Penetration Testing Frequency: How Often Should You Test?

Penetration testing has become a progressive exercise, with organizations using either pen testing services or in-house teams to uncover weaknesses and assess their security posture. Businesses want to stay proactive about securing their IT environment and identify that pen testing helps them stay compliant and prove adherence to rules or business best practices. According to the 2021 Pen Testing Report, most cybersecurity professionals run a penetration test once or twice a year. Cyber Security Hive is one of the top Penetration testing companies in UAE, with their resources focused on empowering protectors to build solid and sustainable security. Our pen-test services are based on a deep understanding of methods applied by hackers to attack your systems.

Should You Be Pen Testing Daily?

Running penetration tests may be too draining on all resources like time, budget, and talent. While some aspects and types of penetration testing can be automated, the method is not automatic, and a human element is still heavily needed. While 10% of those surveyed for the 2021 Pen Testing Report said they were running tests daily, it is more likely that they were running vulnerability scans regularly.  Vulnerability scans are mistaken as synonymous with penetration tests; while they are both necessary security practices, they are distinct.

Vulnerability scans look for vulnerabilities and report if identified vulnerabilities are present within an IT surroundings. While vulnerability scans give a valuable picture of what vulnerabilities are present, penetration tests will add more insight by seeing if these vulnerabilities could be leveraged to access your environment. Vulnerability scans provide a high-level view, identifying potential risks, whereas penetration testers zoom in to investigate that potential.

The Importance of Retesting

One of the most important reasons to pen-test more often is the need for retesting. Retesting involves running the same tests as the previous pen-testing session to verify that remediation efforts were successful. Sometimes changes are made to resolve security weaknesses found in penetration tests; however, it's simply assumed that these measures sufficiently fix these problems. Cyber Security Hive's penetration testing is one of the most popular Penetration testing Services in UAE. Penetration Testing from Cyber Security Hive helps strengthen your security for assets by pinpointing vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in your security systems.

While it may seem like a huge effort to redo a test you have completed once, the retesting method should be simplified and efficient. Third-party services usually provide detailed reports of what actions were taken throughout the first test, which can be used to provide instruction on precisely what to do for the retest. Some tools afford to save pen-testing sessions while they are initially run, logging what attacks were used. These tests will then be automatically rerun at a later time for validation. Comparing reports from both tests should not solely show you that weaknesses are resolved; it should also reveal if any new vulnerabilities are uncovered.

The Right Testing Frequency

Ultimately, there is not a rigid, specific variety. It will rely on the size of your organization, the scale at which you would like to run your tests, and the variety of resources you would like to use. The right frequency is one in which you feel you never need to guess at your security status.