Pentests have been a core component of IT security programs for more than two decades.
And while nobody can argue the value of having assets tested by expert humans, there are some problems with the format. Most notably, traditional pentesting simply can’t be scaled sufficiently to keep pace with the rate of IT change.
New features ship, dependencies update, new APIs are added… and all the while, despite your active pentest program, security debt mounts up.
What is security debt, anyway?
Security debt is the accumulated risk created by outdated systems, unpatched vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and untested assets. It’s the cost paid for having IT infrastructure that moves faster than the security controls intended to protect it.
Here, we're focused on one specific source: risk that builds up when your rate of IT change outpaces your rate of security testing.
Traditional pentests cause security debt because they are inherently slow and cumbersome. A process that worked well when the rate of IT change was relatively slow is now a major obstacle to effective security. When pentests cycles are measured in months, but new versions are shipped weekly, daily, or even hourly, security debt will inevitably rise.
Every release that ships without being tested adds to the balance, and the longer that continues, the larger the debt grows.
3 ways pentesting creates security debt
So traditional pentesting is cumbersome. Fine. But what is it specifically about the format that makes it so difficult to keep pace with the rate of IT change? It comes down to three things:
1. Cost
A thorough pentest of a web application or API can take days or weeks of a skilled tester's time. For complex scopes, you may need to engage several pentesters over a week or more to achieve comprehensive testing.
Unsurprisingly, this can get expensive very quickly. For many organisations, the high cost of traditional pentesting is a clear hurdle to achieving their desired testing cadence and depth.
2. Scheduling delays
With a traditional pentest, it takes a minimum of six to eight weeks to move from initial request to receiving findings. Scoping calls, statements of work, procurement, scheduling delays, the test window itself, and report writing all take time.
Twenty years ago, this was acceptable. The rate of IT change was relatively low, so multi-month engagements could quite easily be accommodated. But realistically, this old-school project management approach has been a hindrance to security teams for many years now.
Developers keep shipping new code. Infrastructure changes constantly. The rate of IT change is so high that by the time you receive the results from a penetration test, the live scope may bear little resemblance to what was tested. Not only does this mean developers are asked to fix issues that are no longer fresh in their minds, but the issues may have materially changed since the test occurred.
3. Internal effort
Every traditional pentest creates work for your security team before, during, and after the engagement. Someone has to define the scope, negotiate the SoW, arrange access and credentials, attend kick-off calls, answer questions from testers, and handle a dozen other admin items.
When the findings arrive, they usually come as a PDF. Someone has to read it, triage it, copy each issue into a ticketing system, chase asset owners, and arrange retests. All this just to manage findings through your preferred workflows.
This is a frustration that may seem quite small. But by the time you’ve managed this full process for every pentest engagement, it becomes a significant drain on your team’s resources.
Growing pains
The real frustrations with traditional pentesting arise from the need for scale.
High unit costs are hard to scale. Scheduling delays become more of a problem at scale. And manual human processes are always tough to scale.
The cost, scheduling, and effort requirements of traditional pentests can be absorbed across a small number of engagements. But when you need to scale testing across a full attack surface or achieve a faster testing cadence (or, most likely, both), it becomes unmanageable.
And since traditional pentesting can’t easily be scaled to the desired level, teams are forced to prioritise. The crown jewels get tested, and everything else goes on the “someday, maybe” list.
Got some assets that you know will be top of mind for regulators and auditors? Naturally, those will be first in line, while less prominent scopes (e.g., internal tools, partner portals, marketing microsites, legacy APIs, and newly launched services) are largely ignored.
This “long tail” of IT assets is frequently a huge source of security debt.
Security debt classes
Security debt can be loosely broken down into two categories, depending on its potential consequences: exposure and compliance.
Your organisation is exposed when there are externally exploitable vulnerabilities in its attack surface. The more vulnerabilities, and the longer they remain open, the greater your exposure.
So, it should be obvious how security debt is related to exposure. The more debt you build up in the form of untested assets and unpatched vulnerabilities, the greater the likelihood there will be exploitable vulnerabilities in your attack surface. In fact, quite quickly you’ll reach a point where you can scrap “likelihood” altogether; there will be vulnerabilities, and that leaves you exposed.
Equally, security debt (or, more specifically, the testing environment that allows it to build up) can cause compliance issues.
Sometimes this happens up front. An auditor decides your testing program is insufficient, and won’t sign you off. Or, a customer wants to see security testing evidence that you can’t provide.
But worse is when you’re found to be non-compliant during a regulatory investigation after a serious breach. This happens all the time, and has done for many years. For instance, European regulators issued around €1.2 billion in fines for GDPR violations in both 2024 and 2025.
Even if it never gets this serious for your organisation, nobody wants exceptions on their SOC 2 report, delays in their ISO 27001 certification, or awkward conversations with their customers or partners.
The safe position is ensuring your security testing genuinely keeps pace with IT change. But traditional pentesting makes this very tough to achieve.
What's needed to pay down the debt
So, what would it take to ensure regular testing across your full attack surface that keeps pace with your rate of IT change? It comes down to four things:
- Costs that scale. The cost per testing engagement needs to be significantly lower than traditional pentesting, so your program can cover both the crown jewels and the long tail of apps and APIs.
- Testing on your schedule. Campaigns should launch when you need them, around your release timetable, and return results while they are still relevant and your developers have the code fresh in their minds.
- Minimal internal overhead. Scoping, scheduling, and other human-led processes should take minutes, not weeks. This will ensure your testing program can scale without burying your team in admin.
- High-quality testing. Finally, it should go without saying, but you can’t accept low-quality testing in exchange for the other requirements.
Erase your security debt
Agentic Pentest was built to meet security teams' need for on-demand, high-quality testing. It can help your organisation maintain a testing program that keeps pace with IT change, and minimises exposure at a time when speed matters more than ever before.
It retains the depth of traditional pentesting while removing the process delays and frustrations described above:
- Costs that scale. Agentic Pentest campaigns come in at less than half the cost of a comparable traditional pentest.
- No scheduling delays + same-day results. Launch campaigns on demand, test around your release schedule, and get findings to developers while the code is still fresh in their minds.
- Eliminate admin. Choose your scope, supply context, and launch campaigns in minutes. Findings appear directly in the YesWeHack Vulnerability Center, where they can easily be assigned, tracked, and remediated using your existing workflows.
- Find real, exploitable vulnerabilities. Agentic Pentest delivers YesWeHack’s 10+ years of OffSec expertise, on demand. Every issue is validated and reproduced before it's reported. If exploitability can't be proven, it doesn't make the cut. No filler, no noise.
That means you can extend testing to a far larger range of scopes, test them as often as needed, and finally pay down your security debt.
To see Agentic Pentest in action, get in touch.
