Continuous Pentesting

Most security testing runs to the calendar. You commission a test once a year, fix the findings, and nobody verifies your security again until the next scheduled engagement. Meanwhile you ship code, change infrastructure and the attack surface drifts. The report ages into a historical document. By the week after it lands, the annual PDF no longer describes your live environment.

Continuous pentesting, also called agile pentesting, embeds offensive security into your development and deployment lifecycle. We test on change rather than once a year: targeted manual testing when something ships, findings reported in real time, and fix validation that keeps pace with your releases. The consultant who scopes your programme delivers it and learns your environment over time.

Who this is for / when to test

• Frequent deployment: you ship weekly, daily or continuously and need testing that keeps up.
• Mature pipelines: you run CI/CD and want security built in rather than bolted on once a year.
• Changing infrastructure: complex cloud and network estates where point-in-time testing goes stale fast.
• Continuous compliance: PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 increasingly expect ongoing testing and continuous evidence.
• Post-incident assurance: you want confidence that new vulnerabilities surface in days, not months.

What we test

• Application changes: risk-based retests of new features, changed components and the integration points they touch.
• Infrastructure changes: new cloud resources, network segments, firewall and DNS changes that can expose services or weaken segmentation.
• Dependency updates: we verify major framework, library and base-image upgrades for newly introduced or unresolved CVEs.
• Security advisory response: we assess your exposure and verify the fix when a critical vulnerability is disclosed in technology you use.
• External attack-surface monitoring: new subdomains, cloud IPs, storage and certificates, plus leaked credentials and source on public repositories.
• New asset discovery: we test assets from acquisitions, migration and organic growth before they become forgotten entry points.

Our methodology

We run continuous testing as a sustained loop aligned to your release cadence rather than a one-off project. It applies the same standards as our point-in-time work (OWASP WSTG/ASVS, PTES, NIST SP 800-115, CIS Benchmarks) incrementally.

1. Onboard: we agree the scope of applications, infrastructure and cloud accounts, define what counts as a significant change, and learn your environment and risk appetite.
2. Continuous discovery: we monitor your attack surface and a consultant triages every alert rather than firing it automatically.
3. Targeted manual testing on change: we run focused, risk-based testing triggered by releases, infrastructure changes and advisories.
4. Real-time findings: we report issues as we confirm them, while developers still have context, and notify you the same day for anything critical.
5. Fix validation: we retest remediated findings promptly rather than holding them for the next scheduled engagement, and track trends over time.

Testing approaches

We blend approaches as the situation demands: grey box for most application and infrastructure change as our default, white box configuration review for cloud drift, and periodic black box external assessment of your perimeter. We hold context across the programme, so each retest runs faster and more focused than starting cold every time.

What you get

• A rolling report that captures your current security posture at any point in time, replacing the static annual document.
• Technical findings with evidence, delivered in real time.
• Per-finding remediation written for the engineer who will implement it.
• A CVSS severity rating alongside a business-risk rating, re-evaluated as your environment changes. A medium finding can become critical once a new chain appears.
• Same-day notification of any critical finding.
• Regular debrief calls and retests of remediated findings, included in the retainer.
• A dedicated consultant who learns your environment, plus priority scheduling for urgent needs.

We augment your internal team rather than replacing it. We handle the offensive expertise so your people can build, defend and respond.

FAQs

How is this priced? We charge a monthly retainer against a defined scope, not per project. That aligns our incentives with yours: we find and fix issues continuously rather than maximise billable hours.

Will continuous testing disrupt deployments? No. We keep testing risk-based and scheduled around your release process, and we escalate critical issues immediately.

Can it be done remotely? Yes. We deliver it remotely from the UK.

Does this replace annual testing? It supersedes the annual-PDF model for in-scope assets. You still get the point-in-time reports auditors and customers expect, kept continuously current.