Penetration testing (pentesting) provides one of your first and best lines of defense against cybersecurity risks like social engineering and phishing, pre-emptively exposing weaknesses attackers might exploit so you can take mitigation measures. As your organization recalls Cybersecurity Awareness Month this October, consider whether this might be a good time to implement or improve pentesting to strengthen your security posture.
What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing is a cybersecurity strategy that simulates an attack on your organization’s digital properties in order to expose vulnerabilities and identify where you need to strengthen your security. By adopting an attacker’s perspective on your organization, pentesting provides an effective method to mitigate vulnerabilities before real threat actors can find them, as well as shut down openings they’ve already discovered. Some industry regulatory frameworks recommend or require pentesting.
Pentesting forms part of a comprehensive offensive security strategy, along with other Offensive Security methods like vulnerability scanning and red teaming. A pentest typically begins with planning to gather information on your testing scope and attack surface. This is followed by scanning to identify your security barriers and defenses, followed by attempts to gain and exploit access. Pentests conclude with reports detailing findings and recommending remediations.
Pentesting can be applied to any part of your digital attack surface, including web applications, APIs, mobile apps, AI and LLM apps, software code, cloud configurations, internal and external networks, and human vulnerabilities. Pentests can cover your entire attack surface or focus on specific vulnerabilities. Focused tests may be run quickly, while comprehensive tests may be prolonged projects. Pentests can be repeated periodically or on an ongoing, continuous basis to verify mitigations and test defenses against vulnerabilities that may have emerged since initial testing.
Pentesters use standard frameworks such as Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP), MITRE ATT&CK, and the Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTES) to analyze attack surface and plan pentesting strategies. Pentests employ tools such as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), and Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST).
From Abstract Threat to Tangible Experience
Pentesting may seem abstract to non-specialists, but it brings tangible benefits to security teams and organizations. Pentests help you:
Prevent data breaches, loss of sensitive data, system disruption, and ransomware extortion
- Achieve compliance requirements
- Protect your organization against reputational damage
- Save time and money by pre-empting attacks
- Prioritize risks
- Implement shift-left security strategies
- Improve security efficiency
- Build a strong security culture
This diverse range of benefits makes pentesting a cost-efficient investment for organizations seeking to improve security postures.
How Pentests Forge Stronger Cybersecurity Awareness
Cybsecurity Awareness Month emphasizes the importance of vigilance for maintaining security. Pentesting can help your organization achieve this goal by exposing vulnerabilities, improving development team security practices, raising employee awareness, and promoting a more proactive security stance.
1. Exposing Vulnerabilities: The "Aha!" Moment
Offensive security testing gives your security team insight into vulnerabilities by giving you better ability to track your security posture over time. Using pentesting frameworks lets you establish criteria and metrics for measuring your security. This enables you to set quantifiable goals, take baseline measurements, make adjustments, and track progress. Through pentesting, you gain actionable insights into security analytics data, raising cybersecurity awareness in a practical way.
2. Building Muscle Memory Through Experience
Pentesting improves development team awareness of security by providing experiential insights into vulnerabilities. Pentest platforms like Cobalt can integrate with popular CI/CD pipleline tools, code analysis tools, and vulnerability management platforms. This makes it easy for your DevOps team to implement security during development and deployment. Post-remediation retests can confirm vulnerability fixes. In these ways, pentests raise development team awareness of security priorities.
3. Fostering a Culture of Vigilance
Pentest reports provide proof of concepts that can help build a culture of vigilance and reduce the risk of breaches stemming from lack of awareness. A Mimecast report found that human error contributed to 95% of breaches in 2024,[ https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/data-breaches-human-error/] with 8% of staff accounting for 80% of incidents, typically caused by insider threats, credential misuse, and user-driven errors. Pentests can help you identify human error vulnerabilities in your organization and bring them to your team’s attention before attackers exploit them.
4. Shifting from Compliance to Proactive Security
Pentesting raises your organization’s awareness by encouraging security teams to go beyond compliance and aspire to specific security goals. Armed with insights from pentesting reports, your team can establish proactive policies and implement procedures that both promote compliance and strengthen your security posture.
Beyond the Breach: Sustaining Awareness
To implement pentesting and cybersecurity effectively, raising security awareness needs to be an ongoing policy and procedure built into your company culture, not just an annual event in October or a response to data breach disasters. Mitigating social engineering and phishing vulnerabilities requires training staff and customers to avoid common mistakes that can thwart even the best security safeguards. A pentesting probe of human weaknesses in your organization can become an occasion to implement ongoing security training.
Regularity is Key: Pentesting Is Not a One-Time Event
Just as awareness should be ongoing, pentesting should be approached as a continuous procedure, not a one-time fix. A continuous pentesting approach integrates pentests into the entire software development lifecycle to strengthen security at every phase of development and deployment. Continuous pentests supplement comprehensive tests of your entire attack surface by focusing on specific components of your defenses, such as particular applications, data, or business processes. Targeted components can be tested at any phase of development or deployment to catch bugs as early as possible.
A continuous pentesting approach integrates a proactive, shift-left development strategy into security, hardening your defenses throughout the software lifecycle. This promotes better compliance with security standards that require security to be built into software design from the onset of development. It also helps verify mitigations and keep systems protected against new vulnerabilities. Continuous pentests with a narrow scope can be scheduled and conducted more rapidly than comprehensive pentests, lending agility to your security procedures.
Penetration Testing: An Investment in Your Team's Security IQ
As a tool for boosting cybersecurity awareness and providing actionable intelligence, penetration testing represents a solid return on investment in your team’s security IQ. When compared to the cost of data breaches, ransomware attacks, or compliance penalties, the benefits of pentesting far outweigh the costs.
Whether you’re new to penetration testing or trying to improve your security posture by improving your pentest procedures, Cobalt pentest services can help your organization bring the cybersecurity benefits of pentesting to your organization. Our pentesting as a service (PTaaS) platform makes it simple to schedule tests on demand with our talented team of over 450 elite pentesters, rigorously screened for expertise and experience. Our pentesting experts work with your team through Slack, in-platform messaging, and integration with your existing security tools to schedule customized pentests quickly in hours or days, not months.
We provide pentesting for internal and external networks and APIs and for all your apps, including desktop, mobile, web, and AI/LLM. Contact us to discuss your security needs and get started bringing the benefits of pentesting to your organization.
