Industry Insight: Why Most Pentests are Useless
Penetration testing (pentesting) has long been considered a cornerstone of cybersecurity strategies. Organizations spend significant budgets on annual or quarterly pentests, expecting them to expose critical security flaws and strengthen their defenses. However, in practice, most pentests fail to deliver real value. The problem is not with the concept of pentesting itself but with how it is commonly conducted, interpreted, and applied within organizations. Here’s why most pentests are useless and how they can be transformed into something genuinely impactful.
1. Compliance-Driven, Not Security-Driven
Many pentests are conducted to satisfy regulatory requirements rather than to improve security. Frameworks like PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and NIST mandate periodic security assessments, leading organizations to seek out the cheapest and fastest way to check a box. This results in shallow, templated assessments that prioritize passing the audit rather than uncovering real threats. The result? A report filled with low-risk findings, generic recommendations, and a false sense of security.
2. Scope Limitations Handcuff the Testers
Organizations often restrict pentests to predefined scopes, excluding critical infrastructure, production systems, or sensitive applications out of fear of disruptions. Attackers do not operate within these artificial constraints. A real-world adversary will exploit misconfigurations, lateral movement opportunities, and supply chain vulnerabilities—avenues that are often off-limits to testers. A pentest that doesn’t simulate real attack scenarios is a waste of resources.
3. Pentesting Firms with Low-Quality Engagements
The cybersecurity industry has seen a surge in low-cost pentesting providers who prioritize speed and automation over expertise. Many firms rely heavily on automated vulnerability scanners, producing reports that contain outdated or irrelevant findings. A proper pentest requires skilled professionals who can manually exploit vulnerabilities, demonstrate impact, and provide actionable insights. Unfortunately, many assessments today barely go beyond what a decent vulnerability scanner could accomplish.
4. No Focus on Exploitation and Real Impact
Many pentesting reports list vulnerabilities without demonstrating how they can be chained together for full compromise. A single SQL injection vulnerability might be dismissed as “medium risk” until an attacker combines it with weak internal segmentation and insecure credentials to gain complete control over an environment. A useful pentest should replicate what a real attacker would do—not just flag potential weaknesses but prove how they can lead to catastrophic failures.
5. Lack of Post-Exploitation and Defense Testing
Most pentests stop at initial compromise, failing to assess how well an organization detects and responds to threats. True security comes from understanding the entire attack chain—how an adversary pivots, escalates privileges, and exfiltrates data. Without testing detection and response capabilities, organizations miss a critical opportunity to improve their security operations.
6. No Follow-Through on Fixing Issues
A pentest is only as good as the remediation that follows. Too often, organizations receive a report, patch the critical vulnerabilities, and ignore the rest—until the next scheduled pentest finds the same issues again. There’s little accountability in the industry to ensure that fixes are applied effectively. Worse, some companies use pentest results as marketing material rather than as a roadmap for real security improvements.
7. One-Time Tests vs. Continuous Security
Security is not a one-time event—it’s an ongoing process. A pentest conducted once a year provides a snapshot of security posture but does nothing to protect against new threats emerging daily. The best approach is continuous testing, with red teams regularly challenging defenses and purple teams working with blue teams to close gaps. Organizations need to move beyond “annual pentests” and adopt continuous validation models.
How to Make Pentests Actually Useful
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Shift from compliance-driven to security-driven testing – Treat pentests as an offensive security measure, not just a regulatory checkbox.
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Remove artificial scope limitations – If something is too critical to be tested, it’s too critical to be left vulnerable.
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Choose quality over price – Work with skilled professionals who prioritize manual testing and real-world attack simulations.
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Focus on exploitation and impact – Move beyond vulnerability listing and demonstrate real attack scenarios.
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Test detection and response – Incorporate blue teams into engagements to improve security operations.
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Remediate, don’t just report – Make security improvements based on findings, and retest critical areas.
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Adopt continuous testing – Pentests should be part of an ongoing security strategy, not an annual event.
The MottaSec Approach: Redefining Pentesting
At MottaSec, we don’t just expose these industry problems—we’ve built our approach to overcome them. Our teams conduct unrestricted, impact-driven, and intelligence-led pentests that go beyond compliance to ensure real security improvements. We integrate red, blue, and purple teaming, advanced exploitation techniques, and continuous security validation to help organizations stay ahead of evolving threats.
Unlike automated pentests that generate generic reports, we focus on real-world attack scenarios, post-exploitation, and defensive validation. Our offensive security team pushes past artificial limitations to replicate adversary behavior, while our consulting team ensures that identified vulnerabilities lead to meaningful security enhancements. Security isn’t about checking a box—it’s about staying ahead of threats.
Conclusion
Pentesting, when done correctly, is one of the most valuable tools in an organization’s security arsenal. However, most pentests today are little more than glorified vulnerability scans designed to satisfy compliance checklists. To truly improve security, organizations must demand more from their assessments—ensuring they are realistic, unrestricted, exploit-focused, and continuously evolving. Anything less is just security theater.
At MottaSec, we ensure that every pentest delivers tangible security value—because cybersecurity isn’t about looking secure, it’s about being secure.