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The State of Pentesting 2020

The State of Pentesting 2020 Finds Strong Relationship Between Security and Engineering

Today, we released the results of the fourth annual “The State of Pentesting” report, which features insights from more than 1,200 pentests conducted in 2019 through our Pentest as a Service (PtaaS) platform and analysis from more than 100 security practitioners who participated in our application security survey.

This year, we also investigated what web application vulnerabilities can be found reliably through dynamic and out-of-band scannings (“machines”) and which require human expertise to manually identify through black-box penetration testing (“humans”). The report is intended to help security practitioners strategize resource allocation and ascertain value in a results-driven market.

Among the key report takeaways, we observed application security methodologies and tactics are adapting quickly to accommodate DevOps:

  • More than one-third (37%) of security practitioners stated their companies release code weekly or daily. It’s unsurprising that they are now pentesting more often, with more than half (57%) pentesting at least quarterly.

  • Misconfiguration leads our top vulnerabilities list for the fourth year in a row, while issues in session management and access control remain consistent issues

  • Dynamic and out-of-band scanning technologies are improving in scope and quality, requiring pentesters to apply system knowledge to find design-level vulnerabilities that machines will miss

We hope this report helps you think strategically about how you invest your application security budget.

Click the following link to download The State of Pentesting 2020 report or access the newest report here: The State of Pentesting 2022.

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About Caroline Wong
Caroline Wong is an infosec community advocate who has authored two cybersecurity books including Security Metrics: A Beginner’s Guide and The PtaaS Book. When she isn’t hosting the Humans of Infosec podcast, speaking at dozens of infosec conferences each year, working on her LinkedIn Learning coursework, and of course evangelizing Pentesting as a Service for the masses or pushing for more women in tech, Caroline focuses on her role as Chief Strategy Officer at Cobalt, a fully remote cybersecurity company with a mission to modernize traditional pentesting via a SaaS platform coupled with an exclusive community of vetted, highly skilled testers. More By Caroline Wong
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