Is it time to retire ‘one-off’ pen tests for continuous testing?

If your organization is like many, annual penetration testing may be a regular part of your security protocols. After completing the yearly assessment, you receive and review your report and then check off your compliance requirements.

Once you wrap up the paperwork, you’re good to go for another year, right? The way things are moving these days, it might be time to reconsider if this approach is the best use of time and resources!

Consider this common scenario: Your development team deploys new features weekly or even daily. Meaning, your annual pen test report grows increasingly obsolete with each deployment. By the end of the year, when the next assessment rolls around, you’re testing a completely different application.

That means between tests, there’s a good chance critical vulnerabilities are lurking undetected in your systems — for days, weeks, or even months. 

Gaps in security testing

Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigation Report highlights why such gaps in security testing matter: exploited vulnerabilities in web applications rank as the third most common attack vector for data breaches, only trailing phishing and compromised credentials.

As organizations expand their web application footprint, these risks continue to grow as well.

So, is it time to retire ‘one-off’ pen tests and adopt continuous testing?

Read on to learn why point-in-time assessments fall short to have an impact on cybersecurity measures, how continuous testing better suits today’s agile development cycles, and the factors your organization will want to consider as you transition to continuous testing.

Moving beyond point-in-time assessments

Traditional penetration testing follows a rigid pattern: define the scope, perform the testing, and deliver the final report. But while that may be valuable for compliance purposes, these kinds of point-in-time assessments simply don’t align with modern development practices and cybersecurity requirements:

• With each code iteration, security snapshots lose relevance
• Patch verification stalls until the next scheduled assessment window
• Development teams get large batches of findings rather than actionable, real-time feedback
• Limited tester and retesting availability creates bottlenecks in security testing
• Communication barriers between developers and testers slow down remediation to a crawl

Continuous testing for modern development

Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) offers a more flexible approach that better aligns with rapid development cycles. Rather than treating security testing as an annual event, PTaaS integrates continuous assessment throughout the development process:

• Real-time vulnerability reporting lets you take immediate action on critical issues
• Developers and testers can directly communicate, speeding up remediation
• Unlimited retesting lets you verify fixes without waiting for the next assessment cycle
• Having access to diverse tester expertise ensures comprehensive security coverage and could even eliminate the need for vendor rotation
• Hybrid approach combines the best of both automated scanning as well as manual testing expertise to cover all possible vulnerability sources

Beyond just finding vulnerabilities

Finding vulnerabilities is only half the battle — rapid remediation requires that security teams partner closely with developers. PTaaS platforms facilitate this collaboration by:

• Providing instant notification when it discovers new vulnerabilities
• Offering built-in communication channels for clarifying findings and discussing fixes
• Giving rapid feedback on proposed remediation approaches
• Providing contextual guidance to help developers understand and prevent similar issues
• Tracking progress with metrics that demonstrate security improvements

Making the transition

Switching from yearly to continuous assessment demands new approaches to security integration and team coordination. Organizations need to break down silos between security, development, and operations teams while establishing new workflows that support rapid identification and remediation of vulnerabilities.

To successfully transition, understand where your traditional pen testing falls short. Your security teams should examine their current testing processes, identifying bottlenecks in vulnerability reporting, delays in remediation verification, and gaps in coverage between scheduled assessments.

Then, extend your success metrics beyond compliance considerations to include practical measures like mean time to remediate vulnerabilities, reduction in high-severity findings over time, and improvements in early-stage vulnerability detection. You should also consider how quickly development teams can receive and act on critical security findings.

Choosing a platform

Choosing the right platform is also important. Select a solution that integrates with existing development tools and ticketing systems. Look for platforms that offer real-time dashboards, automated scanning capabilities, and direct communication channels between developers and security testers.

As you transition to continuous penetration testing, remember that the goal isn’t just to find vulnerabilities —it’s to build a more resilient security program that integrates with your organization’s rapid development cycle to keep business critical assets safe without slowing you down. 

Maintaining compliance while improving security

Rather than choosing between compliance and security, PTaaS solutions offer your organization the best of both worlds. With comprehensive documentation of testing activities and regular status reports, you can go beyond checking compliance boxes, providing substantially better security coverage.

PTaaS-Solutions like those from Outpost24 include built-in audit trails that capture vulnerability discovery and remediation efforts, while performing continual assessment that lets you define (and track) ongoing security requirements. 

Organizations ready to move beyond pentesting for just compliance reasons should explore how continuous penetration testing through PTaaS can strengthen their application security program. Outpost24 offers a proven approach combining automated scanning with manual testing by certified experts to deliver comprehensive, real-time security assessment.

Ready to modernize your application security testing?

Learn more about Outpost24s solutions for web application security, a proven PTaaS approach that combines automated scanning with expert manual testing to deliver comprehensive, real-time security assessments. 

Sponsored and written by Outpost24.