Avery Martin holds a Bachelor of Music in opera performance and a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian studies. As a professional writer, she has written for Education.com, Samsung and IBM. Martin contributed English translations for a collection of Japanese poems by Misuzu Kaneko. She has worked as an educator in Japan, and she runs a private voice studio out of her home. She writes about education, music and travel.

Do you have difficulty controlling your temper? Does your anger come out in unhealthy ways that could hurt others as well as yourself? Anger is a powerful emotion that can lead to serious problems in your relationships and career if left unbridled. Learn more about your ability to manage it by taking this anger management test. It's designed to evaluate the manner in which you approach and handle anger-inducing situations.

Examine the following statements and choose the answer option that best applies to you. There may be some questions describing situations that may not be relevant to you. In such cases, select the answer you would most likely choose if you ever found yourself in that type of situation. In order to receive the most accurate results, please answer as truthfully as possible.

This test is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional diagnosis or for the treatment of any health condition. If you would like to seek the advice of a licensed mental health professional you can search Psychology Today's directory here.

Sohaib Khan is a freelance writer and aspiring novelist with a bachelor's degree in math from Luther College, Iowa. He is an expert in SEO techniques. Khan also contributes to blogs and helps friends maintain their websites. He hopes to earn a master's degree in creative writing some day.

Physical crash dummies may have dozens of sensors and other sophisticated mechanical parts, but their digital brethren can be just as complicated. With more than 100,000 elements and dozens of validation tests to manage, companies delivering the complex FEA simulation models that lie at the heart of the virtual crash test dummies are starting to leverage a new type of software platform to facilitate the process.

One such company is SIMULIA, a division of Dassault Systemes that specializes in simulation software, including the Abaqus FEA program. Abaqus is used by many in the automotive industry to create virtual crash test dummy models, but SIMULIA also separately develops and qualifies its own virtual crash test dummy models, including versions of the BioRID (Biofidelic Rear Impact Dummy) and WorldSID (Worldwide Side Impact Dummy). To streamline the time and effort involved in creating, validating and updating the virtual models, a SIMULIA team now employs the company's own Simulation Lifecycle Management (SLM) platform to automate the process and ease the data management burden. As a result, SIMULIA has been able to cut back the time it takes to validate the virtual crash dummies from four weeks to as little as four days.

"We're using SLM in both the development of the virtual crash test dummies as well as with the maintenance of the virtual crash dummies and the synchronization with the new versions of the Abaqus FEA software," says Paul Lalor, SIMULIA's product manager for the SLM suite of products. "The virtual crash test dummies need to be managed and we need to assure the OEMs that the dummies they're using in their car programs, together with the versions of the analysis software, are indeed fully validated."

Data Management Challenge

Deploying SLM to promote simulation reuse, aid in the onerous data-management burden and, ultimately, shorten the development and validation cycle couldn't come at a better time. Virtual crash test dummies are in high demand as leading automotive OEMs increasingly transform their vehicle development programs to embrace the digital world, using 3-D CAD and simulation tools to model and test vehicle designs virtually as opposed to building costly physical prototypes. The cost of building and crashing a prototype vehicle is high enough, but the physical crash test dummies, which come in a variety of true-to-life human dimensions and are made of myriad materials, including custom-molded urethane and vinyl, are expensive in their own right, often commanding a price tag of more than $200,000 per dummy. The reason? The physical dummies are highly complex, loaded up with sensors, and equipped with ribs, spines, necks, heads and limbs so they can respond to impact in ways that are realistic to how a human body might respond.

To ensure the validity of any kind of safety testing, the virtual dummies have to consistently mimic the behavior of the physical crash test dummies and produce data that correlates well to the physical crash test results. To do so in any highly consistent and repeatable manner requires standardization of FEA models, ensuring that each virtual dummy exhibits predictable responses to crash impact loads and accelerations. A typical FEA dummy model will have about 100,000 elements, 150,000 nodes and 500,000 degrees of freedom. To ensure there are comparable results between this extensive virtual dummy and its physical counterpart, the SIMULIA engineers have to run component, sub-assembly and full-model tests of each dummy model, which generates a huge amount of data and outputs for comparison. For instance, the team might run a sub-assembly test to assess the stresses on a full rib cage model hit from the side by a pendulum, while also doing a full-body test of an entire dummy model to see what happens when it's hit from the side by a virtual "solid" barrier.

