Best Mobile App Penetration Testing Tools for Enterprises

Penetration testing tools are necessary for enterprises that want to protect their applications from real-world cyber attacks. These tools identify vulnerabilities that could lead to breaches, like the 2017 Equifax data breach. 

These specialized tools help identify gaps in software security posture by simulating real-world attacks that vulnerability assessments may not fully expose. The Equifax data breach is a stark example of the importance of penetration testing in addition to vulnerability assessments for enterprises.

What are penetration testing tools?

Penetration testing tools, sometimes called pen-testing tools, are dedicated software created to assess the security of an organization’s network, system, or application. Cybersecurity experts and ethical hackers use these tools to identify, exploit, and document vulnerabilities, providing actionable insights to enhance security and counter real-world cyberattacks.

How to choose the best security testing tools?

Picking the right security testing tools can feel like choosing a superpower for your company's cybersecurity team. But with so many options out there, how do you know which ones are worth your time and money? Let's break it down into simple steps.

1. Accuracy and comprehensiveness 

• False positives/negatives
  False positives are incorrectly flagged vulnerabilities, and false negatives are vulnerabilities that were passed as not a vulnerability, leaving critical vulnerabilities unnoticed. Appknox has a false positive rate of less than 1%, the lowest in the industry.
• Vulnerability coverage
  A good pen testing tool should cover a broad vulnerabilities database, including the OWASP API Top 10. 
• Threat intelligence integration
  The penetration testing tool you choose should give real-time updates on threat intelligence, including strategic, tactical, technical, and operational intelligence. 
  
  

2. Integration

Look for CI/CD pipeline integration so the penetration testing tools can run tests automatically. Additionally, the vulnerability assessment integration gives a complete overview of the threats found and their impact if left unpatched. 

3. Support for mobile app testing

Your penetration testing tool should offer support for multi-platform testing. The best mobile app penetration testing tool should be equipped with features like:

• App coverage
  Test different types of mobile apps like native, hybrid, and web apps.
• OS coverage
  Support testing Android, iOS, ChromeOS, and more.
• Testing Common Vulnerability Exposure (CVE)
  Test common mobile vulnerabilities, such as insecure data storage, improper session handling, and insecure communication.
  
  

4. Manual testing capabilities

Top penetration testing tools offer manual penetration testing, during which security experts analyze your mobile application's threat landscape and business impact. Combine manual testing with automated vulnerability assessment to create a robust security strategy across your app portfolio. 

5. Real-time reporting and analytics

The reporting and analytics features of the penetration testing tools for mobile applications should ideally include: 

• Real-time alerts
  Allows teams to address emerging issues that are critical in time-sensitive scenarios. 
• Analytics dashboards
  Tracks historical data to help security teams understand trends, patterns, areas of strength, and weaknesses. Provides visual representations of security metrics for quick assessments.
• CXO dashboard
  This includes gravity, business impact, and regulatory and compliance issues. 
  
  

6. Vendor reputation and support

Look for customer reviews, certifications and compliances (ISO, SOC, GDPR, and HIPAA), and customer support responsiveness in the mobile app penetration testing tool over multiple channels. 

7. Ease of use and adoption

The best penetration testing tools are easy to adopt and intuitive for users. They offer online documentation, a knowledge base, a help center, and assistance with the initial onboarding.

Top 7 penetration testing tools for enterprises

Let’s examine the top 7 penetration testing tools for enterprises and understand how they are equipped to secure mobile apps from cybersecurity attacks.

Commercial penetration testing tools

1. Appknox

Appknox is one of the best penetration testing tools for analyzing the threat landscape of your mobile application. It offers manual and automated vulnerability assessments and covers 140+ automated SAST, DAST, and API VA scans on your mobile apps. It helps companies speed up their release cycles by 2X by scanning your app’s binary in <60 seconds and prioritizing risk severity based on CVSS scoring.

What sets Appknox apart from the other pen testing tools are: 

• A mobile-first vulnerability assessment
• Automated DAST on real devices, not emulators
• Simulated real-world attacks to identify vulnerabilities
• Detailed reports that break down vulnerabilities, attack vectors, and risk levels to prioritize remediation efforts
• Reliable in-house QA tool for enterprises relying on outsourced application development and
• On-call support from security experts on mitigating vulnerabilities during penetration testing. 

Besides, Appknox helps organizations with a diverse portfolio of applications from multiple vendors identify inconsistent coding, testing, and security hygiene practices that create security gaps without a centralized testing tool. It combines manual and automated security assessments to seal off loose ends in application security. 

The key features of Appknox’s mobile app penetration testing are: 

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
  Upload the binary of your Android or iOS application's binary and get real-time dashboard feedback with exhaustive test coverage. 
• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
  Test on real devices and schedule scans for multiple apps with one-time setup in <1 minute.
• API testing
  Discover all APIs within your mobile application without manual identification, synergize testing, and customize scans.
• Detailed reports with CVSS score
  The comprehensive VA report has 140+ test cases.
• Remediation call
  Understand your app vulnerability scan reports with security experts and explore best practices to make your applications hack-proof.
  
  

Pros

• High accuracy with minimal false positives (<1%)
• Strong focus on mobile application security
• Identify vulnerabilities in <60 seconds 
• 80+ DevSec integrations, including CI/CD pipeline and vulnerability assessment workflows 
  
  

Cons

• Appknox is a mobile-first penetration testing platform 
• Remediation reports are available only in PDF format 
  
  

Pricing 

• Starter 
• Professional 
• Advanced 

Appknox offers flexible, usage-based pricing based on the customer requirements with add-ons for manual testing.

