Penetration testing helps organizations ensure that IT systems are secure, but it should never be treated in a one-size-fits-all approach. Traditional approaches can be rigid and waste your organization’s time and money – as well as produce poor results.
The benefits of pen testing are clear. By empowering “white hat” hackers to attempt to break into your system using the same tools and techniques as an adversary, pen testing can provide assurance that your IT set-up is secure. Perhaps more importantly, it can also identify areas for improvement.
As the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) notes, this is the equivalent of a financial audit.
“Your finance team keeps track of day-to-day expenses and income. An audit by an outside group ensures that your internal team’s processes are adequate.”
While the advantages are obvious, it’s important to understand the true cost of the process: in fact, the classic approach can often demand significant time and effort from your team. You need to get your money’s worth.
pen testing hidden costs
There is no one set form of pen test: it depends on what exactly is being tested, how often the pen test takes place, and how it is done. Nevertheless, there are some common elements of the classic approach that can generate significant costs, both in terms of financial and your employees’ time.
Let’s take a look at some of the costs that may not be immediately obvious.
administrative overhead
Important administrators may be involved in arranging “traditional” pen testing. First, you have to coordinate the schedule between your own organization and the testers you have hired to conduct testing on your behalf. This can cause significant disruption to your employees, distracting them from their daily tasks.
In addition, you will need to develop a clear overview of the resources and assets you have available before testing begins, for example, by gathering a system inventory. You will also need to prepare access credentials for hackers, depending on what type of pen testing approach you want to take: for example, testers may need these credentials to develop a scenario based on the risk of a disgruntled employee targeting your system.
scoping complexity
Again, it’s important to determine the exact scope of the test – what is “in-scope” for hackers, and what should remain out of scope?
This will be determined internally, and built on a number of factors based on the exact needs of the organization; For example, there may be some applications that cannot be included in the test. Whatever the reasons, it will take time to determine the overall scope of the trial.
Of course, this is not a sure thing: few organizations can deal with highly sophisticated environments that change over time. You’ll need to dedicate resources to assessing the potential impact of these changes – as your environment changes, should you include new elements to target testers?
All of this increases the risk of “scope creep”, where a pen test extends beyond its original purpose, creating additional work and costs for both the internal team and external testers.
indirect costs
As we’ve seen, pen testing by its nature can pose significant risks of disruption to your team, including operational disruptions during the testing window. It is important to keep it under control from the beginning.
There is also time and cost associated with refinement, a somewhat undefined phase that may include consultation with testers to troubleshoot and resolve any issues that arise during pen testing. This may also involve re-testing – starting another pen test to check that everything is now safe and secure.
All of this can add additional time and money for your organization.
Budget Management Challenges
Network Assured, which provides independent pricing guidance on pen testing and other cybersecurity services, notes, “There’s a reason it’s so difficult to benchmark penetration testing costs: every test with every firm is unique.”
In such a situation, how can you get the best return on investment and optimize cost effectiveness?
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| Figure 1: Some factors may not be immediately obvious when talking about the total cost of penetration testing. |
Pen Testing as a Service (PTaaS)
To ensure you are getting exactly the pen testing capability you need (at the right price) you may benefit from an “as a service” approach. Such an approach can be customized to your needs, reducing the risk of unnecessary efforts.
For example, Outpost24’s CyberFlex combines the strengths of our Pen-Testing-as-a-Service (PTaaS) and External Attack Surface Management (EASM) solutions, providing continuous coverage of application attack services on a flexible consumption model. This enables organizations to achieve discovery, prioritization and reporting needs, as well as having complete information about their costs and capabilities.
Pen testing is critical to the security of your organization’s systems, but cutting-edge capabilities don’t have to come at a price. By taking a smart approach based on providing the services you need at the right time, you can detect the vulnerabilities you need to address, without causing undue disruption or unnecessary costs. Book a live Cyberflex demo today.
