Penetration testing is a proactive cybersecurity strategy where ethical hackers simulate real-world attacks to uncover vulnerabilities across an organization’s systems, networks, and applications. This article outlines types of penetration tests, the difference between regular and continuous testing, and the many business benefits of ongoing security validation.
Penetration testing key insights:
Penetration testing (or pentesting) is a critical part of maintaining and fortifying your IP, network, and physical security. It involves giving professional pen testers permission to hack, test, and identify potential vulnerabilities in existing and new systems, networks, and apps, to secure against unauthorized access by malicious actors. This article looks at the benefits of penetration testing and how to get started.
IT penetration testing (or pen testing) refers to the process of methodically hacking into your system and network to identify and expose as many vulnerabilities as you possibly can, from multiple vantage points. Ethical hackers and security researchers perform these tests with the full knowledge and authorization of the client.
Penetration testers use internal and external attacks on your servers, intranets, web applications, wireless networks, mobile devices, network devices, and other available entry points (on-site or remote). After hacking your assets, pen testers generate reports on their findings and, in some cases, offer remediation advice.
Market research shows the growing demand of penetration testing. In 2024, the global penetration testing market was worth $1.7 billion. Experts claim it will reach $3.9 billion by 2029 (with a CAGR of 17.1%).
Source: techmagic.co
Penetration testing has been around since the ‘90s but has definitely changed over the years. The practical value of attack simulation hasn’t gone away, but deficiencies in the way these programs are deployed have caused many security leaders to view penetration tests as a ‘necessary evil’.
You should perform a penetration test if you:
Protecting the organization and its assets isn’t the only reason to invest in penetration testing. With penetration testing, you can protect customer data, reduce cyber risk, satisfy stakeholder requirements, and preserve the organization’s image and reputation.
It’s important to note that compliance is no longer the top reason for penetration testing. According to a recent study of cybersecurity engineers, managers, and CISOs, only 16% of organizations test purely for compliance purposes, while 61% of respondents cited best practice as a reason for testing.
A range of penetration testing types are available to uncover vulnerabilities across key areas of your IT infrastructure. Below are some types of pen tests you could perform:
The key difference between regular and continuous penetration testing lies in their frequency and integration into the development lifecycle.
Regular penetration testing is typically performed on a scheduled basis—quarterly, annually, or after major changes—to identify vulnerabilities with vulnerability scanning at a specific point in time. While effective for baseline assessments, it leaves potential gaps between tests where new vulnerabilities may go undetected.
Continuous testing, on the other hand, operates as an ongoing process, integrated into agile or DevOps workflows. It provides real-time visibility into security risks by continuously simulating attacks and assessing new code or system changes as they happen. This approach reduces the window of exposure, supports rapid remediation, and is ideal for organizations with dynamic environments or high compliance demands.
A penetration tester would use continuous security testing when:
The following are four ways of performing a pen test:
When your pen tester gives you an overall measure of your risk assessment, you can start understanding and appreciating your organization’s overall readiness to identify, prevent, mitigate, and respond to cyber threats.
Your pen testing strategy should help you answer these questions:
These questions are excellent high-level discussion points to have with your senior management team.
A pen test allows an in-depth analysis of your IT infrastructure and your ability to defend your applications, systems, networks, endpoints, and users from external and internal attempts to cause disruption and data losses or gain unauthorized access to protected assets.
Below are some advantages of using pen tests to analyze your security infrastructure:
A single breach of your company’s security system can lead to millions of dollars in damages. Security faults and associated disruptions in the performance of your network, applications, and services can cause debilitating financial harm to your organization. It could hurt your reputation and customer loyalty, generate negative press, and incur unanticipated penalties and fines.
Frequent penetration testing helps avoid these expenses by preventing and mitigating IT infrastructure invasions. It is far better for your organization to proactively maintain its security, irrespective of the high cost than to face extreme losses to its brand equity and financial stability.
Therefore, you should carry out a pen test whenever you change your network infrastructure and have highly qualified experts do it. Penetration testers will scrutinize your internet-connected systems for weaknesses and potential information vulnerabilities that hackers could use to compromise your data and network’s confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
A security breach can significantly affect your organization, clients, partners, and other third parties. However, if you schedule penetration tests regularly and take the necessary actions and prevention steps needed to ensure data and system security, you build trust and confidence.
You build an excellent company reputation and public reputation after years of consistency, hard work, and a lot of investment. However, all your hard work can change overnight due to a single security breach. Irrespective of the breach’s cost and whether you resolve it quickly, it can significantly hurt your reputation, trust, and confidence.
These destructive consequences could take years to repair and cost you a lot of business. Hence, scheduling regular penetration tests and taking the right mitigation steps to avert security breaches can prevent such outcomes. Remember that there are many malicious actors and hackers always on the prowl of vulnerable company IT environments, looking to gain access by any means necessary.
IT departments address the overall compliance and auditing facets of procedures such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, GLBA, SARBANES – OXLEY, and report penetration testing necessities recognized in the PCI DSS or NIST/FISMA commands. The complete records of your pen tests can help you evade substantial penalties for non-compliance. It also allows you to illustrate ongoing due diligence by maintaining the required security controls.
PCI DSS addresses pen testing to relevant systems, and qualified penetration testers perform it. The ISO27001 standards have a compliance section that requires system owners and managers to perform regular penetration tests and security reviews – at least every six months. They also need competent pen testers with the right tools to conduct these tests.
Performing a thorough IT penetration test is a complex process that entails:
The entire process requires a team of skilled IT professionals with years of experience in Windows and Linux environments, networking, scripting and coding skills, application development and assessment, and database management. They also need skills and expertise in hacking and pen test methodologies.
Furthermore, pen-testing helps your organization align with set industry security standards. Whether you need to meet PCI DSS, HIPAA, FISMA, GDPR, FFEIC, GLBA, or any other compliance and regulation needs, a pen test can help you identify the gaps preventing you from reaching compliance certification. It will offer you specific deliverables that you can improve, and you need the technical know-how to map them to particular industry security standards. Alternatively, you can hire a security consultant for help.
Unfortunately, not all penetration tests are equal. These tests’ results vary depending on several factors, including your testers’ skill, the test’s length, system changes during the test, as well as active and inactive web applications and firewalls during the test.
Hence, when you hire a company offering penetration tests and vulnerability disclosure and scanners, ensure that their pen testers are seasoned experts who perform multiple tests periodically to identify all the vulnerabilities in your system.
Before beginning with penetration testing, you need to determine which method of penetration testing is right for your organization. The four primary methods are traditional penetration testing, crowdsourced security penetration testing, internal testing, and a mixed testing approach. Each method has its pros and cons depending on your goals, resources, timeline, and budget.
Certified penetration testers range from thorough, razor-sharp, and helpful to oversold, irresponsible, and negligent. Below are some critical things to know when looking for the right professionals:
Alternatively, instead of taking on the challenges of pen testing, you could hire a trusted IT security company with an experienced team of experts in all things IT. By leveraging the power of crowdsourced penetration testing, you’ll find benefits such as rapid setup and time to value, realtime results, SDLC integration, and the option to ‘pay for results’ instead of time.
A recent survey found that crowdsourced penetration tests identify on average 7X more high-priority vulnerabilities than traditional penetration tests. If you want your penetration tests done ASAP and receive a detailed report of your systems’ health, Bugcrowd can help. We are a top-tier crowdsourcing security company offering the complete security coverage you need.
Get started with Bugcrowd today, or get a copy of the “Ultimate Guide to Penetration Testing.”