Pen testing spending on the rise

Ninety-two percent of U.S. and European organizations have increased their overall IT security spending this year, with 85% raising their penetration testing budgets, reports TechRepublic. More significant pen testing spending gains are expected in Europe, with 42% of European organizations noting a more than 10% increase in pen testing budgets this year, compared with only 17% of those in the U.S., a Pentera report revealed. Meanwhile, cloud infrastructure and services were mainly prioritized for pen testing, followed by external-facing assets, core network, applications, and active directory and password assessment. The report also showed that pen testing results are being immediately shared by 47% of surveyed chief information security officers with their organizations' IT security team. However, many CISOs continue to be concerned that pen testing may cause operation disruptions. "We conclude that CISOs must put a greater emphasis on validation of the entire security stack to ensure that they can effectively reduce their exposure," said Pentera Chief Marketing Officer Aviv Cohen.