On top of this, there's another layer that complicates the data-management challenge. Each time a new version of the physical crash test dummy is introduced or a new version of the crash simulation software is released, vendors have to go through a lengthy qualification process to ensure that same level of consistency is retained. Traditionally, this has been a labor-intensive process for a SIMULIA team, which had to manually run simulations for the 30 to 60 tests in both the current and previous versions of the Abaqus software. Teams also had to run post-processing steps to generate the curve plots describing the analysis results, as well as generate statistical comparisons to ensure the same variables were in agreement between the different versions of Abaqus. "It used to be a horrible, labor-intensive, poorly managed process, (and with SLM), it's now a highly automated, highly managed process with a lot of collaboration," Lalor says.

SLM, which serves as both a central repository for the simulation data and as a process controller, allows the SIMULIA engineers to save and manage their simulation data, reuse simulations, retain performance metrics and protect their intellectual property. The Isight software within SIMULIA also allows them to automate much of the simulation processes - another key factor in reducing the overall validation cycle times, Lalor explains. Specifically, Isight enabled the team to create a workflow that let them launch all of the Abaqus analysis tasks on a compute cluster as well as another workflow that helped determine the correlation between results from the different Abaqus versions on identical dummy tests. "We can literally press a button and launch all of the validation tests on a high-performance computing cluster and then generate a report to tell me which of the 350 tests matched and which didn't," Lalor says. "That gives us an 80 percent reduction in maintenance cycles."

Since building and validating virtual crash test dummies is a team, not an individual sport, the use of SLM and Isight has also aided in collaboration. "This allows multiple team members to collaborate on the same data in a controlled way," Lalor says. "Before SLM, the data was on individual people's hard drives or shared drives and you had to call `Joe' to ask about changes in a file."

First Technology Safety Systems, which uses Abaqus as well as other simulation tools to create its physical and FEA crash test models, sees process automation as the wave of the future for simplifying what is now, admittedly, a labor-intensive, data management process. "We definitely see a need for this," says Roel Van De Velde, CAE sales and customer relations manager for FTSS Americas. "Today, it's very labor-intensive to make sure we use the correct data, and we plan to have the resources available in the next six to 18 months to have our models ready to integrate into this kind of process automation environment."

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to grasp why cybercriminals prioritize attacks on organizations. These folks are notoriously hurry on taking shortcuts, and the average enterprise environment is a goldmine of quick exploitation opportunities that range from ransomware extortion and data breaches, to industrial espionage and botnet activity.

Once a trespass has happened, hackers move laterally across the infrastructure to stretch the attack surface by plaguing multiple endpoints in one go. What’s particularly unsettling, they may maintain the foothold for months without being detected. In the aftermath of this, companies face downtime, loss of customer data, financial repercussions, and regulatory issues, let alone long-term reputational damages.

It comes as no surprise that proactive security is gathering steam today, wherein penetration testing (pentesting) is a Swiss Army knife strategy. In plain words, it’s about breaking bad for a while to simulate a real attacker’s actions. This offensive approach can be an eye-opening experience to enterprises in terms of their vulnerabilities and applicable fixes.

The internet is rife with information about penetration testing types and methodologies, so this article will zoom in on a few key aspects, including those that call forth confusion and misconceptions among organizations that decide to jump on the pentesting bandwagon.

Knowing the objectives is half the battle

Emphasis on the goals is a cornerstone of preparing for an offensive cyber stress test that will yield positive security dividends rather than being a waste of time and resources. This is first and foremost because the motivation defines the methods for conducting a pentest.

Risk mitigation is a common objective. The impulse to minimize the odds of a security incident is often fueled by a exact attack that wreaked havoc in the industry the company represents. The impetus for reducing risks may as well stem from corporate decision makers’ forward-thinking philosophy geared toward best security practices, which is a commendable route to take.

Compliance is another driving force throughout the penetration testing ecosystem. The whys and wherefores are prosaic: noncompliance with industry-specific or regional regulations, such as the General Data Protection Act (GDPR), entails penalties and can potentially kick an org out of business. It’s also in every company’s best interest to check if third-party contractors follow safe security practices, which raises the bar for executing supply chain raids.

Attack simulation, one more classic objective of a pentest, aims to reproduce a real incursion where the threat actor is unfamiliar with the target system’s architecture, running programs, and source code. White hats’ knowledge is limited to publicly available information. This technique provides a bird’s-eye view of the digital assets from the angle of exploitation probability.

