Understanding Cybersecurity Footprinting: Techniques and Strategies

Footprinting, also known as fingerprinting, is a methodology used by penetration testers, cybersecurity professionals, and even threat actors to gather information about a target organization to identify potential vulnerabilities. Footprinting is the first step in penetration testing. It involves scanning open ports, mapping network topologies, and collecting information about hosts, their operating systems, IP addresses, and user accounts. This gathered data helps to generate a comprehensive technical blueprint of the target organization. Using footprinting, cybersecurity researchers can...

collecting cybersecurity cybersecurity professionals fingerprinting footprinting identify information mapping network open ports operating systems organization penetration penetration testing ports professionals scanning strategies systems target techniques testers testing threat threat actors understanding vulnerabilities