How to Select a Pentesting as a Service Provider

As technology continues to advance and businesses expand their digital footprints, security has become a paramount concern.

In the past five years, the demand for digital goods and services has skyrocketed, and more people are working remotely than ever before. In this world of digital transformation, security is the lynchpin to success. When security is deprioritized, organizations may find themselves in the breach headlines and scrambling to find budget as they face the business-crushing costs associated with a reportable security breach.

One of the most effective ways to minimize the risk of a security breach is through regular pentesting. However, traditional pentesting methods are becoming increasingly inadequate to keep up with the rapidly expanding attack surfaces and threats. Traditional, manual pentesting is both time-consuming and costly, and with the rapid expansion and evolution of attack surfaces, waiting weeks or even months to receive a pentest report diminishes its value. By the time organizations receive their report, it is likely that many changes have already been implemented in their digital environments in the meantime.

Security and DevOps teams need a faster and more efficient way to test their applications, networks, cloud environments, and all digital assets in order to scale their DevSecOps approach proportionally with their growing environments. With the budgetary and technical talent-related constraints businesses are facing, solutions also need to be economical and easy to use to be adopted. This is where Pentesting as a Service (PTaaS) comes into play.

The New Alternative to Traditional Pentesting

If you’re a security leader considering moving away from traditional pen tests, you’re not alone. Technology and Security teams alike have grown tired of the costs and time lost with the old approach.

Fortunately, Pentesting as a Service (PTaaS) is the faster, more scalable, new alternative that enables DevSecOps and reduces false positives without increasing risk, introducing threats, or adding more work or downstream issues for the SOC. With PTaaS, IT Security teams and CISOs have a proactive mechanism to test on-demand throughout the organization’s full stack and build a cyber-resilient security infrastructure that meets security compliance requirements without introducing unnecessary risks.

To learn more, download: The CISO’s Guide to Pentesting as a Service (PTaaS).

PTaaS Combines Manual and Automated Testing Together

While manual Pentesting alone is inherently slow, expensive, and not scalable, legacy automated security testing tools lack accuracy in that they cannot apply business logic during vulnerability discovery, nor can they provide expert-level remediation guidance. Net-net, both have inefficiencies that can cause more risks and delays over time compared to the new, advanced approaches that have evolved in recent years to improve upon traditional Pentesting.

With Pentesting as a Service, security leaders can get the best of both worlds by combining manual pentesting techniques with automation and AI with PTaaS. This new way of conducting pentesting as-a-service helps time-strapped DevSecOps teams gain major advantages over their adversaries while removing the drawbacks of traditional pentesting methods.

Check out the infographic below to learn more about why enterprise security teams are turning to PTaaS and how manual pentesters work in unison with automated tools and next-gen AI to ensure pentesting is fast, scalable, accurate, and cost-effective.

PTaaS Eliminates the Pentest Backlog

The primary goal of Pentesting is to simulate a real-life attack on a specific IT system to assess several criteria for security and compliance. Pentesting should be conducted regularly, and, at a minimum, annually. If regulatory mandates are required, organizations will have various stipulations to meet when conducting pentesting to maintain compliance and meet third party security standards.

This has increased the demand for certified testing, leading to in-house security teams cannot keep pace with the demand for pentesting, resulting in a backlog. To combat the problem, CISOs are quickly shifting to Pentesting as a Service (PTaaS) to eliminate the pentesting backlog and increase testing for maximum results while containing costs. PTaaS gives security leaders the benefits of an internal team with a subscription-based pricing model for on-demand pentesting. The solution allows teams to focus on what they do best – without the burden of having to hire a costly headcount or incur capital expenses to manage the in-house demand for pentesting.

Ideally, with the right penetration testing services provider, you’ll be able to conduct full stack testing across your entire organization’s digital ecosystem, including:

1. Compliance pentesting for GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 279001, NYDFS, etc.
2. API penetration testing
3. Web penetration testing
4. Application pentesting
5. Internal and External Network pentesting
6. IoT device Pentesting
7. Red team simulation
8. Social engineering testing and phishing simulations
9. Cloud pentesting
10. Mobile application Pentesting
11. ICS embedded systems pentesting

Based on the needs and offerings of a pentest-as-a-service provider, an organization has the flexibility to choose one or several services to ensure comprehensive coverage. Discover the reasons why security leaders are advancing their security and compliance testing in the informative video provided.

