When preparing background findings for next steps:
- Clearly determine what "next steps" actually means for your pen test.
- Analyze findings to determine how to weaponize them in future phases.
- Consider findings within a bigger picture, not in a vacuum.
- Discard irrelevant findings and focus on findings that are actionable and relevant.
- Determine how public IP addresses map to resources like web servers that you can later target.
- Consider how you may use public IP addresses as entry points into the private network.
- Determine which subdomains may be worth targeting due to how they're named.
- Leverage information from third-party sites to learn more about an organization and its people.
- Consider how the people information you gather can help shape your later testing.
- Leverage people information in conducting social engineering tests.
- Use gathered technology information to identify potential vulnerabilities.
- Consider that the presence of certain technology might imply the target organization relies on a specific vendor in other areas.
- Record your findings and next steps in a document for easy reference.