2. Burp Suite

Burp Suite by PortSwigger is a web vulnerability scanner that allows web security to test, find, and exploit vulnerabilities faster with automated DAST scanning. Bulk actions allow users to run recurring DAST scans across thousands of sites. 

The key offerings include automated scanning, manual testing, and advanced vulnerability discovery. 

Pros

• Offer web application testing
• They have a free community edition
• High customization options using BApp extensions and a robust API
  
  

Cons

• It does not offer mobile application penetration testing 
• The free edition does not offer web vulnerability scanning 
  
  

Pricing

• Free community edition 
• Pro plan: $449/year

3. Astra

Astra Security is a continuous penetration testing tool that supports manual pen tests, continuous scanning, a vulnerability management system, and an Al-assisted engine. It also supports web apps, mobile apps, and API pen tests.

The plug-and-play automated penetration testing tool offers a Chrome extension for login recording and enables authenticated scans behind login pages without repetitive reauthentication.

Pros

• Integrates with CI/CD pipeline
• Combines manual and automated penetration testing
• Complies with various industry standards, including OWASP Top 10 and SANS 25
  
  

Cons

• Sometimes, it fails to update the software or scan for malware
• Users have had issues with increased spam traffic on their website
  
  

Pricing

• Scanner: $1,999/year for one target 
• Pentest: $5,999/year for one target
  
  

Open-source penetration testing tools

4. Nmap

Nmap, or Network Mapper, is an open-source tool for security auditing and network scanning. It is designed to scan large networks and can work with single hosts. Using IP packets, Nmap identifies the hosts in the network, their services, their OS, the types of firewalls they use, and several other elements. 

Pros

• Open-source
• Exhaustive network scanning
• Wide range of port scanning options
  
  

Cons

• High false positive rates that lead to false identification of vulnerability
• Limited functionalities in Windows GUI compared to the command line
  
  

Pricing

• Free and open-source

5. Metasploit

A collaboration between the open-source community and Rapid7, Rapid7's Metasploit is a penetration testing framework that helps verify vulnerabilities, manage security assessments, and improve security awareness. Metasploit comes pre-installed on the Kali Linux operating system.

Pros

• Open-source and provides deep customization options by giving total access to its source code
• Supports both automated and manual testing
• Regular updates and a wide range of exploit modules

Cons

• Antivirus can detect Metasploit’s payload and attacks
  
• Resource-demanding and does not work on older systems
  
  

Pricing

• Free and open-source

6. OpenVAS

OpenVAS is an open-source, full-featured vulnerability scanner that provides vulnerability assessments and security audits. The penetration testing tool performs unauthenticated and authenticated testing, performance tuning for large-scale scans, and can implement any vulnerability test.

Pros

• Free and open-source
• Performs various high-level and low-level internet and industrial protocols
• Detailed documentation and tutorials
  
  

Cons

• Poor UI
• No regular updates, and it is siloed since it’s open-source and free
  
  

Pricing

• Free
  
  

7. MobSF

Mobile Security Framework (MobSF) is used for mobile application security, penetration testing, malware analysis, and privacy analysis. The framework can run both static and dynamic analyses and supports Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile.

Pros

• Static analyzer supports popular mobile app binaries APK, IPA, APPX, and source code
• Dynamic analyzer supports Android and iOS applications
  
  

Cons

• High false positives and negative rates
• Limited support for obfuscated code
  
  

Pricing

• Free

Comparison of the best penetration testing tools for enterprises

TL;DR

Enterprise organizations require penetration testing tools that cater to multi-platform infrastructures across their entire mobile application portfolio. 

Pen-testing tools that offer end-to-end penetration testing and vulnerability assessment generate comprehensive reports and integrate with CI/CD and vulnerability assessment workflows are ideal.   

Appknox is one of the best penetration testing tools for enterprise organizations with several mobile applications that want to accelerate their time to market. 

With <1% false positives, comprehensive penetration testing, combined manual and automated testing, simulated real-world attacks, and on-call support for mitigating vulnerabilities, Appknox manages the security assessment of your entire mobile app ecosystem.

To learn more about Appknox’s mobile app penetration testing platform, sign up for a free trial now!

Try Appknox for free

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is penetration testing?

Penetration testing assesses the security of an application, system, or network by simulating a cyber attack. It helps enterprises strengthen their defenses by identifying vulnerabilities and weaknesses that attackers can exploit.

2. What is enterprise penetration testing?

Enterprise penetration testing is a comprehensive security testing focused on large-scale organizations. It usually contains complex infrastructure, multiple networks, systems, and applications.

3. What are the three types of penetration testing?

The three main types of penetration testing tools are white box testing, black box testing, and gray box testing.

4. How are penetration testing and vulnerability assessment different?

Penetration testing means exploiting the vulnerability to simulate a cyberattack. Vulnerability assessment involves identifying and listing down the vulnerabilities.

5. How are penetration testing and vulnerability assessment different?

Penetration testing should be performed at least once a year or whenever major updates are made to the application, system, or network.

6. Can security testing tools be integrated with other development tools?

Yes, security testing tools like Appknox can be easily integrated with other development and CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Circle CI, GitLab CI, and more. You can integrate them with Slack, Teams, and Jira for better communication and faster release cycles.