Penetration Tester – Defender of the Cyber World!
IT security is becoming increasingly important in everyday business life. In order to be able to react to vulnerabilities, you have to know them. This is exactly where the penetration tester comes into play.
For anyone who feels at home in IT, is keen on new challenges, has a good dose of creativity and wants to develop further, the job of Junior Penetration Tester offers ideal conditions.
(Last update: August 10.07.2024th, XNUMX)
Penetration tests are now an essential part of ensuring the best possible IT security. Only those who know their weak points can address them.
Penetration testers help companies and organizations find exactly these vulnerabilities – weak points that are best discovered before cyber criminals do.
The victims of cyber criminals no longer only include companies that one might think of first because they seem particularly large or particularly important. The attackers are usually only interested in profit. No company is too small or insignificant for that.
Penetration tester, white hat hacker or ethical professional hacker - terms that are often used synonymously. Ultimately, they all show what these jobs are all about: hacking, but on the side of the good guys. To do this, they all have to slip into the role of the cyber criminal and think like him. Because every loophole that a pentester finds, the cyber criminal can find. The special thing about the job of penetration tester is that they act exclusively on behalf of the customer, work together with the customer and ultimately also give recommendations for action.
PenTesters worldwide help with their knowledge and skills in the form of Independently to make future attacks more difficult and also to clarify the current status of the given IT security of a company. They examine a wide variety of security vulnerabilities or security weaknesses.
The aim of such a penetration test is to uncover errors or omissions in patch management as well as vulnerabilities that arise, for example, from the everyday use of services and protocols, using a variety of techniques and tactics as well as exploits and to prove them accordingly with “PoCs” (Proof of Concept).
The career of a good penetration tester starts at the competency level “Junior Penetration Tester”. At the beginning, you carry out smaller tests such as Vulnerability Analysis (vulnerability analyses) or smaller penetration tests and supports a wide variety of larger pentest projects under the guidance of a "professional penetration tester".
You will learn the most important techniques and skills for the job that you ultimately need to be able to carry out a high-quality penetration test.
Furthermore, the junior penetration tester is brought up to speed on the job and to the level of the other penetration testers (professional penetration testers) in order to be able to apply this knowledge independently in future penetration tests.
You should acquire your own strategies and procedures for testing. A quantitatively and, above all, qualitatively good penetration test should never be carried out according to "scheme F".
There should be a basic understanding of how computers and networks work and how they interact with each other.
Initiative and willingness to learn are fundamental building blocks that a penetration tester must demonstrate if he wants to carry out qualitative penetration tests. A certain amount of ambition as well as a pinch of curiosity and adaptability are also required.
In order to ensure a good start as a junior penetration tester in this job, it is of great advantage to be able to show that you have completed training as an IT specialist with a focus on "application development" or "system integration".
There are no legal requirements regarding previous professional experience. However, we recommend that you have worked in one of the professions mentioned for at least three years. A degree in computer science can be helpful. But we know from experience that this cannot replace the experience you gain in everyday working life.
The advantage of studying is that you can advance in the skill level faster. However, this is not a guarantee, but purely dependent on your performance and competence as a junior penetration tester in this job.
Since each penetration tester is responsible for his upcoming penetration test, a high degree of self-organization and documentation of daily events are part of everyday working life. Without self-organization, a good quality penetration test result cannot be achieved under any circumstances.
Structured documentation is essential for a penetration tester, because it enables application security. It also forms the basis for the next steps on the customer side: Here, the vulnerabilities are quickly eliminated and missing security mechanisms are implemented.
You will find a comprehensive PDF on the “Junior Penetration Tester” and this job here.
