justify any budgetary changes.

Managing Risks

Prioritizing the right security measures for your organization is essential to minimizing the risks associated with cyber-attacks. Cyber risk assessment methods prioritize measures according to likelihood, exposure, and impact.

The approach can be based on the maturity of a risk assessment model or on a collaborative approach. Cyber security risk management requires an organization to develop a strategic approach, and involves the inclusion of senior management, compliance officers, departmental or operating unit managers, and IT professionals.

A good method you can follow is to use a proxy server. It will hide your IP address and help your website in filtering out any user with suspicious activity. It’s recommended to use private proxies, but you can also use a free proxy server as long as the IP addresses are from are reputable proxy provider.

Once you’ve identified potential risks, the next step is assessing your risk appetite. Managing risk is a process that will evolve over time, and you must continually evaluate and adjust your controls to ensure your organization’s success. Risk cannot be eliminated, only managed.

There are no shortcuts to ensuring the protection of your business. However, without a comprehensive plan, you’ll have no way of knowing which threats and vulnerabilities are posing the greatest risk to your organization.

A common issue with freelancers is that they hate time tracking. It’s annoying, and you are not alone if that’s the case.

However, many clients won’t work with you if they can’t see what you’re doing and how many hours you’ve worked. You can guess, but that creates inaccuracies and costs you, and clients will think it’s not ethical.

With a freelance time tracking tool, you can ensure that you’re not being underpaid or overwhelmed. As a result, you have a better business and can earn far more income.

Keeping Track At All Times

A freelance time tracking option will stay with you wherever you are and no matter what time. You can stop or restart the tracking, and you don’t have to worry about the process. That lets you work in any manner you want. You can also allow your client to see a tracked invoice time down to each minute. That builds a great deal of trust between you and your clients, creating a better and more sustainable business.

A Freelance Time Tracking App Is Useful

To make sure that you have a realistic idea about where your time goes, you need to have a freelance time tracking app. This will optimize your time and ensure that you have an idea of how you spend your time and where you could improve. With the ability to visualize your projects and clients by month, day, or even hour, you can ensure that you’ll never lose another client and that you have to build a solid repertoire with them.

In addition to this, if you have to collaborate with a team, this is also made more accessible. Instead of wasting hours you don’t have, your team can track the time and invoice together to ensure that your client has no issues and there is no miscommunication. Clients will appreciate that you can take care of them in a better manner. You’ll find that people immediately want to work with you more.

Invoicing Becomes Easier As Well

Getting paid for your work shouldn’t be a hassle. This is no longer an issue with the suitable freelancer time tracking option. The app will create and send out customized and professional invoices to your clients and ensure that you get paid on time for your tracked time. Before, it might have been an issue to invoice, and you’d never get paid on time, but that won’t happen here as the app sends reminders and nudges to ensure that you get your check quicker.

Track Your Time More Efficiently

As a freelancer tracking your time becomes vital. There is no way to get around that situation, so it is critical to have an option that cuts out the work and makes it easier. You can gain more clients and establish a solid career when you have a better system in place. Use the best and watch as your time becomes more productive and efficient. You won’t go wrong!

AMP and Responsive Web Design – As of February 2022, more than 57% of website traffic comes from mobile devices. The figure was around 8% a decade ago. 

The steady increase in the share of mobile devices in web traffic bears testimony to the importance of going mobile. That’s why it is important for webmasters to ensure that their website loads quickly and nicely on mobile devices. After all, 

• 64% of users expect a website to load on their mobile screens within 4 seconds. 
• And people who have a negative mobile experience are 62% less likely to make a future purchase. 

Loading speed boost. Fast internet browser, modern online technology, accelerated download time. Smartphone performance optimization, improvement. Vector isolated concept metaphor illustration

Thus, experience and page load speed are important parameters while developing mobile sites. 

Now you have two ways to achieve these goals:

• Get Responsive Website Designs from a full service WordPress agency.
• Rely on Accelerated Mobile Pages. 

Both can make your website ready for mobile users. However, they do differ in some aspects. And you will eventually have to pick between the two for your website. 

This guide right here will help you understand:

• What is AMP?
• Advantages and disadvantages of AMP
• What is Responsive Website Design? 
• Advantages and disadvantages of Responsive Website Design
• The difference between AMP and Responsive Website Design
• How to decide between AMP and RWD for your business mobile website 

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Back in 2015, Google launched an open-source HTML framework. It aimed to provide lightning-fast speed and an engaging mobile experience to users. This framework is called Accelerated Mobile Pages. And it makes both creating and consuming mobile content faster and easier. 

