Top Three Proven Open-Source Cybersecurity Tools to Try Out
In the article for the month of April, How to gain valuable experience before your first cybersecurity role, I outlined helpful ways to gain hands-on experience before landing your first cybersecurity role. One of these excellent ways is to build your personal projects. But how can this be achieved with ease? Is there a cost-effective approach to implementing new technology on a limited budget? One solution, is open-source cybersecurity tools.
What Are Open-Source Cybersecurity Tools?
The term open-source software was first introduced in the late 1990s. It describes a type of software which makes its source code or the “brain” behind the software available to the public for use, distribution and modification. The principle behind this software development approach is the belief that software should be freely available to anyone interested in using, studying and improving it. However, this was in stark contrast with standard practice in the industry where software was copyrighted and owned by the original software developer. This was also known as close source or proprietary software development.
Open-source cybersecurity tools make it easy for professionals to put their knowledge and skills to good use. It helps organizations of various sizes reduce the risks of cyber-attacks while saving money at the same time. It is safe to use open-source software. because they are reviewed frequently and examined by several experts. Open-source cybersecurity tools are not free from bugs, errors and other developmental flaws but these deficiencies are quickly remedied. It has a community of experts that makes knowledge sharing and support available. This is usually through forums, emails and other collaborative efforts.
Now, whether you are looking for defensive tools, offensive tools or cryptographic technology, there are high quality open-source versions available to use at no cost. For every copyrighted cybersecurity software in use, there is most likely, an equally good open-source version available. These include vulnerability assessment tools such as Nmap and Sqlmap. Cryptographic tools such as VeraCrypt and GNU Privacy Guard and network analysis tools such as Wireshark and Snort.
Top 3 Open-Source Cybersecurity tools to try out
There is a saying that experience is the best teacher so here are three open-source cybersecurity tools for you to try. They have proven to be valuable and efficient in their respective areas of expertise and will surely meet and exceed your personal and organizational needs.
Kali Linux
Kali Linux is an open-source penetration testing platform. It enables experienced and inexperienced professionals to perform security research, reverse engineering, computer forensics and penetration testing.
As the most advanced penetration testing platform, it can be optimized easily to meet your specific needs. It contains a wide range of security tools such as Aircrak-ng, Burp Suite, Hydra, Maltego, John the Ripper, Empire and many more. In addition, Kali Linux is available in various environments such as, undercover, cloud, bare metal, mobile applications, containers, virtual machines, USBs, and WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). The comprehensive nature of the platform ensures that its tools cover everything from reconnaissance to reporting.
AlienVault OSSIM (Open-Source Security Information and Event Management)
All over the world, Security Professionals trust AlienVault OSSIM. It aggregates and analyzes security data from different sources to identify potential security threats in real time. More especially, it provides network control and security visibility in asset discovery, vulnerability assessment, intrusion detection and event correlation. It has a single server deployment design and performs security monitoring in an on-premises physical and virtual environment.
The Open Threat Exchange (OTX) program powers the AlienVault OSSIM software. This is an open threat intelligence community with professionals who contribute millions of threat indicators to it daily. Furthermore, a community of industry experts provide support for the product through online forums.
OpenVAS
Greenbone in the year 2006, designed The Open Vulnerability Assessment Scanner (OpenVAS) to rapidly identify weaknesses in IT systems and networks. It assess risks and made recommendations for remediation. Its design consists of an executable applications scanner that runs tests against target systems, the Greenbone vulnerability management daemon and the Greenbone security assistant daemon.
OpenVAS makes use of the Greenbone community feed which contains many vulnerability tests and daily updates which it uses to continuously identify new vulnerabilities. It has a security response team, product documentation and an online response forum.
Next Steps
Open-source cybersecurity tools are powerful. They are enough start any ad-hoc or enterprise security project. Save yourself and your organization from spending money on expensive cybersecurity tools you may not need. Finally, enhancing your skills with open-source products is one of the smartest things to do today.