The color spectrum of a penetration test

Pentesters seem to be obsessed with colors. Red, blue, and purple teaming; black, gray, and white-box testing – these are elements of a seasoned ethical hacker’s everyday vocabulary. What’s the big deal with colors? The truth is, these terms go well beyond symbolism and correlate closely with the objectives the company seeks to achieve.

Black-box testing presupposes a penetration tester’s zero knowledge of the target environment. Typically combined with the red teaming tactic, this assessment brings the offensive gist of the exercise as close to a real-world attack scenario as possible. This method leverages, among other things, dynamic application security testing (DAST) and tends to be the fastest to run.

However, relying solely on this spray-and-pray technique is a slippery slope. “Over the last 30+ years, black box testing has proven over and over again to miss critical security issues that led directly to ever more massive breaches,” emphasizes the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) documentation.

Also, cybercrooks have virtually infinite time to probe a system for weaknesses and weaponize them, whereas a pentest is typically limited to several weeks. Black-box testing is unable to tackle this asymmetry.

When gray-box testing is underway, security professionals mimic the actions of an attacker with some insider knowledge, such as network design documentation and login credentials for an account with limited access to enterprise resources. It strikes a balance between true-to-life and staged circumstances.

In a white-box testing assignment, the pentester has unrestricted access to the system and is given carte blanche to inspect every nook and cranny of the environment in search of weak spots. In this case, the daunting challenge is to analyze massive amounts of code and other data in-depth.

White-box evaluation is often labeled as the most time-consuming across the board due to its comprehensive essence, but that’s not always the case and somewhat of a stereotype. The use of automatic scanners like static application security testing (SAST) tools, combined with the ability to see the realization of a feature in the code instead of fuzzing an application, significantly reduces the duration of such a pentest.

Demyd Maiornykov, CEO and co-founder of cybersecurity company Sekurno that has a strong track record of conducting successful penetration tests for companies across different industries, explained in an email interview how this trio of approaches and customer goals overlap: “It all comes down to your objective: if you aim to reduce the risk to the highest extent possible, white-box is an excellent, and the most efficient tool for that”.

He goes on to say, “However, if you have previously performed white-box testing and/or integrated security in the development process, gray-box or black-box can be a good option for you. Because you already test the existing security controls and check their efficiency. How can you simulate a robbery of your house to see whether someone can break in, if there is no lock in place?”

Bridging the awareness gap for informed decisions

Many organizations encounter a fissure between Dumps when preparing for a pentest. This is a catalyst for wrong choices and frustration over unrealized expectations going forward.

For instance, aside from terminology and methodology misconceptions, some don’t know that the assessment workflow can be accompanied by system downtime. DevOps teams may frown on insufficient involvement in the testing, and the pentest report might be a bit complicated for non-technical folks upstairs to understand.

That said, providers should engage with their potential audiences to explain the nuts and bolts of the process and demystify some of their inner workings. This principle is top of mind for Sekurno. In addition to penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, SDLC security, and GDPR compliance, an important facet of the company’s mission is security training. In an upcoming webinar that will be held on June 1st, Demyd Maiornykov will share his team’s experiences from past projects to help organizations get maximum mileage out of a pentest.

Conclusion

A penetration test is no walk in the park. It takes some fundamental awareness and preparation on an organization’s side for the exercise to come to fruition. This includes knowing the objectives, the possible roadblocks, and the criteria for choosing a security provider beyond marketing mantras.

If done right, the evaluation provides precious visibility of the attack surface, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, potential business impact, and most importantly, the ways to address these weaknesses before malicious actors get a chance to exploit them.

© 2023 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

5 minutes

Do you have difficulty controlling your temper? Does your anger come out in unhealthy ways that could hurt others as well as yourself? Anger is a powerful emotion that can lead to serious problems in your relationships and career if left unbridled. Learn more about your ability to manage it by taking this anger test. It's designed to evaluate the manner in which you approach and handle anger-inducing situations.

Examine the following statements and choose the answer option that best applies to you. There may be some questions describing situations that may not be relevant to you. In such cases, select the answer you would most likely choose if you ever found yourself in that type of situation. In order to receive the most accurate results, please answer as truthfully as possible. After finishing the test, you will receive a brief personalized interpretation of your score that includes a graph and information on the test topic.

This test is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional diagnosis or for the treatment of any health condition. If you would like to seek the advice of a licensed mental health professional you can search Psychology Today's directory here.