Pentest Marketplace vs Individual Pentest Provider: When to Choose Each 

For most companies, cybersecurity and pentesting is an increasingly regular and normal part of development and doing business. That’s true whether the goals of pentesting are to reduce risks associated with cyber-attacks and harden your environment or whether you’re pentesting to ensure regulatory compliance. Pentesting increasingly finds place in DevSecOps practices, where it’s also routine to test new features and code before it goes live. All of this means you have more need of pentesters than ever before – and often in more diversity. 

Traditionally, that has meant looking for a pentest firm or pentest provider, contracting with them for a pentest, running that test, and then repeating that process every time you need a new pentest. 

Today, you can choose to leverage a pentest marketplace like PentestHero, where you contract with pentesters via a marketplace of available options, and where all of your vulnerability findings are uploaded into one place. In addition, with PentestHero, you can add incidents and risks to your portal and then request a pentest on those incidents, to have a pentest provider of your choice assess risks or find the root of the vulnerability. 

What is a Pentest Marketplace

A pentest marketplace like PentestHero is a cloud portal delivering pentest-as-a-service but rather than offering services from one pentester, you have a network of different providers to choose from. Here, you’ll be matched with a pentester whose expertise and skillset best matches your use case. However, if you have other use cases, you can add additional pentest firms to round out your team. 

With PentestHero, you request pentests from the same portal no matter who you’re working with. This means that you share tested assets once. Then, when you onboard a new tester, everything is there and you don’t have to invest hours into sharing the same data again. 

In addition, pentest marketplaces like PentestHero mean all your vulnerabilities are uploaded to the same portal, connected to the same assets, and rated in the same way. You’ll be able to easily see actual vulnerabilities over time, keep track of findings by different pentesters in the same portal, and reduce the time to manage and remediate vulnerabilities. 

Pros of Pentest Marketplaces vs Individual Pentesters 

Working with a pentest marketplace means you’ll have access to a pool of pentesters, where you can look for solutions. That means: 

• Everything in One Place – It doesn’t matter how many pentest firms you work with; all of your results and assessment swill be uploaded to the same place. That makes it easier for teams to manage results and to remediate findings – as well as to track duplicate findings, see instances across assets, and figure out what’s causing reoccurrences. Plus, you’ll save time on setup and onboarding new pentesters, because everything they need is already in your platform. 
• Access to Diverse Cybersecurity Skills – If you need a red team assessment, you’ll go look for a red team provider. If you need scanning, you’ll look for a scanner. If you need an expert in information security and compliance services, you look for a firm specialized in that. With individual providers, that means researching and finding individual providers. With a marketplace, you get everything in one place, with access to a diverse talent pool of professionals – all of whom have been pre-vetted to be on the marketplace. Your needs for cybersecurity don’t have to be met by a single provider but you can request everything from the same platform. 
• Scalability – Pentest marketplaces give you the freedom to scale cybersecurity and pentesting up as much as you want. You can easily add on more pentesters by bringing in an additional firm if needs suddenly go up. That also means you can typically start pentesting more quickly. For example, with PentestHero you can normally start a pentest within about 4 weeks.
• Predictable Pricing – If you have to source four different pentesters on your own, you’ll likely pay using very different payment schemes. One might charge per hour, another per contract, etc. Costs will not be predictable, and you might not have oversight of the pentest budget until after everything is delivered and paid for. With a pentest marketplace like PentestHero, everything is priced at a flat rate, you get a quote upfront in credits, and you always know exactly how you’re going to pay. 
• Scheduled Pentests – Pentest marketplaces like PentestHero make it easy to build ongoing relationships with the same great cybersecurity teams. You can schedule pentests out into the future to ensure your compliance controls are booked, to align pentesting with your dev pipeline, and to ensure periodic controls. That means you can have the same great relationships with an individual pentest provider as you would off the marketplace. 
• Giving Devs More Control – If you’re aligning cybersecurity with your development pipeline, it’s important that devs can schedule and align pentests with their coding process. With a pentest marketplace, you buy credits upfront and allow devs to plan and schedule code review, pentests, and assessments themselves, so pentests can be aligned with the dev schedule. That’s harder to do with a single pentester, where short-term availability is lower, as Agile development means exact deadlines on production are not guaranteed. 

Essentially, a pentest marketplace can offer a lot over working with an individual pentest firm. 

When to Choose a Pentest Marketplace 

Both pentest marketplaces and individual pentesters have a best-fit use case. 

Choose a pentest marketplace when you need flexibility, variety, and access to specialized skills – plus options to scale quickly, compare pricing, and look for the best-fit for your needs without slowing start time. 

Flexibility is Key – You have security needs across platforms, applications, and systems. A pentest marketplace like PentestHero brings talent together, so you can easily source the right cybersecurity talent. 

Competitive Pricing – PentestHero isn’t a budget cybersecurity platform. We invest in top talent. However, you do get flat-rate pricing, shared upfront, and paid for with a credit system, so cybersecurity costs are predictable and easy to manage. 

Speed – Our marketplace means we can easily leverage a wider network of pentesters to start your pentest as quickly as possible. Depending on the type of assessment, you can often start in 4 weeks or less. 

Would you like to learn more about the PentestHero pentest marketplace. Book a demo to see the platform in action and to learn more about some of our pentesters.