Testing new tools and techniques is an important part of a penetration tester's job. Every day new tools are created and new techniques found, so keep up with the industry. We have to invest a fair amount of our time practicing and mastering the tools of our trade. Having a data center where we can set up a lab environment and practice is not always possible and can be quite expensive. With cloud services getting cheaper, faster, and easier to use, we do not have an excuse not to have a penetration testing lab.
Take for example Azure; create a free account, and you get $200 of credit to explore services for 30 days. Take a look at the virtual machines available, and you will see that creating a lab domain like the one used in this book can be done with a couple of clicks.
One of the biggest concerns with deploying vulnerable machines is to keep them contained and not expose them to the internet. For this, we can create a virtual network...