CompTIA® Security+™: Study Guide, Fifth Edition

Summary

This chapter focused on issues related to your network’s vulnerabilities and ways to identify/prevent them. We looked at penetration testing, as well as vulnerability scanning. The topic of ethical hacking was introduced, along with secure network principles and mitigation and deterrent techniques.

Penetration testing involves trying to get access to your system from an attacker’s perspective. In a vulnerability test, you typically run a software program—a vulnerability scanner—that contains a database of known vulnerabilities against your system to identify weaknesses.

One of the approaches a security administrator can use to identify vulnerabilities that exist in a system for which they have authorization is known as ethical hacking. ...