The primary function of the Penetration Tester in the CST team is to continually review the customers’ defined scope for vulnerabilities, identify additional targets that should be included in the scope, and report these to the client in a timely, accurate, and comprehensive manner. The Penetration Tester is also responsible for pre-engagement activities including scoping, statements of work, working with customers to determine their testing requirements and restrictions, on boarding customers into the service and contribute to the service improvement and further development.
Essential duties & responsibilities
The Continuous Security Testing service is a consultant led vulnerability identification and verification service which makes use of automated vulnerability scanning along with significant manual testing against a broad scope in a continuing engagement. The purpose of the service is to continually monitor a customer’s external attack surface for new vulnerabilities, changes in the scope of the attack surface, and proactively inform customers of discovered issues along with recommended remediation; with the overall aim of reducing the lifetime of each vulnerability. Manual testing includes identification of issues which automation alone could not identify, exploitation of all issues, often chaining multiple findings together in order to determine the true impact of vulnerabilities for the customer.
- Pre-engagement activities including scoping of assessments and statements of work and determining customer requirements and restrictions.
- On boarding customers into the service including configuration of continual scanning and liaising with customer to resolve issues which may reduce the effectiveness of scanning.
- Monitoring of the customers’ external perimeter for changes, and proactive discovery of new targets to include within the customer’s scope.
- Manual identification and exploitation of vulnerabilities.
- Manual verification and exploitation of scanner findings.
- Detailed analysis of issues identified and exposure for the customer including proof of concept, reproduction steps, and recommended remediation.
- Communication of findings to the customer in a detailed, accurate and manageable manner both orally and through written vulnerability/scope notifications and periodic summaries.
- Assisting in the continual development of the team and service through research and development activities. This includes the development of in-house tools the implementation of tools released to the community, and design and documentation of new and existing internal systems and processes.
- Continual professional development to maintain and develop knowledge and technical competencies.
- Maintain professional technical qualifications to demonstrate competency to our clients.
- Contributing to the writing and publishing of whitepapers and advisories.
- Undertaking projects and support tasks as appropriate to the role.