Penetration Testing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In the newly released 2025 State of Pentesting Report , Pentera surveyed 500 CISOs from global enterprises (200 from within the USA) to understand the strategies, tactics, and tools they use to cope with the thousands of security alerts, the persisting breaches and the growing cyber risks they have to handle. The findings reveal a complex picture of progress, challenges, and a shifting mindset about how enterprises approach security testing. More Tools, More Data, More Protection… No Guarantees Over the past year, 45% of enterprises expanded their security technology stacks, with organizations now managing an average of 75 different security solutions​.  Yet despite these layers of security tools, 67% of U.S. enterprises experienced a breach in the past 24 months​. The growing number of deployed tools has a few effects on the daily operation and the overall cyber posture of the organization.  Although it seems obvious, the findings tell a clear story - more security tools...

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) has moved from concept to cornerstone, solidifying its role as a strategic enabler for CISOs. No longer a theoretical framework, CTEM now anchors today's cybersecurity programs by continuously aligning security efforts with real-world risk. At the heart of CTEM is the integration of Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV), an advanced, offensive methodology powered by proactive security tools including External Attack Surface Management (ASM), autonomous penetration testing and red teaming, and Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS). Together, these AEV tools transform how enterprises proactively identify, validate, and reduce risks, turning threat exposure into a manageable business metric. CTEM reflects a broader evolution in how security leaders measure effectiveness and allocate resources. As board expectations grow and cyber risk becomes inseparable from business risk, CISOs are leveraging CTEM to drive measurable, outcome-based security ...

Imagine this: Your organization completed its annual penetration test in January, earning high marks for security compliance. In February, your development team deployed a routine software update. By April, attackers had already exploited a vulnerability introduced in that February update, gaining access to customer data weeks before being finally detected. This situation isn't theoretical: it plays out repeatedly as organizations realize that point-in-time compliance testing can't protect against vulnerabilities introduced after the assessment. According to Verizons 2025 Data Breach Investigation Report , the exploitation of vulnerabilities rose 34% year-over-year. While compliance frameworks provide important security guidelines, companies need continuous security validation to identify and remediate new vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them. Here's what you need to know about pen testing to meet compliance standards — and why you should adopt continuous penetratio...

Detecting leaked credentials is only half the battle. The real challenge—and often the neglected half of the equation—is what happens after detection. New research from GitGuardian's State of Secrets Sprawl 2025 report reveals a disturbing trend: the vast majority of exposed company secrets discovered in public repositories remain valid for years after detection, creating an expanding attack surface that many organizations are failing to address. According to GitGuardian's analysis of exposed secrets across public GitHub repositories, an alarming percentage of credentials detected as far back as 2022 remain valid today: "Detecting a leaked secret is just the first step," says GitGuardian's research team. "The true challenge lies in swift remediation." Why Exposed Secrets Remain Valid This persistent validity suggests two troubling possibilities: either organizations are unaware their credentials have been exposed (a security visibility problem),...

"A boxer derives the greatest advantage from his sparring partner…" — Epictetus, 50–135 AD Hands up. Chin tucked. Knees bent. The bell rings, and both boxers meet in the center and circle. Red throws out three jabs, feints a fourth, and—BANG—lands a right hand on Blue down the center. This wasn't Blue's first day and despite his solid defense in front of the mirror, he feels the pressure. But something changed in the ring; the variety of punches, the feints, the intensity – it's nothing like his coach's simulations. Is my defense strong enough to withstand this? He wonders, do I even have a defense? His coach reassures him "If it weren't for all your practice, you wouldn't have defended those first jabs. You've got a defense—now you need to calibrate it. And that happens in the ring." Cybersecurity is no different. You can have your hands up—deploying the right architecture, policies, and security measures—but the smallest gap in your defense could let an attacker land a kn...

After conducting over 10,000 automated internal network penetration tests last year, vPenTest has uncovered a troubling reality that many businesses still have critical security gaps that attackers can easily exploit. Organizations often assume that firewalls, endpoint protection, and SIEMs are enough to keep them secure. But how effective are these defenses when put to the test? That's where vPenTest , Vonahi Security's automated network pentesting platform, comes in. Designed to simulate real-world attack scenarios, vPenTest helps organizations find exploitable vulnerabilities before cybercriminals can. These aren't complex, zero-day exploits. They're misconfigurations, weak passwords, and unpatched vulnerabilities that attackers routinely exploit to gain access, move laterally, and escalate privileges within networks. Here's how these risks break down: 50% stem from misconfigurations – Default settings, weak access controls, and overlooked security policies. 30% are due to m...

We've been hearing the same story for years: AI is coming for your job. In fact, in 2017, McKinsey printed a report, Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation , predicting that by 2030, 375 million workers would need to find new jobs or risk being displaced by AI and automation. Queue the anxiety.  There have been ongoing whispers about what roles would be impacted, and pentesting has recently come into question. With AI now able to automate tasks such as vulnerability scans and network scans—among other things—and with platforms like PlexTrac adding AI capabilities to cut back on the manual effort, will pentesters be out of a job? Let's start with some optimism. This year, McKinsey retracted its former prediction that 375 million workers would be displaced by AI, lowering the prediction to roughly 92 million workers. The article continued to ease concern stating that although some jobs may become obsolete, it's more likely that jobs will simply unde...

In cybersecurity, confidence is a double-edged sword. Organizations often operate under a false sense of security , believing that patched vulnerabilities, up-to-date tools, polished dashboards, and glowing risk scores guarantee safety. The reality is a bit of a different story. In the real world, checking the right boxes doesn't equal being secure. As Sun Tzu warned, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." Two and a half millennia later, the concept still holds: your organization's cybersecurity defenses must be strategically validated under real-world conditions to ensure your business's very survival. Today, more than ever, you need Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV) , the essential strategy that's still missing from most security frameworks. The Danger of False Confidence Conventional wisdom suggests that if you've patched known bugs, deployed a stack of well-regarded security tools, and passed the nec...

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is an amazing technology developed by Microsoft that lets you access and control another computer over a network. It's like having your office computer with you wherever you go. For businesses, this means IT staff can manage systems remotely, and employees can work from home or anywhere, making RDP a true game-changer in today's work environment. But here's the catch: because RDP is accessible over the internet, it's also a prime target for unethical hackers. If someone gains unauthorized access, they could potentially take over your system. That's why it's so important to secure RDP properly. Why IT Teams Depend on RDP, Despite the Risks More than 50 percent of Kaseya's small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) customers use RDP for daily operations due to its efficiency and flexibility: Reduces Costs and Downtime – IT teams can resolve technical issues remotely, eliminating travel expenses and delays. Supports B...

Imagine receiving a penetration test report that leaves you with more questions than answers. Questions like, "Were all functionalities of the web app tested?" or " Were there any security issues that could have been identified during testing?" often go unresolved, raising concerns about the thoroughness of the security testing. This frustration is common among many security teams. Pentest reports, while crucial, frequently lack the depth and detail necessary to truly assess the success of the project. Even with years of experience working with cybersecurity teams and managing ethical hacking projects, we frequently encountered these same issues. Whether collaborating with external pentest providers or managing our own projects as founders of Hackrate , we often faced difficulties in ensuring that the testing was as comprehensive as it needed to be. This realization inspired us to create HackGATE , a managed gateway solution built to bring transparency and contro...