We have witnessed technology advancing at an increasingly rapid pace over the past decade, with no signs of the acceleration slowing down. This realisation presents positive and negative consequences for businesses and their network infrastructure: as new technology arises, so do new cybersecurity threats.
This blog will explore why manual pentesting has long been the gold standard for assessing security vulnerabilities and why it now struggles to keep pace with modern infrastructure’s speed, complexity, and scale.
We’ll explore how human-led penetration testing combined with AI-augmented tools can effectively uncover security gaps while saving businesses valuable time and costs.
Introduction to Penetration Testing
Penetration testing, or pentesting, is a simulated cyber attack against a computer system or network to assess security vulnerabilities. The primary goal of penetration testing is to identify security gaps and weaknesses that an attacker could exploit. By doing so, organisations can receive remediation guidance to strengthen their security posture.
Penetration testing is a critical component of a comprehensive security testing programme, helping organisations to identify and detect vulnerabilities and prevent security breaches.
Whether a web application or a cloud system, pentesting provides valuable insights into your business's security posture, ensuring that sensitive data and critical assets are protected.
The Traditional Penetration Testing Process
Pentesting is traditionally a manual, structured approach to evaluating the security of an organisation’s systems, networks, and applications by simulating real-world attacks in a controlled environment.
Types of tests include: internal and external penetration testing, web and mobile applications, cloud environment security testing, social engineering, physical penetration testing, white box penetration testing, and black box penetration testing.
This process has historically been a labour-intensive task for penetration testers. From information gathering to tedious access requests for security testing, the methodology from scope to remediation recommendations has been proven to be bothersome and outdated for testers and clients time and time again.
How does Traditional Pentesting Happen?
Penetration testers gather detailed information about the target system, including identifying open ports. Evaluating physical assets is also relevant in penetration testing to ensure comprehensive security. The testers may also simulate attacks on the organisation's internal network and systems to uncover vulnerabilities.
An external penetration test assesses how easily an outsider could gain access to critical systems. The report generated from these tests is essential for addressing security issues and enhancing the organisation's security posture.
Pentesters play a critical role in conducting these tests and providing actionable insights. They identify known vulnerabilities and perform a thorough security assessment. While vulnerability scanning can be automated, it fundamentally lacks the depth of an expert penetration tester with human logic.
Role of a Penetration Tester
The role of a penetration tester is to identify potential vulnerabilities and provide remediation guidance to strengthen the organisation’s security posture. Penetration testers use various tools and techniques to identify security flaws and provide recommendations for remediation. They must have a deep understanding of operating systems, network infrastructure, and web applications, as well as the latest security threats and vulnerabilities.
Manual testing vs AI-augmented penetration testing process
We know that the manual testing process has worked for decades. Still, businesses should consider utilising technology to speed up and improve traditional methods and streamline the orchestration of pentesting.
However, human intervention remains crucial, as it provides nuanced analysis and comprehensive assessment where automated processes fall short.
Let’s look into how manual and automated methods compare:
Speed and Efficiency
Traditional pentesting relies heavily on a manual, structured approach and, with the complex nature of testing security controls, there is a lot of space for human error. Moreover, the post-test process involves time-consuming reporting, which can take weeks to complete with delayed remediation guidance, leaving security flaws wide open.
Automated penetration testing significantly improves speed and efficiency using AI-powered tools. It runs 24/7 vulnerability scans for known weaknesses, misconfigurations, and risky patterns across applications, business infrastructures, and operating systems, providing real-time insights. This automated process enhances the efficiency of vulnerability scanning. However, it lacks the depth of a full penetration test since it does not assess the actual level of access that hackers may achieve.
Combining automated tooling with human logic allows pentesters to focus on the high-impact vulnerabilities while automated systems complete repetitive tasks, such as reporting.
Point-in-time Assessments
Traditional pentesting focuses on a snapshot of security at the specific testing time, failing to account for newly emerging vulnerabilities. For example, an organisation could complete a web application penetration test. Still, as soon as the application has been updated, the static analysis of vulnerabilities is immediately outdated, meaning sensitive data and other network services are at risk.
Internal security teams should step away from the one-off assessment to ensure complete security assurance and continuously monitor for vulnerabilities. Internal teams play a crucial role in this continuous monitoring, collaborating to evaluate defense mechanisms and understand how various security practices perform under realistic conditions.
Costs Vs Value
Manual effort and resource allocation can be expensive, naturally inflating costs over time. As a result, many businesses opt to run tests once or twice a year, usually for compliance requirements such as ISO 27001, SOC 2 or PCI-DSS.
This security testing gap creates potential vulnerabilities where new features, updates, and third-party integrations are untested, exposing the corporate network security posture to high risk.
AI-automation tooling can be more cost-effective over time, especially with platforms like OnSecurity, which automate processes and integrate into existing workflows. While vulnerability scanning can be automated, it lacks the depth of a full penetration test since it does not assess the actual level of access that hackers may achieve. However, it minimises expensive delays caused by late-stage software vulnerabilities. Simplify spending with an automated platform, secure more and spend less.
Expertise
Physical pentesters are still required to interpret complex, high-threat vulnerabilities, identify false positives, and recommend effective remediation strategies. Human intervention is crucial in these scenarios, as automated tools can identify potential vulnerabilities. Still, the analysis and comprehensive assessment provided by human testers are essential for effectively evaluating security weaknesses and determining the extent of exploitable vulnerabilities. Automation doesn’t eliminate the need for expertise; it enhances the expert’s value.
We’ve identified the difference between manual and automated testing. Now, let’s examine how businesses utilise an AI-driven automation platform to reap the benefits.
Pentest Orchestration: An Automated Approach
We define ‘pentest orchestration’ as a method that combines human integration and automation tools to enhance the delivery of penetration testing. This approach encompasses each stage, from scheduling and booking to managing your testing schedule to delivering the test, aiming to simplify the testing process with one orchestrated approach. But how do security professionals achieve this?
Using an automated platform approach, internal security teams control all security activities in one centralised place, such as monitoring, identifying potential vulnerabilities, incident response and retesting. This centralised approach streamlines processes and visibility while improving the organisation’s security posture. Even when internal teams are aware of the testing, it serves as a valuable security drill, helping to evaluate defense mechanisms and understand how various security practices and personnel perform under realistic conditions.
Automated Penetration Testing: Revolutionising Pentesting
With a reimagined approach to penetration testing, OnSecurity’s platform combines automation with human insight and expertise. This integrated platform enables full visibility of their security posture in one place.
Security leaders can wave goodbye to the days of flicking between multiple systems and managing countless tickets across disconnected security systems. Our AI-augmented platform empowers security teams to detect, report and remediate vulnerabilities with complete visibility, in one simplified dashboard, while keeping costs low. The automated process of vulnerability scanning is a key feature, providing quick identification of potential issues, though it is complemented by the depth of a full penetration test.
Using technology to improve our clients’ experiences has always been at the forefront of how we innovate and evolve the platform. Human intervention is crucial in penetration testing, providing a comprehensive assessment that automated tools alone cannot achieve. Improve your organisation’s security posture by embedding AI-powered penetration testing into your security strategy today!
