Irish IT company unveils new ethical hacking service

19 Jul 2024

From left: Wayne Morgan and Eamon Gallagher. Image: IT.ie

The Dublin-headquartered company expects the new service to generate an additional €1m in revenue.

Irish managed IT services company IT.ie has launched a new automated testing service that incorporates ethical hacking to imitate the movements of threat actors to uncover and exploit cybersecurity “weak spots” in organisations.

In an announcement today (19 July), IT.ie said that its new penetration testing service, also known as pen testing or ethical hacking, is designed to “fully replicate” a hacker’s attack on an organisation to exploit and gain access to its network.

The company said this kind of testing-as-a-service product forewarns the organisation to the potential dangers before cybercriminals have an opportunity to exploit them, potentially preventing an attack.

Wayne Morgan, chief technological officer at IT.ie, said that to stay ahead of hackers “we must think like them and view our defences as their points of attack”.

“Manual penetration testing led the way for many years, highlighting vulnerabilities in our networks and systems. Identifying these issues internally gave us time and direction to apply remediation steps before falling victim to malicious intent,” said Morgan.

According to him, manual penetration is only effective at the time it is carried out but fails to account for the “dynamic nature” of cyberthreats.

“Hackers don’t just knock on your door once; they are constantly there, looking for ways in,” Morgan said. “Automated monthly pen testing is the next-generation approach and is a much more effective means of testing your network to highlight any potential weaknesses, helping you to keep hackers at bay.”

IT.ie hopes the new service with monthly assessments will help organisations reduce costs and achieve regulatory compliance. It also expects the service to generate an additional €1m in revenue.

This comes on the back of recent growth at the company. In February, IT.ie announced plans to double its headcount with the creation of 30 new roles based across offices in Dublin, Cork and Galway. The roles are to be created over the next three years through an expansion investment of €2.5m.

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Vish Gain was a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com