Why You Need Pentesting-as-a-Service (PtaaS)
Cyberattacks have been growing in frequency and severity over the past 10 years and have increased exponentially since the onset of widespread remote and digital work. The pressure is on for organizations to prioritize building and implementing a comprehensive security strategy to avoid becoming the latest cyberattack headline.
Proactive, preventative testing is a critical way to enhance an organization’s security posture. Overall, testing brings major awareness to companies by testing their people, processes and technologies—guiding the remediation of vulnerabilities before an actual attacker breaches the enterprise.
A critical component of security testing that often gets labeled as a “must-do” is pentesting. However, organizations that adopt a new way of approaching pentesting—pentesting-as-a-service (PtaaS)—will be the ones who successfully transform their security programs from reactive to proactive and ultimately create a safer digital world.
But what exactly is PtaaS and what value does it bring to the cybersecurity table? Let’s take a closer look.
What is Pentesting?
Before we dive into PtaaS, we need to understand pentesting; traditionally referred to as penetration testing. In short, this is a security assessment and analysis activity, conducted via simulated attacks, to check an organization’s security posture. The objective? Seek out and expose vulnerabilities within an organization’s security defenses so that weaknesses can be remediated—before a cybercriminal exploits them.
However, companies frequently end up putting pentesting on the back burner because the process is archaic, inefficient and expensive. In fact, research shows that 22% of security professionals say that it takes months to get a pentest project scheduled and deployed, leaving their systems open and exposed while they wait. Organizations find themselves in a paradox: They recognize the need for pentesting but become frustrated with the model.
What’s the Solution? Pentesting-as-a-Service (PtaaS)
Traditional pentesting models include long delays before testing starts, limited collaboration between pentesters and developers and, at the end of the process, a static PDF-style report—all in all, too many organizations end up with a security strategy that doesn’t match the velocity of development today. The ultimate goal of the PtaaS model? Increase the efficiency of the entire pentesting life cycle.
PtaaS was created with modern development cycles and the current threat landscape as its foundation. With PtaaS, organizations can manage scalable, efficient pentests with on-demand access to expert security talent via a modern and easily accessible SaaS delivery platform. It allows DevSecOps teams to secure code faster via direct integration into security and development tools and offers real-time collaboration with pentesters, enabling them to catch vulnerabilities that may slip past other automated checks in a company’s security strategy.
Let’s dig into the nitty-gritty of the benefits.
Speed and efficiency: There’s no question that speed plays an integral role in vulnerability remediation. Being able to identify and update weaknesses and vulnerabilities faster ultimately puts organizations in a better position to fend off potential cybersecurity threats more quickly and efficiently. PtaaS enhances a company’s ability to integrate testing throughout their development life cycle quickly, with a 48-hour start time and two-week testing windows. Using PtaaS platforms, organizations are able to schedule their tests, effectively eliminating the long wait times associated with traditional pentesting.
Cost: When it comes to overhead, research found that PtaaS offers companies a 96% higher ROI for their testing budget. In addition, adopting a PtaaS model instead of traditional pentesting showed that organizations can save as much as 62% of the overhead hours associated with traditional testing.
Integrations and automated workflows: Unlike traditional pentesting that requires findings be manually entered, PtaaS enables organizations to integrate pentest findings directly into engineering and DevSecOps workflows quickly and easily. Through integrations with issue tracking programs like Jira and development platforms like GitHub, tickets can not only be actioned quickly but also acted upon throughout the pentest life cycle instead of after, enabling a more efficient workflow from start to finish.
Talent sourcing: Unlike traditional pentesting firms that have a limited bench of available testers, PtaaS offers a larger talent pool (and increased depth of talent) organizations can choose from which provides customers a more tailored testing experience. Organizations are able to have a more timely response, as well as engage a tester that fits their specific needs.
Collaboration and communication: A PtaaS platform enables pentesters, developers, project managers and business leaders to easily interact and collaborate throughout the testing process via messaging platforms like Slack, allowing for more visibility and a more seamless workflow. Pentesters and development teams are able to ask questions and communicate directly about how best to remediate identified vulnerabilities; project managers and business leaders can monitor progress and explore the findings of a test in real-time.
Analytics and reporting: Traditional pentesting reports are typically delivered in a static PDF, but PtaaS platforms deliver a more thorough and actionable set of insights. Reports include a dynamic overview of the test along with a risk summary of every identified vulnerability and an industry benchmark.
It takes a layered approach to create a robust security program and ensure a stable security posture. Pentesting validates other pieces of an organization’s security program and helps identify and inform what areas need improvement. PtaaS automates many of the traditionally labor-intensive tasks that can delay traditional pentesting. As a result, not only is there more time for the actual test; the speed, integrations, talent, collaboration and reporting capabilities allow for real-time insights and more effective remediation in the long run.
The key takeaway? Organizations must stop viewing pentesting as a manual add-on to their security process and instead integrate PtaaS into their technology stacks from day one, using it as a core component of their security systems. In the end, using the PtaaS model and integrating it into a comprehensive security strategy will help organizations stay on top of the rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape they’re facing.
