How an expert pentesting boosts enterprise cybersecurity maturity?

The value of expert pentesting

Cybersecurity has become a crucial priority for businesses. Detecting and mitigating vulnerabilities before they are exploited is critical to protect sensitive data, maintain customer confidence, prevent financial loss or reputational damage. Pentesting is a key technique for assessing and improving the security of systems by identifying vulnerabilities before they are exploited by an attacker. However, the true value of a pentest is maximized when performed by a team of experts with experience in various industries, who can significantly help improve an organization’s cyber security maturity due to their experience, breadth and depth of knowledge, not only on a technical level but also in understanding an organization’s risk appetite.

Bug hunters are professionals with an outstanding talent for identifying vulnerabilities that others might overlook due to their expertise. Their ability to think like attackers allows them to identify weaknesses with great precision. At Strike, we align the skills of these experts with the specific needs of each project, using advanced methodologies such as OWASP Testing Guide, OWASP Cheat Sheet Series, MITRE ATT&CK, NIST SP 800-115 and PTES. This alignment not only improves the ability to identify vulnerabilities, but also enables the implementation of more robust security controls and advances the customer's maturity model, such as CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) for cyber security, ensuring that customers receive a deep and detailed analysis of their systems.

Pentesting process at Strike

At Strike, the selection process for pentesters is rigorous. Only the most qualified professionals, with a proven track record of success, are considered. When assigning testers to projects, we look for the best fit between their skills and the client's needs, ensuring a top-quality assessment that contributes to increasing the client's level of cybersecurity maturity.

The availability of testers is crucial for the effective execution of a project. At Strike, we manage our team in such a way that there are always professionals ready to start critical projects and available to execute the assigned hours in a timely manner, using an internal project management tool. This involves careful planning and efficient management of human resources to respond quickly to the client's needs, achieving the perfect balance between skills and type of project, which allows us to meet the client's needs and complete projects on time and within budget.

Our review and validation process for reported vulnerabilities is exhaustive and follows recognized standards such as CVSS to classify and prioritize vulnerabilities identified during testing. Each finding is carefully analyzed and verified to ensure its technical accuracy and impact and risk assessment, along with recommendations that can be general or specific according to the type of vulnerabilities identified. This thoroughness not only improves the quality of the final report, but also helps clients to prioritize corrective actions effectively, advancing the level of cyber security maturity by implementing mitigation controls that can be reproducible in other environments.

Maintaining continuous and transparent communication with the client is critical during Pentesting. At Strike, we use collaborative platforms to ensure that the client is aware at every stage of the process, from the initial identification of vulnerabilities to the delivery of the final report.

In this communication the customer receives updates on the tests performed, with specific information on what was attempted, even if this did not result in findings, however, in this way the customer is not only aware of the vulnerabilities identified, but implicitly can be aware of the controls/implementations that are working to mitigate risks.

Benefits from Start-up to Delivery of Results

A careful initial analysis establishes a solid foundation for the pentest. In this phase, we gather critical information about the client's system, identify potential risk areas and establish a detailed test plan based on the expertise of the assigned tester. This approach allows us to define a clear and precise scope for testing, ensuring that all critical/important areas are covered from the beginning.

During the testing execution of a project, continuous monitoring and adjustments are essential. Our team performs regular assessments to adapt testing strategies as needed, combining automated and manual testing as required. Throughout this phase, we share our observations and preliminary findings with the client so that they are aware of progress and potential emerging risks by documenting and reporting each finding immediately. This dynamic approach contributes to improving cyber security maturity by implementing incremental and continuous security enhancements, as well as not having to wait until the end of the project to learn about weaknesses in the system(s) in scope.

The importance of retests cannot be underestimated; they ensure that vulnerabilities have been effectively corrected and that no new weaknesses occur, contributing to a continuous cycle of improvement. A pentest conducted by Strike experts provides significant long-term benefits. Not only are vulnerabilities identified and corrected, but also the client's overall cyber security posture is improved, advancing their level of maturity. Strike is positioned as a strategic partner, committed to the security and success of our customers.

How are you measuring and continuously improving your level of cybersecurity maturity?