What's the difference between black-box vs grey-box/white-box testing?

Pentests, conducted with or without prior knowledge, are essential for evaluating the security posture of your systems. At Web Security Scan, we advocate for a comprehensive approach that leverages prior knowledge (grey-box/white-box testing) whenever possible. This entails providing penetration testers with pertinent information such as login credentials, IP ranges, service configurations, system architecture insights, and database/source code access.

By furnishing pentesters with this contextual understanding, they gain a holistic view of your applications, systems, and underlying IT infrastructure. This empowers them to conduct thorough examinations, resulting in more precise and comprehensive findings within the allotted timeframe.

Conversely, black-box testing—performed without prior knowledge—mimics real-world hacking scenarios but requires additional time to grasp the test subject. This may limit the depth of investigation into other areas within scope, potentially leading to security blind spots where certain functionalities remain untested.

In our white-box testing approach, we also combine elements of black-box and grey-box testing. This includes assessments from external and unauthorized user perspectives, ensuring a robust evaluation of your security measures.