The Power of Pentesting AND DAST

An ad series from about a decade ago entitled “And not or” tried to convince people that the Ford Focus sedan had cool features in addition to great gas mileage. It was all about having both. One commercial in particular stuck with me as the actors imagined having to choose between Sweet OR Sour Chicken, instead of Sweet AND Sour Chicken. Their reaction to eating Sour Chicken still makes me laugh to this day.

Ford isn’t the only globally recognized brand to lean into this concept. AT&T rolled out a similar theme a few years later with their campaign entitled Unleashing the “Power of &.”  Again the focus of this campaign was on bundling services together and getting more, instead of having to choose between options. The slogan for AT&T was “It’s 25% of our name, but it’s 100% of what we do.” (Side note: I’m a huge fan of the ampersand and I don’t think it gets enough love in our shorthand, emoji crazed society, but I digress…)

What do Ford and AT&T know about products and services that you and I also inherently know? That AND is better than OR.

But you’re not interested in cars or cell phone providers. You’re interested in finding a third-party testing provider for an upcoming audit and fulfilling a security request from a future customer. You’re busy trying to figure out how to triage your backlog and get your latest features into production. You need to meet critical testing deadlines and stay ahead of potential threats.

At Cobalt, we’re here to help you with the AND.

Automated & Manual Testing

At Cobalt, we believe the answer to better pentesting is in both products and services, combining automation with human expertise. In March we announced a new addition to the Cobalt platform, Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST). In addition, we’ve recently added an Attack Surface Monitoring (ASM) tool for continuous security checks on your internet-facing assets. 

When you pair Pentests with attack surface monitoring (ASM) and dynamic vulnerability scanning (DAST) you get an even more efficient and effective layer of security awareness. Combining the creativity and knowledge of expert pentesters with the precision and automation of ASM and DAST gives you comprehensive security coverage between pentests, ensuring both continuous vulnerability detection and continuous risk reduction.

Security & Compliance

You don’t need us to tell you that your attack surface is growing. You need us to tell you where the issues are so you can fix them. You should ask yourself if your goal in doing a pentest is to identify vulnerabilities, assess defenses, simulate real-world attacks, or to find policy gaps that would affect your next audit.

Often compliance is a main driver. Sometimes our customers focus on security, and end up with compliance as an outcome or byproduct. In either case, we’ve got you covered. At Cobalt, We recommend that customers run daily ASM scans on their entire environment, configure DAST scans to run weekly, or monthly on critical assets, and continue to run pentests quarterly or annually as needed for security and compliance requirements. By combining automation from ASM and DAST with the depth of findings from a manual pentest, you can ensure you’re consistently finding and fixing the things that matter. 

Web, API, & More

While application-based risk in your Web Apps and APIs is likely your focus at the moment, third-party pentesting can encompass a wide range of critical systems and identify business risk across your technology stack.

Cobalt Pentesting areas include:

• Web: An online application. Includes APIs that supply data to the app.
• API: Standalone APIs that aren’t part of your web app.
• Mobile: Any application intended for smartphones or tablets.
• AI/LLM: Chatbots or any systems you’re building that use artificial intelligence or leverage Large Language Models (LLMs).
• Cloud Configurations: The setup of cloud-based assets across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), etc.
• Devices/IoT/OT: Technologies including embedded devices and firmware with a physical element to the asset.
• External Network: Internet-facing components of a company’s network, including external portals and website servers.
• Internal Network: Networked devices that are protected by a corporate firewall, including network shares and domain servers.

Speed & Quality

Pentesting-as-a-Service (PtaaS) is the most efficient way to meet customer and compliance requirements while maintaining a high efficacy of test results. For over a decade, Cobalt has been the recognized leader in security testing, pioneering the PtaaS market and setting the standard in offensive security. Cobalt ran more than 4,000 pentesting in 2023 alone, with the ability to start a new pentest in as little as 24 hours depending on the scope. We also offer free retesting for up to twelve months to validate fixes. 

At the heart of our success is The Cobalt Core Community. We have over 450 elite pentesters worldwide with an average of 11 years of experience. Our expert testers hold top certifications like CISSP, OSCP, and CREST. With an acceptance rate of less than 5%, the Cobalt Core ensures you receive the highest quality security assessments from the industry's best talent. Since no two applications or pentests are the same, we can provide the right combination of skills, performance, and experience to meet your needs.

Turn OR into MORE

Right now you just need to complete a Pentest. Great. We can get started in as little as 24 hours. But we both know there are a hundred other things on your plate, including looming end-of-year audits and a never ending stream of vulnerability findings and configuration issues you need to tackle. Cobalt is here to expand with you as your security and compliance needs evolve. 

For example: 

• Are you building out an AI chat bot?
• Do you need to do some network stress testing or container hardening?
• Have you performed a manual secure code review recently for an in depth analysis of your code?

These are all different security tests that we can run to help you stay secure today and in the future.

Get better pentesting with Cobalt's expert-led, manual assessments, complemented by continuous attack surface monitoring (ASM) and automated vulnerability scanning (DAST) to ensure proactive security. Check out the Cobalt platform and schedule a demo today to see why thousands of companies use Cobalt every year to accomplish their security testing and compliance goals.