Cyber Security is often referred to as Information security in the modern world. Nowadays most people are looking forward to starting their professional career or switching over to the cyber security domain because of its importance and crucial role playing in the IT industry. Hence it is very important to know the tools before you start your career which makes it easy for you to get adopted quickly.
Here in this article, we will have a look at the top cyber security tools or cyber security software available and an overview of it. Most of the tools which are role-playing mentioned here are open source-based and well-documented tools.
You can do cyber security certifications and gain relevant knowledge on this field.
There are many tools in cyber security based upon specific domains/areas of interest:
Visit CEH certification course and learn Ethical hacking from scratch
Here is the cyber security tools list you should now.
NOTE: Using these tools is restricted/unauthorized networks can take legal action against your activities.
NMAP, short form for Network Mapper is an open-source tool used for scanning the networks. This tool is mainly useful to discover hosts, information gathering about the network devices on which service or port is open publicly and identify security vulnerabilities, uptime of the host device. NMAP supports major OS platforms like Windows, Linux and even MAC OS. The main advantage of this tool is flexible, easily portable, free, and well documented steps.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Customer Rating: 8.4 out of 10
You can download the NMAP tool in their official portal.
Wireshark is one of the tools which is used globally by many for analyzing network protocol. This tool will help you to capture using pcap, store and analyze each packet in a detailed fashion. Wireshark supports OS platforms like Windows, Linux, Solaris, macOS etc. Wireshark is also an open-source tool similar to the tcpdump with a user interface option. The main features of Wireshark are that real-time data can be analyzed from different types of protocols. Also colour coding feature is available in the platform to show the packets when it matches any specific rule. This tool will capture packets only from the pcap-supported networks.
Pros
Cons
Pricing: Free
Customer Rating: 4.6 out of 5
You can download the tool from the official website.
Metasploit is a powerful and famous open-source penetration testing tool used in cyber security industry. This tool will be used by cyber attackers and as well as cyber defenders. All that matters is that how they use the tool. Metasploit has many inbuilt modules which can be used for exploiting, payload executions, auxiliary functions, encoding, listening, executing shell codes, Nops. This tool can be used to perform security assessments that enhance the company’s security posture.
Pros
Cons
Pricing: Average price of Metasploit Pro is approximately $15,000 per year.
Customer Rating: 4.6 out of 5
You can download the tool from the official website.
Aircrack-ng comes with a package of security tools to assess WiFi network security controls. It covers on monitoring, attacking, testing, cracking WiFi security. This tool is mainly used by hackers to hack WiFi by cracking WEP, WAP, WAP2 encryption techniques. This tool has sniffing and packet injection features. This tool is available for Windows, Linux, macOS, Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD.
Pros
Cons
Pricing: $65 per user
Customer Rating: 9.1 out of 10
You can download the tool from the official link.
Hashcat is a globally used tool for cracking passwords. Almost 250+ hashing algorithms are supported by this tool. This tool supports Windows, Linux and macOS platforms. The main features of this tool are very fast, flexible, versatile and an open-source tool that will help a person perform brute-force attacks by several hash values. Hashing algorithms like LM, MD-family and SHA-family are supported. Hashcat can be used to perform various cyber attacks like brute-force attacks, combinator attacks, dictionary attacks, fingerprint attacks, mask attacks, hybrid attacks, permutation attacks, Toggle-Case attacks, rule-based attacks, etc.
Pros
Cons
Pricing: $0.63 to $2112.52/one-time payment
Customer Rating: 8.0 out of 10.
You can download the tool from the official website.
Burp suite is a combined platform of several tools which are used in the penetration testing field. This is the favourite tool for all pen testers and bug bounty hunters. This tool was developed by the company “Port Swigger”. There are various tools like Spider, Proxy, Intruder, Repeater, Sequencer, Decoder, Extender, Scanner etc., which are used for different security testing processes. This tool can be used at project-level as well as at user-level.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Customer Rating: 9.1 out of 10
You can download the community edition of this tool from its official website.
Nessus Professional is a commercial tool used for vulnerability assessment. This tool can help you to find security flaws, security vulnerabilities, information about outdated patches, misconfigurations of systems, servers, and network devices as well. This tool can also be used for compliance and auditing purposes. This tool is an advanced tool where all the said features are automated. Basic network scan, advanced scan, advanced dynamic scan, malware scan, mobile device scan, web application tests, credential patch audit, badlock detection, bash shellshock detection, DROWN detection, Intel AMT Security Bypass, Shadow brokers scan, spectre and meltdown, WannaCry ransomware are the types of vulnerability scans available in the platform. Audit Cloud Infrastructure, Policy Compliance Auditing, Offline Config Audit, SCAP and OVAL Auditing are some of the options available for compliance perspective.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Customer Rating: 4.7 out of 5
Here is the official link for the tool.
