Pen Testing As A Service (PTaaS): What It Is And What It Should Do

BreachLock’s Founder & CEO, Seemant Sehgal, is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and published a Council Post, Pen Testing as A Service (PTaaS): What It Is and What it Should Do.

As Sehgal opened with in the article, Cybersecurity incidents have risen increasingly since the Covid-19 pandemic began, proving that there is still plenty of progress to be made with cybersecurity defenses. The one silver lining to these cyber incidents, he highlights, is “they have raised public awareness of how vulnerable information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) systems are,” adding that offense has proven to be the best form of defense in the fight against cyber threats.

In the article, Sehgal mentions how security testing, which is a major component of offensive security strategy, is divided into three layers – vulnerability scanning, red teaming, and finally, pen testing, which is exactly what BreachLock specializes in. BreachLock is known for being a global leader in Pen Testing as a Service (PTaaS), having been recognized as a sample vendor in the PTaaS space in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Security Operations multiple years in a row.

How Pen Testing Delivers a Hacker’s Perspective

Delving deeper into the second layer of security testing, which Sehgal identifies as pen testing, he writes “pen testing, the second layer, brings an active human element into the picture. It tasks one or more cybersecurity experts working actively, more intensely, and with a wider array of tools to find and exploit weaknesses in a system. Those experts seek out vulnerabilities and use them to penetrate systems, and their findings help the operators of these systems find and fix weak spots — and then put long-term solutions in place to guard against breaches.”

As Sehgal mentioned, human pen testers are equipped with a wide array of tools to discover vulnerabilities within an organization’s system during Pen testing exercises. Pen testing as a service, however, is different than traditional pen testing in that its results are delivered through a SaaS platform, and it leverages artificial intelligence and automation to offload the otherwise manual components of Pen testing and free up the ethical hackers’ time to find more complex vulnerabilities with additional business logic. While automation and AI are helpful in finding known vulnerabilities, there are some things that still require a human to discover. Over time, Pen testing AI and automation will evolve with the help of machine learning, but in the same token, more unknown vulnerabilities will surface because of the rapidly evolving threat landscape.

Pen Testing Designed to Save You Time and Money

BreachLock offers fast and comprehensive Pen testing services that help clients identify and address potential cybersecurity breaches before they occur. Our approach combines human expertise with artificial intelligence to accelerate the Pen testing and remediation processes, resulting in a 50% reduction in cost and time. We assist more than 700 organizations in meeting compliance and certification standards, such as SOC 2, GDPR, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and HIPAA, and improving their cybersecurity resilience through detailed, actionable, and easy-to-implement results and support.

If you’re ready to start quickly achieving your security goals through a hybrid Pen testing approach, contact us today.