Should I Stay or Should I Go: Why Partnering with a Trusted PTaaS Vendor YoY Brings Success

TL;DR

Switching penetration testing vendors is appealing when it comes to gaining fresh perspectives, but maintaining a long-term partnership with a trusted provider offers significant advantages. Familiarity with your environment leads to greater efficiency, faster results, and a deeper focus on critical risks. With a centralized platform for historical data, you gain valuable insights into trends and vulnerabilities, aiding strategic remediation and proving progress over time.  

While changing providers may be necessary for governance, or if existing services become stagnant, it comes with challenges. Onboarding delays, disruptions, and the loss of historical data continuity can hinder your security progress.  

Ultimately, long-term partnerships foster trust, communication, and continuous improvement, ensuring your defenses are stronger and better prepared for future threats.  

Should You Change Penetration Testing Vendors? Key Considerations 

Deciding whether to stick with your current penetration testing company or rotate to a new vendor can be a challenging question for any team. After all, bringing in “fresh eyes” can offer value on the surface. But is switching providers always the best move? 

Making a Case for Long-Term Partnerships in Pentesting

Building a long-term partnership with a trusted provider like NetSPI offers several advantages.

1. Efficiency Gains Through Program-Level Knowledge

When your pentesting team knows your environment inside and out, the entire engagement process becomes faster and more effective. Familiarity means reduced setup time and a deep understanding of your organization’s unique systems, processes, and security goals. 

This level of fluency allows your pentesting team to focus on what truly matters, uncovering vulnerabilities that are actually meaningful to your business. These efficiency gains are difficult to achieve with a new vendor that typically needs significant time to ramp up

2. Central Platform for Historical Data 

Continuity with a pentesting partner can come with access to a centralized platform for historical data. Having a solution like this enables your security team and pentesters to see the bigger picture, identify patterns, and prioritize vulnerabilities over time.

Some key advantages include:

• Reviewing insights from prior assessments 
• Tracking vulnerability trends 
• Visualizing adversary paths to key systems 

This centralized approach empowers your leadership team to make better-informed decisions about your security investments, supported by data that grows more valuable year after year.

3. Evolving Threat Landscape

Cybersecurity evolves at breakneck speed. Each year brings new vulnerabilities, attack vectors, and industry-specific threats. A trusted pentesting partner stays on the cutting-edge of technology, adapting to these changes quickly and ensuring their testing approach incorporates the latest updates and threat intelligence. 

Switching to a new vendor often means starting from scratch when it comes to integrating current threat data into your assessments, which can delay your ability to act on pressing risks. 

4. Focusing on Untested Areas

Even the most comprehensive pentests have limitations; certain areas may be de-scoped or overlooked due to time and budget constraints. With a steady and trusted partner, you have the ability to refine your approach year over year. 

For example, one year you might prioritize your application stack, while the next year focuses on cloud configurations or APIs. Over time, these incremental gains help cover more ground and leave fewer vulnerabilities unchecked. Plus, all results are tracked in a single place so you can share the ROI with the executive team. 

5. Enhanced Methodologies

Cybersecurity is not static. Techniques for testing and simulating real-world adversarial attacks are constantly evolving. High-quality pentesters don’t rest on their laurels. Instead, they refine methodologies year after year with advanced tools, techniques, and adversary simulation strategies. 

While a new vendor can bring fresh perspectives, a long-term partner comes equipped with a holistic understanding of your environment, allowing for methodical improvements that target new threats while reinforcing old defenses. 

6. Scalability and Expertise

Switching vendors means taking a gamble on expertise and scalability. A trusted partner with a sizable, experienced team (such as NetSPI’s 350+ experts) ensures you have the knowledge and bandwidth required, regardless of the scope or complexity of your engagement. 

Changing providers can open the door to inconsistent results, onboarding challenges, or a mismatch of expertise. 

7. Complementary Solutions for a Holistic Approach 

Pentesting is just one piece of the puzzle. A long-term partnership allows for integration with complementary solutions such as External Attack Surface Management (EASM) and Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) which provides always-on visibility into your internal and external assets. This continuity enables a risk-based approach that is tailored specifically to your needs, in a way that a new vendor may struggle to match. 

When Rotation Makes Sense

Of course, there can be valid reasons for changing pentesting companies.

For example:

• Stale Processes: If your current vendor’s methodologies or deliverables have plateaued, it may make sense to explore a fresh approach. 
• Lack of Expertise: Rotating vendors can address gaps in knowledge if you’re exploring completely new areas of testing or feeling unsupported. 
• Procurement Requirements: Some organizations may need to rotate vendors periodically for compliance or governance reasons. 

If considering rotation, take time to understand whether your current vendor can address these concerns. Partners like NetSPI welcome feedback and constantly innovate to avoid stagnation.

Risks with Switching Providers

Rotating away from a pentesting provider can come with unexpected challenges:

• Steep Learning Curves: Onboarding a new vendor can be time-consuming as they familiarize themselves with your environment and systems. 
• Potential Gaps in Testing History: Switching vendors means losing continuous insight into your historical testing data, which is vital for long-term strategy. 
• Disruption and Delays: Adjusting to a new partner’s methods can lead to delays during critical phases of the engagement. 
• Missed Intangible Value: A well-established partnership brings intangible benefits, including trust, communication, and a personalized approach that’s hard to replicate with a new provider. 

Improve Your Security Posture with NetSPI 

At NetSPI, long-term partnerships are about more than a point-in-time pentest. They’re about driving continuous improvement, uncovering deeper insights, and staying ahead of the evolving threat landscape. Our team of over 350 skilled penetration testers will work with you to ensure your security strategy remains razor-sharp and tailored to your business. 

Want to learn more about how NetSPI can strengthen your security program? Contact us today to explore how we can partner for lasting success.