What should a PTaaS solution include?

The right PTaaS solution will offer full-stack continuous or point-in-time pentesting services. The service will include a variety of powerful features, including:

1. Manual, Human-led penetration testing combined with Automated pentesting, vulnerability scanning, and AI
2. Audit-ready, certified pen test reports
3. Remediation support
4. Integrated DevSecOps workflows
5. Secure client portal with on-demand retesting capability

Additionally, the right PTaaS provider will also offer additional services, such as:

• Complimentary vulnerability assessments
• Compliance-focused cyber security testing
• Red Teaming services
• Continuous vulnerability scanning and monitoring

PTaaS Provider Selection Criteria

As with every cybersecurity category and marketplace, not all providers are the same. It’s important to scrutinize your vendor selections. These are the top criteria to seek out in a PTaaS provider.

Certified Pentest Reports: Like a standard penetration test, a Pentesting as a service engagement concludes with an accredited pentest report that provides practical recommendations. The report encompasses discovered vulnerabilities, potential avenues of attack, and security deficiencies, along with comprehensive guidance for remediation in a contextual manner. These reports are readily auditable and can be effortlessly shared with relevant stakeholders.

Human-Led, AI-Enabled Results: Seek a blended methodology that combines human-led expertise, AI-enabled procedures, and automation to achieve comprehensive outcomes. A specialized ethical hacker adeptly carries out the penetration test, employing exclusive tools and established industry methodologies to evaluate the designated system. The expert validates the findings, eliminates false positives, and offers preliminary remediation advice alongside the conclusive report.

Faster Turnaround Time: An exemplary PTaaS provider should efficiently conduct assessments within agreed-upon timelines, ensuring that essential activities are appropriately prioritized to test critical systems without compromising business continuity. Scheduling is hassle-free and can be arranged within a swift timeframe of 1-2 business days.

Customized Pentesting Exercises: Each organization encounters unique security and compliance challenges as part of its routine operations. A service provider must carry out customized engagements that align with your predefined objectives, enabling you to mitigate unnecessary cost escalations and scope expansions.

Expertise and Credentials: The right PTaaS provider should have compliance credentials, analyst recognitions, industry awards, and customer references to provide during the RFP process. They should have a roster of experienced, qualified security testers and security researchers. Ideally, your designated penetration tester should be an in-house employee of the PTaaS provider and possess relevant work experience, certifications, and a successful track record. The provider can provide documentation to validate your assigned pentester, including verified background checks, positive client recommendations, and proof of good standing with the cybersecurity community.

Ultimately, prioritizing these factors during your selection process can expedite the identification of the optimal provider. These considerations significantly impact the level of visibility you will attain from each offensive security engagement. By obtaining comprehensive visibility to assess assets, vulnerabilities, and assigned risk scores, you empower your in-house teams to take prompt action. Additionally, the right provider will offer integrated, proactive remediation guidance complemented by expert customer support, enabling swift mitigation of critical risks and timely achievement of objectives.

Prevent Future Breaches Today with BreachLock

Join the Pentesting as a Service movement with BreachLock and 1000+ global organizations and stop your most critical risks from causing impactful, expensive, and preventable breaches. Our satisfied clients report they can meet their pentesting requirements on time and more affordably than ever before with BreachLock’s suite of full-stack pentesting services.

Test your attack surface with one trusted provider that can help you meet your security goals on time with our in-house, certified pentesters who leverage their expertise and industry standards give you true visibility of your attack surface and actionable remediation guidance that actually helps your team reduce risk.

1. Your BreachLock Client Portal offers the ultimate in agility and visibility with prioritized vulnerabilities categorized with risk scores and tagged with expert remediation guidance.
2. SecOps and DevOps teams can seamlessly work together to quickly remediate critical risks and meet security testing goals on time using API ticketing integrations to Trello, Slack, and Jira.
3. After the most critical remediation activities are completed, you’ll receive an audit-ready, certified pentesting report delivered 50% faster and more affordably than traditional providers.

Schedule a discovery call today with one of our security experts and see how PTaaS can help you reach your security goals in time and within budget.