Snort is one of the best open-source IPS / IDS tool. This tool uses a set of rules that will help to identify the malicious activity and generate security alerts to the users. Snort can also be deployed in the first layer of network to block the malicious sources. Snort can be functioned and deployed for both personal and official purposes. Sniffer can be configured in three modes “Sniffer mode, Packet logger mode, Network Intrusion Detection System mode”. This tool is developed by Cisco Systems.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Customer Rating: 4.4 out of 5
You can download the tool from the official website.
Intruder is a vulnerability scanner tool to perform cyber security assessments, vulnerabilities across your company’s structure. This tool can look for security patches, web application attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, CSRF etc, applications that are configured with default passwords etc. It is commercial tool that has three versions “Pro, Essential, Verified”.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Here is the official website link for the tool.
Kali Linux is an open-source and advanced penetration testing tool. The main objective of developing this tool is to act as cyber attackers and ethical hackers. Kali Linux comes up with a pack of 600+ tools like Aircrac-ng, Autopsy, Burp Suite, Hashcat, John the ripper, Maltego, Nmap, OWASP ZAP, Sqlmap, WPScan, Nessus, Hydra, Wireshark, Nikto, Vulnhub, Metasploit framework etc, that can be used for specific cyber security purposes. Kali-Linux is a Debian-based Linux distribution tool that is maintained and developed by Offensive Security.
Pros
Cons
Pricing: Free
Customer Rating: 9.4 out of 10
Here is the official website link for the tool.
John the Ripper is a password cracker that is free of cost, and it is an open-source project, so any developer can contribute as well. It is used for password cracking. Cybersecurity researchers use John the Ripper because it can crack many hashes and cipher text using its comprehensive set of algorithms of hashes.
Pros
Cons
Price: Free
User Rating: 8 out of 10
You can download it from its official website.
SiteLock is a platform that provides web security to protect websites. It performs daily scans to find vulnerabilities in websites like SQL Injection, XSS (Cross-Site Scripting), malware detection, etc. It provides plugin features in various hosting platforms like HostGator, WordPress, Bluehost, etc.
Pros
Cons
Price:
User Ratings: 7.5 out of 10
You can download it from its official website.
Teramind provides tracking of employee’s time and engagement. This helps the administrator with threat management. Using teramind is beneficial because one can find any suspicious activity of their employee.
Pros
Cons
Price:
User Ratings: 7 out of 10
You can download it from its official website.
Sprinto is a cloud-based platform providing security and compliance automation services. I provide a comprehensive dashboard to handle assessments, evidence gathering, and control implementation. Sprinto helps the organization to be prepared for auditing because of compliance’s coordination with regulations. It has pre-built templates of various compliances like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), etc. to start any assessment quickly.
Pros
Cons
Price: There are no fixed prices for sprinto as it varies based on the requirements the customers ask for. Creating an estimation for cost for a tech organization with default options gives the cost of $13,200.
User Ratings: 7.5 out of 10
You can download it from its official website.
Cain and Abel are password-cracking tools that are specifically made for Windows operating systems. It is used to crack passwords of Windows Operating system. It attempts to crack the password hash through many methods like brute force, dictionary attack, etc.
Pros
Cons
Price: Free
User Rating: 8 out of 10
You can download it from its official website.
Paros Proxy is a web proxy used to intercept traffic between web browser and internet with the capability of altering the HTTP/HTTPS requests according to need. It also comes with more functions like web spider, web traffic recorder, hash calculator and also has the capability to find some web vulnerabilities on its own such as XSS (Cross-site Scripting) and SQL (Structured Query Language) Injection.
Pros
Cons
Price: Free
User Rating: 5 out of 10
KeePass is a free and open-source password manager for Windows operating system. Users can store their usernames and passwords. It even has the capability to store file attachments. KeePass will encrypt and store it in a database of its own to maintain security. There are unofficial versions of KeePass for other operating systems like MacOS and Linux which are contributed by developers across globe.
Pros
Cons
Price: Free
User Rating: 7 out of 10
You can download it from its official website.