AMP prioritises user experience on your website while making sure the load speed is blazing fast.

The key advantages of using AMP include:

• Google saves the AMPs in its server cache. This means the pages load directly from Google’s servers and not your hosted servers. That’s how AMPs are extremely quick-loading. 
• With the use of AMP JS, an open-source JavaScript code, you can make your mobile web pages super fast and optimised. 
• Google also introduced AMP HTML, which is slightly different from regular HTML. This HTML format allows modifications as per your requirement without the related load delays. 
• Embedding images into your page content is also slightly different for AMPs. You have to <amp-img> </amp-img> tag instead of the regular <img> </img> HTML tag. This sets an inline style for the width of the element to ensure that it loads perfectly and quickly on mobile devices.

Like everything else, AMP is not a perfect offering. It has its fair share of shortcomings, including

• AMPs can only have a single embedded style sheet. This means you cannot use external styles on AMP webpages, except for some custom fonts. 
• AMP works great only with static content. With more components that are dynamic in nature, AMP’s load speed takes a hit.
• You cannot use third-party JavaScript with AMP as you are limited to the use of only AMP JS. This might mean cutting down on some features on the page. 

Responsive Web Design (RWD)

Back in the early 2010s, people started accessing the Internet on many devices and not just their desktops. That’s when the need for Responsive Web Design arose. Before the introduction of RWD, web designers had to design and develop multiple versions of the same website for different device types and sizes. The process was costly, time-consuming, and cumbersome. With the introduction of RWD, flexible images and fluid layouts let web pages fit on any device. Without compromising on the look or user experience. 

The key advantages of using Responsive Website Design for your web pages are:

• With RWD you get unmatched flexibility. Your page automatically responds to the visitor’s device type and size. 
• Responsive Web Design lets you offer an engaging user experience on any device type or size.
• There are no limits on the use of CSS or JavaScript in responsive web design. Whether it is a third-party plugin or framework you can easily add it to the page.
• RWD allows adding external CSS files. This ensures a stylish display without compromising anywhere.  

While Responsive Website Design is generally great, it does have some downsides, like

• Code density, asset size, plugins, server performance, and many other factors can negatively affect the load speed of a responsively designed web page. 
• The ability to use external JavaScript comes with the additional responsibility of optimising the third-party code by compressing the CSS and JS to ensure adequate site load speed.  

The difference between AMP and RWD – Different Goals

Broadly speaking, both accelerated mobile pages and responsive web design aim to make sure your visitors can access your web page easily on their mobile devices.

But when you look carefully, the two are vastly different. Primarily in terms of their goals. 

Accelerated mobile pages focus on load speed while Responsive Web Design is aimed at flexibility.

Other differences between the two include:

• RWD is a method of organising and designing a website. AMP on the other hand is a framework.
• AMP delivers content to mobile users instantly, while RWD can be used to seamlessly display on any device and not just mobile phones.
• To be able to reap the benefits of RWD, you have to replace or rework your current website. That’s not the case with AMP. You can simply add independent AMPs without redesigning your website.
• AMP is limited only to static content, but RWD can be used for websites with dynamic content too. 

Thus, we can conclude that:

• AMP is ideal for news platforms, blogs, informational pages, and other web content. 
• Responsive Website Design is more suitable for custom applications, web forms, and the like.  

Choosing between AMP and RWD for your mobile site

45% of people want content that displays equally well and quickly across all their devices. That means you do need to work on your site’s responsiveness and speed both. 

Other than user experience, even Google’s search algorithms favour websites that offer a good user experience. 

Now, if you use Responsive Website Design for your website, your website will be not just mobile-friendly, but load seamlessly on any device or screen size. But that responsiveness comes at the cost of speed. 

AMP, on the contrary, is designed for speed and mobile experience. Plus, it is a Google offering, which gives it an edge in search result rankings too.  

However, the choice between the two should depend on one important factor – your audience. 

• If your audience is likely to visit your website via mobile devices, AMPs are the right choice for you. 
• But if your website is accessed by users on multiple device types like desktops and tablets too, Responsive Website Design would be a better fit for your needs. 

Thus, to be able to decide between Accelerated Mobile Pages and Responsive Web Design you need to know more than just about these two solutions. 

And the best way to make the choice? Consult experts. Website development experts can sit you down, and walk you through the cost, complications, and outcomes of both AMP and Responsive Website Design. Based on this information, you can make an ideal choice. Or who knows, maybe find an ideal balance between the two and use both. 

Ready to offer a wonderful experience with your mobile site? Talk to experts and leverage AMP and Responsive Website Design today!