Market Trends of Penetration Testing Industry
Growing Requirement of Penetration Testing among Government and Defense
- The government and its agencies have the authority to access and manage large amounts of sensitive citizen information. Further, with the advent of the digital age, governments have leveraged online web portals and mobile applications to enhance government procedures and processes. For instance, the government of India has begun a digital movement, "Digital India," intending to digitize all government processes and payments.
- Infrastructure development is emerging as one of the priorities for governments, including deploying public Wi-Fi and connected public transport. As a result, there is a need for government organizations to secure the network and its applications to protect the integrity of citizen information on a large scale. This has created a greater vulnerability to sensitive data.
- Further, technologies, such as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), are used by federal governments to enable broad functional capabilities for government applications. Since these solutions were developed for commercial purposes, government systems are vulnerable to certain unique risks that must be addressed.
- Thus, software vendors developing technology for the government have been pushed to ensure security for static and dynamic applications through compliance measures and mandates, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) risk management framework (RMF) and the Department of Defense Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DoD DIACAP). These mandates demand that vendors guarantee testing services and verification of their applications. The abovementioned factors are expected to propel the market's growth studied over the forecast period.
North America to Hold Major Share
- The region is a technology hub. Therefore, the Federal government has made stringent rules regarding security testing services. Moreover, it is made compulsory for industries like BFSI to adhere to compliance testing.
- According to International Telecommunication Union (ITU), North America is the most proactive and committed region regarding cyber security-based initiatives. The GCI score given to the major countries (United States - 0.91 and Canada - 0.81) further reinforces their commitment to building a robust cybersecurity framework and enhanced security testing methodologies. Businesses in the region look forward to installing penetration testing, security, and vulnerability management solutions and have the best practices for regular business operations.
- Moreover, employees are accessing business networks and data using their devices that are not adequately secure due to the growing trend of working from home (WFH), which exposes exploitable weaknesses to cyberattacks. Additionally, many North American companies have created and updated their current web- and mobile-based apps due to the increased adoption of digital transformation to meet the growing demand for customers to shop online, opening up possibilities for cyberattacks.
- Companies across the region are anticipated to double down on necessary security arrangements such as a layered defense with firewall, filtered DNS, segmented networks, security clients, etc. However, employee awareness and training might be the investment that brings the highest RoI for companies.