Cobalt, the Pentest as a Service (PtaaS) company that is modernizing the manual pentesting model, today announced its fifth annual State of Pentesting Report. This year’s report highlights the impact of talent shortages and budget cuts on security teams’ performance and plans for 2023. With cybersecurity teams struggling to manage the remediation process and monitor for vulnerabilities, organizations are at a higher risk for security breaches.
As enterprises prioritize efficiencies, security leaders increasingly turn to third-party vendors to alleviate the pressures of consistent testing and to fill in talent gaps. The State of Pentesting Report identifies how macroeconomic shifts are affecting organizations’ security standards across the U.S. and EMEA, revealing how security teams can extract more value from their pentests and maximize ROI. After analyzing more than 3,000 pentests and surveying more than 1,000 cybersecurity professionals, Cobalt found:
Budget cuts and layoffs plague security teams: More than half (63%) of U.S. cybersecurity professionals had their department’s budget cut in 2023, compared to only 28% of their EMEA counterparts. To further align with tight budgets, both U.S. (67%) and EMEA (61%) organizations have implemented a recruitment slowdown for this year.
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