The 2024 State of Pentesting Report highlights the increased reliance on manual and AI-driven security testing amid rising vulnerabilities and attack surfaces. It underscores the critical role of penetration testing in safeguarding digital assets, especially with evolving threats like AI-related vulnerabilities and patched vulnerabilities. #Cobalt #AIThreats
Keypoints
- Major cybersecurity vendors usually structure their annual reports into sections such as forward, introduction, methodology, industry trends, threat analysis, key statistics, and recommendations, providing a comprehensive overview of the current cybersecurity landscape.
- These reports frequently include significant data points, such as the increase in pentest engagements (e.g., a 31% rise in manual pentests in 2023), and highlight that vulnerabilities like server misconfigurations, SQL injection, RCE, and IDOR remain prevalent and critical.
- Key industry trends include growing adoption of AI and open-source software, expansion of attack surfaces through cloud and shadow IT, and a steady rise in vulnerabilities reflected by a 21% increase in findings per pentest and a 15% increase in published CVEs, indicating escalating threat complexity.
- The reports emphasize the importance of strategic, proactive security practices, including maturity models for pentesting, to elevate organizations from ad hoc testing to integrated, strategic cybersecurity programs.
- Recurring themes include resource constraints, skills gaps, increased regulatory compliance requirements, and the critical need to adapt testing methodologies to emerging technologies such as AI to effectively identify and mitigate evolving threats.
Source: Awesome Annual Security Reports - The reports in this collection are limited to content which does not require a paid subscription, membership, or service contract. (https://github.com/jacobdjwilson/awesome-annual-security-reports/)