April 15 10 Penetration Testing Companies to Watch in 2024
Penetration testing is a skill set and a mindset
– Steve MorganEditor-in-Chief
Sausalito, California – January 16, 2024
“If you spend a dollar on cybersecurity and you don’t do penetration testing, you’re doing something terribly wrong,” says Seemant Sehgalfounder and CEO of BreachLock.
For what? “Because you don’t know if the defenses you have in place are actually working,” adds Sehgal, an expert tester with more than 17 years of network security experience.
Penetration testing, also called pentesting or ethical hacking, is the authorized simulation of cyberattacks on IoT devices, networks, software, users and web applications, to assess the security of a system.
No matter how secure you think a network is, you really don’t know until it’s hacked. So you might as well call in the penetration testing troops before the cybercriminals get there.
Who is a pentester?
“Hacking isn’t really a skill, it’s a state of mind,” says Sehgal. He offers Kevin Mitnick (recently deceased), often considered the world’s most famous hacker, as a historical example given the practice of ethical intrusion dating back to phreakers in the 1970s and 1980s.
Even though today’s pentester may have obtained a technical certification such as CEH (certified ethical hacker)they must also possess a talent for cat-and-mouse games and advanced social engineering skills.
“Cybersecurity can be a very crowded market,” notes Sehgal, and that certainly applies to penetration testing. It explains three types of businesses: technology-centric or automated vulnerability scanning; bug bounty or crowdsourcing services; specialized companies selling hours of work.
HOT SLOPES COMPANIES
Who does what in the field of penetration testing? Here are 10 hot companies Cybercrime Magazine editors will be watching in 2024, and you should too.
- Astra Security, Clayton, Del. Modern engineering teams need more than just penetration testing. Astra is a one-of-a-kind Pentest platform used by over 650 modern engineering teams. Find and fix every security vulnerability with our hacker-style pentest. Get the most comprehensive and broad vulnerability coverage in the industry. Upgrade your DevOps to DevSecOps.
- BreachLock, New York, NY Discover comprehensive penetration testing services from BreachLock, the global leader in Pen Testing as a Service (PTaaS). Powered by certified hackers who combine AI and human expertise, we help you solve scalability and cost challenges within an agile, DevOps-ready SaaS platform.
- Crowd of insects, San Francisco, California. The Bugcrowd platform’s modern, highly configurable Pen Testing as a Service (PTaaS) suite delivers fast, high-impact compliance and risk reduction results. Run penetration tests on any target in days, see prioritized results in real-time, and integrate them into your DevSec processes for rapid remediation.
- HackerOne, San Francisco, California. Penetration testing is often performed with limited transparency in the testing process. Discover a creative, community-based approach that gives you greater coverage, instant results, and seamless remediation workflows, all in one platform.
- High security, Sandusky, Michigan. Organizations choose High Bit Security because of their unique focus, top ratings, transparency, and use of direct employees only. It costs nothing to finalize a quote, they don’t ask for your life history and they don’t waste your time. Ask them for a free, fast and hassle-free quote.
- Offensive security, New York, NY Offensive Security offers penetration testing services on a low volume basis, with an average of only 10 clients per year. Their reviews have a minimum engagement length of two weeks, with the average engagement length being four weeks. Unlike other companies that focus on assembly line assessments, they take a unique approach.
- Pentra, Petah Tikva, Israel. Assess your security readiness with the Pentera automated security validation platform to know your true security risk at any time. Test all layers of cybersecurity across your attack surface (inside and out) by securely emulating attacks and prioritizing fixes with a risk-based remediation roadmap.
- Raxis, Atlanta, Georgia. Raxis PTaaS gives you fast turnaround times while maintaining quality. Their penetration testing team will monitor your attack surface at all times, providing you with in-depth, near-real-time targeted insights into potential exploits. With Raxis PTaaS, you will be able to more effectively eliminate emerging threats that specifically impact your organization.
- Synack, Redwood City, California. Synack, one of the world’s largest penetration testing providers, finds exploitable vulnerabilities faster than traditional penetration testing thanks to our community of ethical security researchers combined with intelligent technology. Synack offers an on-demand security testing platform, enabling continuous penetration testing of web and mobile applications, networks, APIs and cloud assets.
- White Knight LaboratoriesGuy Mills, Pennsylvania. A cybersecurity consultancy specializing in offensive cyber engagements, including network, web, mobile, wireless and cloud penetration testing services, as well as deceptive social engineering attacks, l advanced adversarial emulation, OSINT services, and business email compromise. (BEC), ransomware simulation, dark web scanning, and much more.
Cybercrime Magazine will expand its ethical hacking coverage and this list in 2024.
– Steve Morgan is founder and editor-in-chief of Cybersecurity Ventures.
Go here to read all my blogs and articles dealing with cybersecurity. Go here to send me story tips, comments, and suggestions.
Sponsored by BreachLock
BreachLock is a global leader in continuous attack surface discovery and penetration testing. Continuously discover, prioritize, and mitigate exposures with evidence-based attack surface management, penetration testing, and red teaming.
Elevate your defense strategy with an attacker’s perspective that looks beyond common vulnerabilities and exposures. Every risk we uncover is supported by validated evidence. We test your entire attack surface and help you mitigate your next cyberattack before it happens.
Know your risk. Contact BreachLock today!