Looking for VAPT in India? This is What You Should Know

VAPT – as you know – is an acronym for Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing, which is defined as a process to identify security risks and vulnerabilities in a web system or network.

You might be seeking to pentest your application & network for a bunch of reasons like –

• Identifying and rectifying vulnerabilities,
• Compliance needs,
• Certification requirements,
• Partnership opportunities, and so on.

Whatever your reason may be, conducting a VAPT is highly beneficial for your organization’s security. It not only helps you to patch your present security gaps. But also lets you strategize better for the future with a more nuanced understanding of your application’s security and its accompanying risks.

But,

When it comes down to choosing the best service, it’s more difficult than it seems. 

Since VAPTs usually land on the expensive side of security measures, your skepticism is totally understandable. In fact, it’s vital to making the right choice. This is exactly what we are trying to tackle with this blog post.

Today we are getting to the bottom of Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) in India. 

We will answer questions like:

• How does a VAPT in India work, 
• Types of security testing available in India, 
• What features & benefits should you be looking at, and 
• How much does it all cost, among other questions

We will also introduce you to one of India’s leading VAPT services – Astra Security.

Astra Security is a NASSCOM-certified cybersecurity company. Over the years, Astra has carved a niche for itself in the VAPT space and has garnered the trust of Fortune companies like – Ford, Gillette, Hotstar, GoDaddy, and others.

Here’s what Olivier Trupiano, Founder Signalement, said about our services.

More on Astra later. Let’s get straight to the agenda.

How does a VAPT in India work?

Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testings are usually done by certified security professionals and services, who have enough expertise and experience in the field.

It is, however, important to know that VAPT is a broad arena and a little tweak of terms can mean totally different things.

For example – VA (Vulnerability Assessment) mostly means automated testing in the security world. Whereas PT (Penetration Testing) refers to simulated hacker-style attacks by an ethical hacker and consists of human intelligence and effort. Besides, there is also Red teaming, Blue teaming, Purple teaming, etc, about which you can read here – different types of security testing styles followed in India and around the world.

Even VAPT processes and methodologies vary from service to service. For instance, Astra Security follows a well-documented methodology carefully crafted as per the global security testing standards of OWASP and known CVEs.

VAPT in India also varies from organization to organization and depends hugely on the scope, methodology, price, certification requirements, and so on. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that security testings are somewhat unique to each organization.

So, when choosing a VAPT service in India do check the methodology they follow and if it is in accordance with your organization’s needs.

Here’s a very simplified version of what Astra follows as its VAPT process:

Coming to the types of VAPTs in India. There are broadly three types of security testing styles:

• Grey box VAPT testing: In Grey-box testing, the ethical hacker has only partial knowledge about the application.
• White box VAPT testing: In White-box testing, the ethical hacker has full knowledge about the application.
• Black box VAPT testing: In Black-box testing, the ethical hacker has no knowledge about the application.

Learn more about these types here.

Having a clear understanding of the types of security testing minimizes the gap between the anticipated and the actual results.

How should you judge a VAPT service?

So, let’s get your concerns straight –

You need a service that is first of all reliable, transparent with the process, follows a Standardized testing methodology, caters to your specific needs, comes under your budget, and offers detailed reports and personalized advice for fixing & maintaining your business’ security. Also, issues a VAPT certificate.

Here’s a checklist you can follow to make the right choice:

• Jot down your organization’s most important requirements
• Define the scope for testing – do you need an IT security audit or a VA or a PT or a Red teaming. Refer to this guide to learn about the different types of VAPT
• Understand what the VAPT service offers
• Skim through their customer testimonials and case studies
• Check the VAPT service’s background and authenticity
• Go through the methodology, tests, and sample report
• Check what certifications they offer and if that meets your needs
• Book a call with their representative and clear out your doubts

Once you follow this you will strategically weed out the unfit VAPT services for your company and ultimately end up with a concise list of only the best ones.

What is the cost of a VAPT in India?

VAPT price varies with different services, scope, certifications, etc. There is no one price. That said, you can expect a standard VAPT in India to cost somewhere between Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 3,00,000.

While for most VAPT services pricing is nowhere to be seen on their websites, many services like Astra Security do reveal prices for the standard testing. Check out Astra’s full VAPT pricing here.

NOTE: It is nonetheless recommended to get on a call with the security representative and see if the pricing offered indeed fits your requirement. If it’s not, you can always get a personalized quote from the service.

Best VAPT Service in India – Astra Security

At the risk of sounding self-indulgent, I want to tell you that Astra Security is THE best VAPT service in India. Not because it is our service, but because it has remarkably simplified VAPT for the average business professional.

For long VAPT has been this complex security process left to the security-cum-tech guy in a company. Other executive members maintained a safe distance from VAPTs, not because they wanted to but because they often felt lost in the conversation. On top of that VAPT was also a time-eating process. Boring reports, emails, pdfs, and long email threads on queries weren’t exactly appealing to the busy decision-makers.

Astra breaks the tradition of boring and tedious VAPT with its one-of-a-kind interactive dashboard. Vulnerability segmentation and labeling make VAPT comprehensible and non-intimidating to even the non-tech member of your team.

Our certified security professionals uncover loopholes in your application with the right mix of automated & manual security testing. Each audit is tailored to the technology stack of your application and follows the global security testing standards as dictated by OWASP, SANS, CERT, PCI, ISO27001, and others.

Astra’s collaborative dashboard lets you/your developer communicate directly with the tester on the reported vulnerabilities. This dashboard lets you see the vulnerabilities being reported live.

You also get video PoCs and selenium scripts in order to reproduce the vulnerabilities. In effect, this means you can go ahead with the remediation in parallel to the VAPT and save precious time.

When your developers have patched the issue, they can raise a re-test request and our security team would be happy to comply.

Once everything’s been tested and verified with your application, Astra issues a publicly verifiable VAPT certificate that you can share with your customers and partners to boost transparency and trust.

Our VAPT offering comes in three different plans: Basic, Expert & Elite. The cost of each plan varies with frequency. So the basic plan with a bi-annual testing frequency will cost $240 per scan. This same plan will cost you $210 per scan when the frequency increases to quarterly. Similarly with the other two plans.

We offer VAPT services for website, web apps, cloud infrastructures (Azure, AWS, GCS, etc.), SaaS apps, mobile apps, and so on. Get in touch for information.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Astra Security Blog authored by Aakanchha Keshri. Read the original post at: https://www.getastra.com/blog/security-audit/vapt-india-guide/