PlexTrac ConceptsManual Pentesting

Manual penetration testing, or pentesting, is a hands-on security measure where cybersecurity experts, known as pentesters, manually simulate real-world cyberattacks. These attacks involve ethical hacking tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and security gaps proactively. 

By combining manual pentesting with automated pentesting, security teams can continuously monitor their environment and mitigate critical risks to prevent breaches. 

The primary purpose of penetration testing is to keep your business running securely. Manual pentesting is important as it provides insight into potential vulnerabilities within complex infrastructures or custom systems. Manual pentests can uncover security gaps that may be overlooked by automated pentests. And because the pentester can dive in deeper, adapt to the environment, and apply more creative tactics and techniques, manual testing is typically more comprehensive. 

Manual penetration testing differs from automated penetration in its approach. While manual pentesting involves a pentester evaluating the attack surface, automated pentesting is performed via a tool or service. Each has advantages depending on your needs.

Manual pentesting employs the skill of a pentester, which provides more flexibility, creativity, deeper analysis, and the potential to identify vulnerabilities that automated tools may miss.

Automated pentesting tools help teams continuously assess their attack surface and provide quick, consistent, and timely reports—ideal for reducing manual labor while increasing testing frequency.

Ideally, combining manual pentesting with automated pentesting will provide the most comprehensive proactive approach leveraging both human expertise for depth and automation for continuous coverage.

Some benefits of manual pentesting include:

• Identifying complex vulnerabilities through skilled pentesting experts
• In-depth analysis and reports that are specific to each company’s environment
• Ability to launch more sophisticated attacks that may be difficult with automated tools

Some challenges of manual pentesting include:

• Point-in-time testing may miss new vulnerabilities, making continuous pentesting important 
• Thorough evaluation of an organization’s environment may be time consuming, whereas automated pentesting is continuous and faster
• Manual pentesting can be more expensive and resource intensive 

Determining how often to conduct manual pentesting depends on the needs of your organization or your client. However, it’s probably more often than you think. Many security experts suggest pentests — either focused manual tests or automated testing — should be run at least once a week on a portion of your system or the entire IT environment.

Discover your optimal pentesting frequency by answering these five questions: 

1. What is the scope of the pentest?
2. What scale of tests do you want to run?
3. What is the budget?
4. What resources do you want to use?
5. How often are the assets modified?

Get more details in our pentesting frequency blog to discover your ideal schedule and learn more about the gold standard of continuous pentesting. 

Aggregate both manual and automated pentest data in PlexTrac to streamline reporting,  prioritize risk, and expedite remediation. PlexTrac integrates with popular automated pentesting tools and services like Pentera, Cobalt, and NodeZero by Horizon3.

Bring all your offensive security data into one platform to maximize the value of your investment in all types of pentesting. PlexTrac is the #1 platform for automating security reporting with AI, aggregating pentest and vulnerability data from various tools and scanners, and effectively prioritizing risk.

Request your demo today to learn more.

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