10 Cyber Security Tools to Watch Out for in 2021
By: Shormistha Chatterjee
Tags: Security Services, Software Testing, Security Testing, Cybersecurity, Security Tool

With an immense number of companies and entities climbing onto the digital bandwagon, cybersecurity considerations have come up as limelight. Besides, new technologies such as Big Data, IoT, and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning are gradually more making inroads into our everyday lives, the threats related to cybercrime are mounting as well. Additionally, the usage of mobile and web apps in transacting financial information has put the complete digital stuff exposed to cybersecurity breaches.

The inherent risks and vulnerabilities found in such apps can be exploited by attackers or cybercriminals to draw off crucial information data counting money. Internationally, cyber-security breaches have caused a yearly loss of USD 20.38 million in 2019 (Source: Statista). Plus, cybercrime has led to a 0.80 percent loss of the entire world’s Gross domestic product, which sums up to approx. USD 2.1 trillion in the year 2019 alone (Source: Cybriant.com).

Statista Report 2018 “Security Threats at All-Time High”. The no. of security threats or vulnerabilities in all kinds of Information Technology software is at an all-time high.

Even the spiraling pandemic has introduced a distressing impact on several enterprises and companies worldwide, the majority of companies arbitrarily attempted or moved their business sections to the untouched or unaffected digital space. Most security funds were, yet, also battered as a collateral outcome of the complete economic downturn. The shrinking budgets mainly exacerbated traumatic digital transformation by gross disregard of privacy and cybersecurity components of the subtle process.

To stem the rot and preempt adverse penalties of cyberthreat or crime, like losing client trust and brand repute, cybersecurity testing should be made compulsory. Cybersecurity expense is nonetheless forecasted to rebound and hit again in the year 2021, giving relief for exhausted CISOs, and their shattered IT, cybersecurity teams. Meanwhile, I would like to acquaint you with a series of best cybersecurity tools that can make a palpable divergence for your overall security program and 2021 budget plans.

What Is Penetration Testing?

The penetration test is a kind of Security testing that is carried out to assess the security of the system (software, hardware, information system, or networks environment). The main objective of this type of testing is to scrutinize all the security risks or vulnerabilities that are found in an app by assessing the system’s security with malevolent techniques and to safeguard the data from the hackers and manage the system’s functionality. Penetration testing is a kind of Non-functional test which intends to make official attempts to breach the system’s security. It is also called a Pen Test or Pen Testing and the QA engineer or tester who performs this testing is considered as a pen tester aka ethical hacker.

What Are the Best Cyber Security Tools for 2021?

Any app security testing method shall require the conduct of a functional test. This way, several security issues, and vulnerabilities can be detected, which if not rectified in time can result in hacking. There are a plethora of paid and open source testing tools available in the market. Let’s discuss the top 10 cybersecurity testing tools to look out for in 2021:

1. NMap

NMap is a short form of Network Mapper. NMap is an open-source and free security scanning tool for security auditing and network exploration. It works on Windows, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD variants (comprising Mac OS), AmigaOS. NMap is used to detect what hosts are accessible on the network, what versions and OSs they are running, what services those hosts are providing, what kind of firewalls/ packet filters are in use etc., Several network and systems administrators find it beneficial for regular jobs like check for open ports, maintaining service upgrade schedules, network inventory, and monitoring service or host uptime. It comes with both GUI interfaces and command line

Core Features:

Determines hosts on a network

It is used to determine network inventory, network mapping, maintenance, and asset management

Produces traffic to hosts on a network, response time measurement, and response analysis

Used to recognizes open ports on target hosts in the arrangement for auditing

To search and exploit risks as well as vulnerabilities in a network

Download: NMap

2. Wireshark

It is one of the best tools and freely accessible open-source pen-testing tools. Generally, it is one of the network protocol analyzers, it allows you to capture and coordinatively browse the traffic running on a system network. It runs on Linux, Windows, Unix, Solaris, Mac OS, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and several others. Wireshark can be extensively used by educators, security experts, network professionals, and developers. The information that is recovered through the Wireshark software testing tool can be viewed through a Graphical User Interface or the TTY-mode TShark utility.

Core Features:

Rich VoIP analysis

Live capture and offline scrutiny

In-depth examination of hundreds of protocols

Runs on UNIX, Linux, Windows, Solaris, macOS, NetBSD, FreeBSD, & various others

Captured system or network data can be browsed through a GUI, or through the TTY-mode TShark utility

Read/write several variant capture file formats

Captured files compressed via gzip can be de-compressed concurrently

Coloring rules can be applied to the packet list for intuitive and rapid analysis

Live data can be read from Blue-tooth, PPP/HDLC, internet, ATM, Token Ring, USB, etc.,

Outcome can be exported to PostScript, CSV, XML, or plain text

Download: Wireshark

3. Metasploit

It is a computer security project that offers the user vital information about security risks or vulnerabilities. This framework is an open-source pen test and development platform that offers you access to the recent exploit code for several apps, platforms, and operating systems. Some of the jobs that can be attained in Metasploit from a pen test perspective comprise vulnerability scanning, listening, and exploiting known vulnerabilities, project reporting, and evidence collection. It has a command-line and Graphical User Interface clickable interface that works on Linux, Windows, as well as Apple Mac OS. Metasploit is a commercial tool but it comes with an open-source limited trial.

