About Face: Defending Your Organization Against Penetration Testing Teams

In this paper, we examine a series of techniques that a network administrator can use to frustrate external penetration testers while securing and obscuring the network under attack. We examine a deeper understanding of the penetration testing cycle performed by the team and the weaknesses that can be exposed in the cycle to survive a test. Throughout the paper, we document and enumerate several tools and scripts that can be of great value in surviving a penetration test.