Supercharge Your 2025 Pen Test: How to Validate Security Controls for 2026

Most teams treat the year-end pen test as a compliance exercise. But a pen test can do far more than check a box—it can become the most valuable input into next year’s security strategy.

Why Scans Aren’t Enough

A vulnerability scan lists potential issues.
A pen test proves what can be exploited.

Scanners operate on signatures and guesswork based on banners. Pen tests validate real risk—showing which weaknesses actually matter and where systemic gaps exist across your environment.

Why Most Pen Tests Don’t Lead to Change

Many organizations rush an assessment in December to satisfy auditors and never use the findings to drive improvement. The result: risks stay unresolved, and the same patterns repeat the following year.

How CTEM Changes the Model

Continuous Threat Exposure Management brings structure to the process:

• Scope – Know every asset and entry point.
• Discovery – Confirm what’s actually exposed.
• Prioritization – Cut through thousands of findings.
• Validation – Test whether issues can be exploited.
• Mobilization – Assign fixes and track progress.

Instead of one major test per year, CTEM enables smaller, repeatable cycles that keep your environment honest.

The Role of AI in Continuous Validation

AI can now assist with repeatable, low-cost pen testing tasks—helping validate remediation between major manual assessments. Human testers still uncover the deep systemic issues, but AI accelerates routine checks and shortens the feedback loop.

What Pen Tests Reveal That Scanners Miss

Pen tests expose the weaknesses attackers rely on—like SMB signing gaps, password issues, or name-resolution poisoning—that never appear meaningfully in scanner results but can lead to domain compromise within minutes.

These findings aren’t just tickets—they inform policy, images, and engineering practices.

Watch the Full Webinar

See how NopSec’s offensive security team breaks down the real role of pen testing and how to transform annual testing into continuous, meaningful security improvement.

Watch the replay of “Supercharge Your 2025 Pen Test: How to Validate Security Controls for 2026.”