Organizations conduct pen tests to learn about their systems and how cybercriminals might try to attack them. Getting the most out of penetration testing as a service requires proactive planning, scoping, testing, and remediation—all of which a quality pen test partner should help with.
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Leveraging Penetration Testing as a Service
Pen testing is an approach to cyber defense that simulates attacks on a system to test how effectively it repels them. By studying how testers behave, organizations can take proactive steps toward preventing real-world attacks—especially with regular, service-model testing.
Getting the most out of IT security penetration testing as a service means:
- Building pen testing into your cyber defense planning and implementation
- Working with pen testers to determine an appropriate scope for your needs
- Conducting a wide variety of tests, ideally regularly, to generate intelligence
- Using pen test results to revamp and optimize your cyber defense deployment
Make sure to keep these factors in mind when recruiting a pen testing service provider.
Account for Pen Testing in Cyber Defense Planning
The first major consideration comes long before any penetration testing program is launched. Organizations need to consider what kinds of monitoring and risk assessments they’ll conduct when planning and implementing cybersecurity architecture to make future tests easier.
Building perimeter defenses, access controls, and other safeguards with pen testing in mind will facilitate future scoping and testing. On one level, it’s a proactive best practice for all security architecture implementation. On another level, organizations should consider whether pen tests are an explicit requirement of regulatory frameworks they need to comply with in the future.
Many providers who offer penetration testing as a service also advise organizations on security governance and help them implement it. Working with the same provider to plan and build systems as you do to test them can lead to more efficient and effective assessments.
Compliance Considerations for Penetration Testing
Depending on an organization’s location, industry, and several other factors, it may be subject to one or more security regulations. In many cases, compliance requires penetration testing. And, even when it does not, pen testing may still be an ideal way to achieve other compliance aims.
For example, consider how pen testing figures into these widely applicable regulations:
- The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which applies to most organizations that process credit card payments, explicitly requires penetration testing.
- The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which applies in and around healthcare, has vulnerability assessment requirements that pen testing satisfies.
- Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), mandatory for military contractors, requires penetration testing for Level 2 compliance when custom software is used.
Letting your pen testing partner know which framework(s) you’re targeting will help them shape an individual pen test or a broader pen testing program to your specific regulatory needs.
Work with Testers to Determine Scope and Focus
This is where the real benefit of a quality pen testing partner first shows itself. When working with a pen testing service provider, organizations can collaborate to create the most apt test or series of tests to meet their specific needs, based on internal and external threat intelligence.
Often, an experienced pen tester will know what kind of test you need better than you do.
For example, it’s easy to assume that limiting pen testing to one specific area is the best way to prevent a known weakness. An organization with a newer—or out-of-date—approach to web apps might pursue penetration testing on web applications exclusively. However, cybercrime often exploits connections between systems and insidious attacks on unknown weaknesses. An expert advisor will know what other systems might be in danger because of or in addition to a hardware- or software-specific weakness and recommend a more robust and intricate program.
Comparison of Major Approaches to Pen Testing
Another major consideration when scoping with potential partners is which approach they’re most comfortable with or experienced in. The best providers can conduct any kind of pen test.
There are two approaches almost all IT security pen testing falls into:
- External pen testing – Testers begin with little to no knowledge of organizational systems and attempt to enter them as swiftly as possible. The focus is on how many points of entry are open to attackers and how easily they can infiltrate from scratch.
- Internal pen testing – Testers begin from a pre-negotiated point of knowledge or access to systems and navigate within them to a central point of control. These tests focus on monitoring and incident response once infiltration has already occurred.
Each approach has its use cases, and many organizations opt for a hybrid or combination of the two. Make sure to work with a pen tester who provides options best suited to your exact needs.
Conduct Multiple, Varied Penetration Tests
The biggest responsibility an IT security pen testing provider has is conducting the tests themselves. One of the best ways to maximize pen testing’s value is to conduct multiple tests, ideally regularly. You should also test in different ways and on different parts of the organization.
As noted above, most pen testing is either internal or external in nature, or a hybrid of the two; however, another differentiating point between tests is which assets or systems it focuses on.
A pen test could focus solely or primarily on a specific segment of the organization, or it could assess weakness to a specific kind of attack within this segment. For example, staff in a given unit might be particularly vulnerable to social engineering, relative to other staff. Or a specific set of hardware, such as mobile devices, might be targeted because of a weak patch management.
Pen testing is at its most effective when it’s frequent and diverse.
And there’s no better way to increase the volume or diversity of pen tests than by incorporating automated penetration testing. By using AI tools to conduct pre-test research and scoping, simulate attacks themselves, and/or assess results and suggest remediation, organizations dramatically increase the potential security benefits all while minimizing overall resource costs.
Remediate Issues Identified in Pen Tests
Just as proactivity in implementation facilitates effective testing, pen tests should also inform a cybersecurity deployment. Any weaknesses identified should be remediated immediately, and follow-up testing should report on those patches specifically in addition to system-wide logs.
The best pen testing partners work with organizations to create actionable threat intelligence, triangulated with industry- or location-wide risk information. In the best examples, this could include risk calculations and prioritization for compliance purposes, along with detailed plans for how to address threats. And a pen testing partner might create dashboards for monitoring both threats and mitigation progress, scheduling tests at regular intervals or after a risk is addressed.
Pen testing is less an end than a means toward effective threat and vulnerability management.
Rethink Your Penetration Testing Today
Ultimately, getting the most out of a pen testing service provider comes down to proactive planning, careful scoping, robust testing, and guided remediation. You should seek out a partner who’s committed to helping you protect your systems the right way—the only way to do it.
RSI Security offers pen testing services of all kinds and for all needs. Our expert team leverages experience across a wide variety of industrial contexts, and we help organizations rethink and optimize their cyber defenses with robust threat intelligence and flexible remediation advisory.
To learn more about penetration testing as a service with RSI Security, contact us today!
