Penetration Testing as a Service

More than a year ago, we talked in a blog post about the growing expansion of the pentesting market and how complex it is becoming for organizations to make the right choice of a provider with so many offers on the table. The problem resides in the fact that many of them can be misleading and do not guarantee a sufficient quality that other providers can achieve in this security testing method. At that time, we highlighted some key attributes you could keep in mind to choose a competent penetration testing vendor. Now, we will inform you about a more recent model, penetration testing as a service (PTaaS), in which traditional pen testing is tweaked to have more value within the agile and now popular DevSecOps methodology. Our intention is that you have a clear understanding of what it is and what benefits it offers before you make a decision.

As you saw in the previous paragraph, we used the words "penetration testing," "pentesting," and "pen testing." This is common in this context, but they all refer to the same concept: security testing of information systems by simulating genuine attacks with the authorization of their owners to detect vulnerabilities. Penetration testing is part of an offensive security posture in which the predominant idea is that the best way to deal with malicious attackers is to think and act like them. This is done by security experts, known as white hat testers, ethical hackers or, precisely, pen testers, using various tactics, techniques and procedures. In their penetration and exploitation results, these experts disclose to owners and interested parties where and how to make adjustments to protect their systems.

The continuous progress in cybercrime and the accelerated evolution of technology make it necessary to evaluate system security time and again. Mistakenly, many organizations believe that implementing automated tools is the perfect solution. And that the more tools they have, the better. Automation fulfills the so-called vulnerability scanning. This, however, acts only as a first layer within a strategy of comprehensive security testing. Systems are checked through this method to quickly detect previously known security problems in them. Not including an active layer of human intervention in a security testing project, precisely with manual pen testing, is a blunder.

We ask you to be aware of our emphasis above on "manual." We speak of manual penetration testing because, in the context of cybersecurity, automatic tools are also attributed the capability of performing pentesting. We do not dispute that tools can infiltrate or find their way into various nooks and crannies of a system. But proper penetration testing should not be limited to automation. Pentesting without human intervention ends up being mere vulnerability scanning. In contrast to what ethical hackers can achieve with in-depth inspection, this method fails to report complex business logic and zero-day vulnerabilities. In addition, it yields false positives and false negatives, which professionals must validate.

Subsequently, pen testers use scanning tools and manual methods that contribute to the identification of vulnerabilities. They analyze through various factors the level of risk and the impact that may generate the exploitation of each security issue. After all the planning, the hackers try to exploit the vulnerabilities in a creative way (something that an automatic tool cannot do), preferably within a staging environment. They get access to the target with different methods (e.g., privilege escalation and lateral movement), at varying levels of depth, in order to determine real impacts.

PTaaS uses a cloud-based centralized platform where the results can be viewed, monitored and analyzed continuously. The client can achieve successful vulnerability management since this new steady model helps solve the problem of prioritization and remediation caused by the previous model, in which all vulnerabilities, old and new, are left to be reported at a single point in time. Another difficulty solved with PTaaS is the limited or non-existent collaboration between developers and pen testers. The latter can now support the former frequently, resolving their doubts and providing them with remediation recommendations or instructions.

In line with the above, whether you are attempting only to comply with standards such as PCI DSS, NIST, GDPR, HIPAA, etc., or aim for a broader commitment to the security of your company and customers or users, at Fluid Attacks, we offer optimal PTaaS. We test in safe mode (i.e., without affecting the availability of your services) the security of your web and mobile applications, networks, devices, cloud infrastructure and other IT systems. We combine our automatic tools with manual penetration testing by our cybersecurity experts, who have highly reputed certifications and diverse skill sets. In this way, we obtain minimum false positive and false negative rates.

We integrate PTaaS into your SDLC from the start and test your software at the pace of your development team and their micro changes. On our platform, you continuously receive detailed reports as the continuous pentesting advances. These make it easy for you to understand your risk exposure and prioritize security issues for their remediation. Your developers can maintain communication and collaboration with our hackers, from whom they receive clear and tangible evidence and fixing recommendations. In addition, our team offers you unlimited reattacks to verify that your vulnerabilities have been effectively closed. Moreover, our DevSecOps agent breaks the build to prevent vulnerabilities from going into production if they remain open, in accordance with your organization's policies.

This solution is part of our Continuous Hacking service. We invite you to contact us if you are interested in experiencing the benefits of our pentesting as a service (PTaaS). If you want to get started with our security testing services by automatic tools, we have a 21-day free trial of our Essential plan at your disposal.