Nagios is an event monitoring tool which is used to trigger an alert if any suspicious activity occurs and also give another alter when the issue is being resolved. Using Nagios one can monitor services, servers, switches, applications, networks. It supports Windows operating system, VMWare and Linux.
Pros
Cons
Price: For 100 nodes - $2,495
User Rating: 7 out of 10
You can download it from its official website.
Nexpose is a on premises vulnerability scanner that is used to scan the network for vulnerabilities. It is used to identify the opened ports, services running, applications and many more. It is a vulnerability management solution developed by Rapid7.
Pros
Cons
Price: As it is an on-premises setup, the price varies according to the user’s requirements. A rough pricing is for scanning 128 IPs it would cost $2,000 and hardware pricing can be $3,000 to $18,000.
User Rating: 7 out of 10
You can download it from its official website.
Forcepoint develops software for security and protection of data and many other security services which help organizations to strengthen their security posture. They provide services like Endpoint security, Data Loss Prevention, Security Information and Event Management, etc. Some of their major products are Forcepoint NGFW (Next Generation Firewall), Forcepoint ONE, Forcepoint TRITON AP-DATA, Forcepoint Threat Protection Platform.
Pros
Cons
Price: The price varies according to the requirement of the customer.
User Rating: 7 out of 10
You can visit the official website.
To get a deeper understanding for the above tools, enroll in KnowledgeHut’s cyber security certifications.
Here are the features which you should search for while analyzing cyber security tools lists:
In most cases, cyber security threats are external. They come in the form of attacks like Denial of Services, malicious attachments, phishing, vulnerable web applications, etc.
However, these threats can be internal too. For instance, employees within an organization can leak confidential data, compromise security settings, etc. In this regard, a reliable cyber security tool can help companies set up firewalls which can help mitigate both internal and external threats.
Nowadays, cybercriminals use bots to enter online accounts, devices and networks. Thus, cyber security tools must have anti-bot functions like reCAPTCHA, rate-limiting, blacklisting, signature detection, etc. to defend against malicious bot activity.
Reliable cyber security tools come with robust monitoring systems. They help information security professionals track both incoming and outgoing traffic stats, CPU, and RAM usage by various applications, newly installed programs, etc. This helps detect anomalies and mitigate probable vulnerabilities which can later become major threats.
Some cyber security tools leverage AI to increase their efficiency in detecting and mitigating cyber threats. Additionally, they can use deep learning algorithms to collect and analyze data from users worldwide and increase their effectiveness in detecting potential threats.
Cybersecurity tools must also support cross-platform compatibility. This means that they must run seamlessly on various operating systems, along with cloud environments and on-premises systems. Furthermore, they must be scalable in terms of environmental diversity and volume. This will provide companies with the flexibility needed to meet future technological requirements.
Given the vast array of cyber security tools available in the market, it can be quite confusing for you to choose the right cyber security tool. Thus, here are some pointers which you can keep in mind before making your choice:
Before you start looking for a cyber security solution, it is essential that you assess your current cyber security needs. They include assessing your current cyber security position, policies, controls and procedures. Also, you need to plan your digital transformation roadmap and understand your priorities, objectives, requirements and challenges to find the appropriate cyber security solution.
Look up the latest cyber security tools and analyze their top features, compatibility, pros and cons, user interface etc. Additionally, read through their user reviews to determine whether the products meet customers’ expectations.
After choosing the best cyber security tools, you need to shortlist a few that align with your preference. To do so, you can use methods like benchmarking, scoring, testing and referencing in order to compare their quality, value and performance.
Check out the pricing plans on your selected cyber security solutions and select one that offers your required features while staying within your budget.
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By now, you must have got an idea on the top 10 tools which are used in cyber industry. These tools are useful for your career in cyber security domain as a fresher. You will come across many cyber security tools/monitoring tools in your work as your experience is getting bigger. If you want to enhance your skills in cyber security, you can start using these tools initially and gain more knowledge. All these tools will give an idea on how attackers are using these tools to find vulnerabilities and with the found vulnerabilities, how they are penetrating inside the network to gain the advantage of user’s data or information.
Cyber Security tools are the tools that are used by cyber experts for performing attacks and for detecting purposes. The same tool can be used in both positive and negative mode. Its all in the mindset and motive of the person who is using the tool.
There are many tools in cyber security based upon specific domains/areas of interest.
Yes, of course. As the threats in cyber world is getting maximum, the demand for cyber security job profiles is also getting bigger to detect those attacks and take required steps. In recent years, cyber security is one of the highly profitable domain for both companies and as well as for employees.
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