Manual Vs Automated Testing

July 6th, 2021

Automated and manual pentesting are both widely used throughout the cybersecurity community. Although they are both trying to achieve the same goal of identifying vulnerabilities within a system, they both utilize different methods. Manual pentesting is conducted by actual human experts in the field whereas automated testing is computer software that can be run by anyone.

Manual penetration testing, much like the name suggests, is pentests performed by an experienced developer or engineer. They are able to identify regular and critical vulnerabilities through performing customized penetration tests using their own tools and databases as well as simulating real-world cyber attacks on the system.  Typically in a manual testing environment at Securestate, the testers will induce the following objectives: • Collect data to use in vulnerability assessment. This can either be through using public databases and tools or manually collected by the tester. • Discovering vulnerabilities. With the data at the tester’s disposal, they test for a large number of vulnerabilities ranging from non-critical to critical. Oftentimes vulnerabilities will also be found through controlled attacks on the system. • Rate all vulnerabilities and provide a cohesive document detailing the vulnerability. • Review with client. Review all vulnerabilities with the client and cover solutions to the vulnerabilities.

Automatic penetration testing is using tools and software that have been created in order to aid penetration testers in trying to find exploits. These tests are often able to be run without any sort of outside information and can find potential vulnerabilities within a system. This means it is more beginner-friendly because they don’t need to do as much reconnaissance as someone who is performing manual testing.  Some popular automated testing tools are: • Metasploit ◦ Metasploit is a popular pentesting framework that provides many tools that can help exploit a system • Wireshark ◦ Wireshark is a commonly used network protocol analyzer, which essentially provides in-depth information about a given network. • Netsparker ◦ Netsparker is an automated scanner that can find multiple system vulnerabilities for you, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. • John The Ripper ◦ John the Ripper is a popular automated password cracker. It can utilize many different types of password cracking in order to try and crack potentially vulnerable passwords. Benefits Of Using Both? After learning a bit about manual and automated pentesting, you might be wondering which one is better to use for your product. The answer, however, is both! Manual testing comes with a lot more flexibility than automated testing. The experienced tester is able to adapt to the system they are trying to exploit for any testing scenario where an automatic test would fail and cause problems. Manual testing also allows the testers to target specific vulnerabilities in a system.  Automated testing is oftentimes faster and easier than manual testing is, and can be run by someone potentially less experienced. This type of testing is extremely useful for someone who is either learning how to hack or trying to be more time-efficient with their pentesting.  Additionally, automated testing is oftentimes more consistent, providing the same results every time, compared to manual testing. However, automated testing generally doesn’t produce as in-depth results as manual testing does. Due to these differences, an experienced pentester will often utilize a mix of automated and manual testing in order to retain some consistency and time-efficiency from the automated tools, but while also staying flexible in their attacks with manual testing methods.

Interested in seeing how a penetration test can help you understand your vulnerabilities and get them patched before exploited?

SecureState uses a combination of automated tools and manual testing to provide a hybrid approach that includes proactive and reactive security testing activities. Our team has decades of cybersecurity experience with some of the largest tech companies including AWS, VMware, Google and Nintendo.

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