Cybersecurity Metrics

The fourth quarter is budgeting time for most companies. Equally, most security managers are gearing up to support their CISO with preparing the security budget for the upcoming year.

Security budgeting is an overlooked area in the cybersecurity industry. It’s also an overlooked skill set when hiring and training cybersecurity executives. Yet, it is a crucial aspect of managing a cybersecurity program. Cybersecurity budgeting rests at the crossroads between cybersecurity (as a discipline) and business.

Penetration testing assessments are essential for companies to identify and resolve security vulnerabilities in their systems and applications. By proactively identifying exploitable weaknesses, software development teams can fix security issues before they become an issue.

However, penetration testing assessments are only half the battle. Remediating security issues on time, effectively and in an auditable manner is the other half. For security teams and upper management, measuring the remediation of penetration testing findings is essential for assessing the effectiveness of a company’s security posture.

If your company runs regular penetration tests then you’ll understand the challenges of processing pentest findings effectively and efficiently. To address such challenges, security teams typically turn towards Penetration-Testing-as-a-Service (PTaaS) platforms in order to fulfil their reporting and processing requirements. Unfortunately, PTaaS platforms are expensive; requiring time-consuming contract negotiations and on-boarding.

Fortunately, Atlassian products such as Jira and Confluence can offer a robust alternative. With some clever configuration, both solutions can provide a sustainable pentest processing solution for lean security teams under time and cost pressures.