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As the pace of digital transformation accelerates, the traditional approach to penetration testing – slow, point-in-time assessments – is rapidly becoming obsolete. In today’s dynamic threat landscape, regular offensive security testing validates the effectiveness of defense controls. Waiting months or even years for that testing leaves organizations at risk. Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) offers a scalable alternative that aligns with the speed of business, allowing organizations to efficiently conduct more frequent testing with the speed, scale, and expertise necessary to address findings and reduce risk proactively.
The GigaOm Radar Report for Pentesting as a Service by Analyst Chris Ray underscores the urgency of this shift, identifying PTaaS as a critical business imperative for 2025 and beyond; “As the PTaaS market continues to mature, it presents a compelling opportunity for organizations to enhance their cybersecurity posture.”Effective security isn’t just about detecting vulnerabilities – it’s about getting them fixed." Which means hooking into the software development lifecycle, continuously managing risk, protecting the organization’s most critical assets, and ensuring compliance without disrupting business operations or innovation.
PTaaS pivots pentesting from a reactive, compliance-driven task to a proactive, strategic component of an organization’s security posture. The best PTaaS providers are coupling human creativity with automation for a continuous testing approach, with tools like Attack Surface Management (ASM) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST). They deliver actionable, exploitable findings directly to development backlogs, and then work with those teams to fix vulnerabilities quickly. It is these key attributes of PTaaS that transform pentesting into a real advantage for a security team.
Why PTaaS is Driving Market Transformation
The Radar Report by GigaOm Analyst Chris Ray points out the challenges of traditional pentesting; it's slow and expensive, which means it can only be used on the most critical assets and never at scale. Every security program needs regular offensive testing to evaluate the effectiveness of its security controls; otherwise, security teams are operating blindly. PTaaS delivers this effectiveness assessment at scale, enabling continuous engagement with security experts, frequent testing at smaller scales, and faster remediation cycles with retesting to validate fixes taking place in days and hours, not weeks.
This shift toward PTaaS is driven by three key forces:
- The Expanding Attack Surface
Modern businesses operate in hybrid and increasingly complex and interdependent environments. The vast digital landscape increases the possibility of overlooked misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and software supply chain problems. Pentesters assess the potential for attackers to exploit this sprawl by linking seemingly unrelated points to carry out an attack. - Agile Development and Continuous Deployment
The increased opportunity for new vulnerabilities is driven by the increased frequency of change across the expanding application and software layer. PTaaS delivers more frequent, agile pentesting and delivers findings in real time - directly to the development team's backlog. - Limited Access to Security Talent
The cybersecurity talent shortage continues to challenge organizations, where niche or specialized knowledge may be difficult to find or retain in a competitive market. PTaaS bridges this gap by providing access to a diverse pool of experienced pentesters without the need to hire and train full-time staff. This model allows organizations to scale their testing capabilities based on immediate needs, ensuring that even with limited in-house resources, security assessments are comprehensive and ongoing.
By integrating with development workflows and enabling collaboration with experienced pentesters, PTaaS enhances operational efficiency, improves remediation timelines, and ensures that security keeps pace with the organization’s growth and innovation - and expanding attack surface. Further, the GigaOm Radar Report highlights, "PTaaS alleviates the burden on often-strained internal security teams, providing access to advanced testing capabilities without the need for extensive in-house expertise." This combination of adaptability and expert-driven testing makes PTaaS a valuable driver to reduce risk.
How PTaaS is Redefining Pentesting Expectations
Leading PTaaS providers are redefining the standard for pentesting:
Speed and Agility
The ability to kick off pentests in 24 hours, receive vulnerabilities in real-time through a platform, and get rapid retesting are the hallmarks of top PTaaS platforms. This rapid turnaround allows organizations to test new products before launch without waiting for lengthy scheduling processes.
Collaboration and Transparency
PTaaS encourages direct collaboration between security teams and pentesters, ensuring that access issues are resolved quickly and findings are clarified in real time. This collaborative approach accelerates remediation and strengthens security knowledge. Further, findings are delivered directly to the team's backlog via integrations into ticketing systems, ensuring fast visibility and prioritization.
Retesting on a Per-Finding Basis
Instead of waiting to retest all vulnerabilities at once, PTaaS enables retesting on a per-finding basis. This ensures that critical vulnerabilities can be addressed as soon as they are fixed, rather than waiting for all findings to get addressed.
Customizable Reporting
PTaaS platforms offer interactive, customizable reporting tailored to compliance needs, board-level summaries, and customer attestations. This ensures that stakeholders receive the information they need, in the format they require.
Diversity Community of Pentesters
One of PTaaS’s unique advantages is the ability to retain historical asset data while changing pentesters to offer new insights. Leading PTaaS vendors can effortlessly rotate pentesting teams without encountering scheduling or expertise issues due to their extensive pentester pools. This fulfills the need for vendor rotation by offering a variety of pentesters who can identify vulnerabilities that previous teams may have missed, all while maintaining the same platform and integrations.
Key factors for PTaaS vendor evaluation
After evaluating 13 leading PTaaS providers, GigaOm’s Chris Ray outlines four key takeaways for organizations evaluating providers:
Prioritize solutions that offer real-time insights and actionable reporting. PTaaS platforms deliver vulnerabilities in real-time, allowing teams to address issues immediately rather than waiting weeks for a static report. This real-time feedback loop enables faster prioritization and remediation, reducing the window of exposure.
Look for platforms with robust integration capabilities to fit into your existing security ecosystem. Leading PTaaS platforms integrate directly into SDLC tools, ensuring that findings are routed to the appropriate teams without manual effort. This streamlined workflow accelerates resolution and prevents findings from getting lost in PDF reports or emails.
Consider the scalability of the solution to ensure it can grow with your organization's evolving needs. PTaaS adapts to the organization’s needs, scaling to cover expanding infrastructures, new applications, and emerging threats. Whether an organization requires a single web application test or 30 concurrent web application tests, PTaaS provides the necessary flexibility.
Evaluate the vendor's commitment to innovation and its ability to adapt to emerging threats. Security threats evolve rapidly, and PTaaS providers must continuously innovate. GigaOm emphasizes that organizations should evaluate vendors’ history of innovation and how they invest to consistently improve their offerings.
The Future of Offensive Security
PTaaS is a core component of offensive security, working alongside red teaming, dynamic scanning, secure code reviews, etc. to proactively identify and mitigate threats. Offensive security provides a continuous feedback loop that strengthens defenses to reduce risk. Security teams that integrate PTaaS into their offensive programs will be better positioned to manage risk, protect critical assets, and support rapid innovation.
Want to learn more? Read the full GigaOm Radar for PTaaS report and join our upcoming webinar on January 23rd where the report’s author, Chris Ray will dig into the market shift, his evaluation of 13 PTaaS providers, his tips for selecting a vendor, and actionable strategies to future-proof your security program. See you there!