Core Features:

Network discovery

It has a command-line and GUI interface

Works on Windows, Linux, & Mac OS X

Module browser

Basic exploitation

Manual exploitation

Vulnerability scanner import

Metasploit community edition is offered to the InfoSec community without charge

Download: Metasploit

4. Netsparker

This commercial security test tool is a web app security scanner. Netsparker is a deadly accurate, automatic, and simple to use web app security scanner. This amazing tool is mainly used to identify security risks automatically like Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and SQL injection in web services, web apps, and websites. Its proof-based Scanning technology does not simply report risks; it also generates a Proof of Concept to confirm they aren’t false positives. Therefore, there is no point in wasting your time by verifying the detect vulnerabilities manually after a scan is ended.

Core Features:

Advanced web scanning

Vulnerability assessment

HTTP request builder

Web services scanning

Proof-centric scanning technology for dead-accurate threats finding and scan outcomes

Full HTML5 support

SDLC integration

Exploitation

Reporting

Manual tests

Automated identification of custom 404 error pages

Anti-Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF) token support

Anti-CSRF token support

REST API support

Download: Netsparker

5. Acunetix

It is a completely automatic web vulnerability scanner that identifies and reports on over 4500 web app vulnerabilities counting all variants of XSS XXE, SSRF, Host Header Injection, and SQL Injection. Acunetix smartly detects around 4500 web vulnerabilities. Acunetix is a commercial tool. Its DeepScan Crawler scans AJAX-heavy client-side SPAs and HTML5 websites. It enables users to export detected vulnerabilities to problem trackers like GitHub, Atlassian JIRA, Microsoft TFS (Team Foundation Server). It is obtainable on Linux, Windows, and Online.

Core Features:

A high detection rate of risks and vulnerabilities with lower false positives

Integrated vulnerability management — organize and control risks

Deeply crawl and scrutinize — automatic scans all websites

Integration with popular WAFs and Issue trackers like GitHub, JIRA, TFS

Open-source network security scanning and Manual test tools

Run on Linux, Windows, and online

Download: Acunetix

6. Nessus

It is a vulnerability assessment solution for security practitioners and it is formed and maintained by a company called Tenable Network Security. Nessus aids in detecting and fixing vulnerabilities like software flaws, malware, missing patches, and misconfigurations across a variety of OSs, apps, and devices. It supports Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, etc. It specializes in IPs scan, website scanning, compliance checks, Sensitive data searches, etc., and assists to detect the ‘weak-spots’.

Core Features:

Configuration audits

Mobile device audits

Reports can be simply tailored to sort by host or vulnerability, generate an executive summary, or compare scanning outcomes to highlight alterations

Detect vulnerabilities that enable a remote attacker to access confidential data from the system

Identifies both the remote faults of the hosts that are on a network and their local flaws and missing patches as well

Download: Nessus

7. W3af

It is a Web Application Attack and Audit Framework. W3af is a free tool. W3af secures web apps by searching and exploiting all web app vulnerabilities. It determines 200 or more vulnerabilities and controls your overall risk exposure on the website. It detects all sorts of vulnerabilities such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL injection, unhandled application errors, Guessable Credentials, and PHP misconfigurations. It has both a console and graphical UI. It works on Mac, Linux, and Windows OS.

Core Features:

Assimilation of web and proxy servers into the code

Proxy support

Injecting payloads into roughly every section of the HTTP request

HTTP Basic and Digest authentication

Cookie handling

UserAgent faking

HTTP response cache

DNS cache

File upload using multipart

Add custom headers to requests

Download link: W3af

8. Zed Attack Proxy

Zed Attack Proxy is a free and open-source security testing tool, developed by OWASP. Popularly known as ZAP, Supported by Unix/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS, ZAP allows you to find a set of security risks and vulnerabilities in web apps, even at the time of the development and testing phase. This tool is simple to use, even if you are a novice in pen-testing.

Core Features:

Authentication support

AJAX spiders

Automatic Scanner

Forced Browsing

Dynamic SSL certificates

Web Socket Support

Plug-n-hack support

Intercepting Proxy

REST-based API and so on

Download link: ZAP

9. Burpsuite

It is also essentially a scanner (with a restricted “intruder” tool), even though several security test experts swear that penetration test without this tool is unimaginable. It isn’t free, yet very lucrative. It generally works wonders with crawling content and functionality, intercepting proxy, web app scanning, etc. One can use this on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux environments.

Core Features:

Cross-Platform Supported

Very Light Weight And Stable

Can Work With Almost All Browsers.

Perform customize attacks

Well Design User Interface

Can Assist in crawling Website

Aid in scanning Https/ HTTP Request and Response

Website: Burp suite

10. Sqlninja

It is one of the best open-source penetration testing tools. The aim of Sqlninja is to exploit SQL injection threats and vulnerabilities on a web app. This automated testing tool utilizes Microsoft SQL Server as a back-end. Sqlninja has a command-line interface. Sqlninja works on Linux, as well as Apple Mac OS X. It comes with a slew of descriptive features, counting remote commands, DB fingerprinting, and its detection engine.

Core features:

Direct and reverse shell, both for UDP and TCP

Fingerprinting of the remote SQL Server

Formation of a custom XP cmdshell when the original one has been disabled

Withdrawal of data from the remote Database

Operating System privilege escalation on the remote database server

Reverse scan to seek a port that can be utilized for a reverse shell

Download: Sqlninja

Wrapping Up

These are the top cybersecurity testing tools that will give you security for your personal data, mitigate the rates of data breaches, as well as stolen hardware. Other advantages of these tools count tighter security and greater privacy. These must-have security tools will help you evade cyberattacks and secure your IT infrastructure. Lastly, such security software requires up-gradation and maintenance to constantly have top-notch security.