BreachLock’s 2025 Penetration Testing Intelligence Report Reveals Today’s Most Critical Risk Patterns, Analyzing 4,200+ Pentests

NEW YORK, Aug. 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — BreachLock, today, released its 2025 Penetration Testing Intelligence Report, analyzing 4,200+ penetration tests conducted over the past 12 months, revealing the most common and critical vulnerabilities impacting organizations today. With asset-specific trends, industry impact breakdowns, and year-over-year comparisons, the report provides security leaders with a data-backed lens to benchmark their security posture and remediation priorities.

Commenting on the release of the report, BreachLock Founder & CEO, Seemant Sehgal, expressed, “The threat landscape is not only evolving, but accelerating with the rise of vibe coding and agentic solutions. Our report draws on insights from 4,000+ pentests conducted by BreachLock over the last year, highlighting real-world attack vectors, including emerging AI-driven threats. This is the fourth edition of the Annual Penetration Testing Intelligence Report since its first release in 2022, which continues to equip CISOs with clear, actionable intelligence to navigate today’s complex security environment. Its inclusion in the 2025 Verizon DBIR reinforces its role as a trusted resource for smarter, more resilient cybersecurity decisions.”

Over the past year, pentesting engagements revealed a steady increase in real-world exploitability driven by the convergence of outdated systems, cloud misconfigurations, and increasingly sophisticated attack chains across the globe.

Here are some of the key stats that stood out in this year’s analysis:

• Broken Access Control became the most prevalent and critical vulnerability, accounting for 32% of high-severity findings, often enabling unauthorized access and privilege escalation.
• Technology & SaaS providers saw a 400% spike in critical API vulnerabilities, highlighting poor access control, logic flaws, and insecure exposure.
• Approximately 40% of Banking & Financial Services firms have increased penetration testing frequency to quarterly or continuous testing to keep up with evolving threats and rapid changes in their IT systems.
• Nearly 70% of Retail & Consumer Goods organizations had APIs with misconfigured authorizations or data exposure issues, averaging 15 vulnerabilities per API.
• 70% of vulnerabilities detected in Healthcare systems were Medium and High severity issues, mostly caused by widespread use of legacy systems and inadequate OT security controls.
• Cloud misconfigurations and excessive permissions vulnerabilities were present in 42% of cloud environments tested.

As security teams face increasing regulatory pressure compounded with the challenge of protecting increasingly complex attack surfaces, BreachLock’s Penetration Testing Intelligence Report offers timely, actionable intelligence based on thousands of real-world offensive security engagements.

Download the full report here for an in-depth breakdown of key vulnerability trends, how these trends are impacting key industries, and security gaps organizations can’t afford to ignore.

About BreachLock

BreachLock is a global leader in offensive security, delivering scalable and continuous security testing. Trusted by global enterprises, BreachLock provides human-led and AI-powered Attack Surface Management (ASM), Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS), Red Teaming, and Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV) services that help security teams stay ahead of adversaries. With a mission to make proactive security the new standard, BreachLock is shaping the future of cybersecurity through automation, data-driven intelligence, and expert-driven execution.

Know Your Risk. Contact BreachLock today!

Author

BreachLock Labs