Introduction
MSSPs are expanding rapidly. With more clients looking for proactive security testing and more compliance requirements being added into the equation every year, the demand for MSSPs – and specifically, their pentesting services – has obviously, inevitably, surged.
Clients today expect fast, consistent, and transparent delivery, along with continuous verification that vulnerabilities have been fixed, and that’s an awful lot of pressure when it comes to scaling.
For MSSPs, of course, scaling pentest delivery isn’t as simple as adding more clients to the roster. Each engagement involves coordination between testers and clients, along with detailed documentation, reporting, and retesting. As volumes grow, manual processes that once worked for a handful of clients can quickly become bottlenecks.
Automation to the Rescue
That’s where an automated pentest platform like ours comes into the picture. By streamlining workflows across scoping, execution, reporting, and retesting, automation allows MSSPs to deliver more engagements without adding proportional headcount growth or sacrificing quality.
Tasks that used to take hours – such as assigning testers or consolidating evidence – can now be handled at a systemic level, freeing teams to focus on the critical work of testing itself.
Scoping
Let’s start with scoping. Ordinarily, an MSSP team doing everything themselves would have to determine which systems and applications fall within scope, as well as clarify compliance requirements and create a test plan for each engagement.
With automated pentest workflows, however, the entire scoping process is simplified, with clients able to submit asset information through a secure portal and have the platform automatically structure this information into a scoping framework.
It’s even possible to cross-reference the submitted assets against vulnerability libraries and compliance requirements, helping to ensure that testing aligns with the best OWASP practices and is consistent across multi-client security operations.
Execution
When it comes to the execution, our platform orchestrates who does what, when, and how, so testers spend less time administrating issues and more time proving them.
Say, for instance, a tester is assigned to perform a web application assessment for a new client. MSSP pentest automation ensures they’re assigned the engagement based on skill set and availability, and that the test checklist – and eventual findings – are preloaded and integrated directly into the platform.
As the tester discovers a vulnerability, such as SQL injection, the platform will then automatically map it to the relevant attacker techniques in the MITRE ATT&CK framework, showing exactly which tactics and techniques the vulnerability relates to.
This mapping then provides context for both the MSSP and the client, helping to prioritise remediation based on likely attack paths, rather than just CVSS scores alone.
Reporting
The next step for MSSPs is turning the findings from the execution phase into clear, actionable reports. Traditionally, this meant manually consolidating vulnerabilities, attaching evidence, writing remediation guidance, formatting the report appropriately – the to-do list just went on and on.
With an automated pentest reporting tool, however, the to-do list is limited to about three steps: reviewing the pre-populated findings, verifying any contextual notes, and approving the report for client delivery.
It’s as easy as that! Whether they’re using pentesting reporting tools to generate white-labelled PDFs for clients or to formulate interactive dashboards for ongoing monitoring, MSSPs can ensure their reports are streamlined and audit-ready in a matter of minutes.
And that’s just one benefit. When it comes to retesting, the automated reporting process becomes even more useful.
Retesting
Because the pentest reporting process maintains all findings and associated evidence beginning with the initial test, retesting can be scheduled and orchestrated automatically, assigned to the right tester, and tracked end-to-end.
This ensures scalable security testing for MSSPs, as any fixed vulnerabilities are revalidated efficiently and any new issues are automatically flagged.
Such automation then helps to eliminate bottlenecks and reduce errors, accelerating the overall retesting process and allowing MSSPs to deliver faster verification cycles – something that is going to become increasingly important as the client roster grows and continuous pentesting is needed.
Audibility and Time Savings
That’s just a quick rundown of how automated workflows can streamline the entire process for MSSPs, but the benefits extend beyond efficiency.
In the world of cybersecurity, audibility is one of the big challenges, and so is being able to provide a complete audit trail for every action. This is going to be central for businesses looking to succeed and prosper.
Not only this, but automation can also save a significant amount of time, which is going to be useful for scaling operations and maintaining a high-quality of service.
When it comes to vulnerability retesting automation, specifically, having all the remediation steps pre-populated in the system is hugely beneficial for accelerating the process, giving MSSPs more room to handle clients without compromising on accuracy or compliance.
If you’re an MSSP looking for faster pentesting, however, you won’t really know the benefits of automation until you try it. So make sure you request a demo today, and give your company the tools to begin scaling with confidence.
Cybersecurity writer who swears he didn’t choose his pen name because he once bricked a server with a single mistyped command.
