Re: Security Audit

[JCovington <jcovingto () home com>]

It's pretty difficult to break the time down per host. Servers may have
a bunch of services running and each one needs to be scanned, searches
done for new vulnerabilities, etc. A workstation on the other hand may
only have only a few services and it becomes a check for
misconfigurations.

It can also depend on the scanning tools used. A big commercial scanner
could check all machines pretty efficiently. But then good pentesters
will follow up on what the scanner found and verify so false positives
are minimized. Also good pentesters will use a toolbag of scripts and
utilities as a second level of thoroughness.

And as someone stated before...an attacker could spend weeks going over
everything in fine detail. For a complete assessment with a good, clear,
concise report at the end I would say 4-5 days.

-Jim


-----Original Message-----
From: Forrest Rae [mailto:forrest () code-lab com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 12:49 PM
To: pen-test () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Security Audit


Hi Simon,
Hi pentest-list,

<IMHO>

The time spent is relational to the number of hosts being audited, and
the security company's defined assessment process.  As a customer, I
would imagine one has the right to review the processes of your
consultants.  You should find out if the companies are going to run any
automatic vulnerability assessment tools such as Nessus, or an in house
product.  If they are just going to run nessus on you, and print out the

report it generates, do they really need 20+ hours to do that?  (If you
have several hundred hosts, then they probably do need 20+)  If they do
100% of the work by hand, then they may require extra time.  This brings

me to question why are they doing assessments by hand when there are
great tools like Nessus?

A good estimate of time for a "Once Over" breaks down like this:

Vulnerability Assessment:
20 minutes per host

Penetration Test:
1 Hour per host

Internal assessments usually take a little longer because you generally
have access to more services, network devices, employees, etc...

I am also interested in other people's estimates of time per host.  :)

-Forrest

</IMHO>

Simon Wellborne wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> We have a company or two providing quotes on a security audit,
including
> penetration tests.
>
> I am a little concerned about the amount of hours being quoted for
some of
> these tests.
>
> > From peoples experience (and I would like to hear from Professionals
who
> comduct audits) about what timeframes are 'normally' used.
>
> Our network is relatively small (20-40 users + servers).
>
> Appreciate all replies
>
> Regards

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