Introducing Interactive Pentesting: Human Experts Augmented With IAST

Four myths hold back application security programs, from 'AppSec teams are optional' to 'DevOps shops do not need one'; successful journeys start with a central governing team and defect discovery.

From a year of thick-client pentests, NetSPI ranks its top critical findings: cleartext and hardcoded credentials, embedded encryption keys, and two-tier designs exposing backend databases.

Argues repeatedly scanning stable complex web apps adds little value; testing should follow the release cycle and prioritize manual assessment of flaws like business logic errors.

For the past five years it seems like almost everything in information security has focused on application security and, for the NetSPI consulting practices, our application security business (app pen testing, code review, etc.) has significantly increased.

Post-mortem vulnerabilities often look harmless in the diff—they only surface at runtime. ProjectDiscovery says LLM code review hits just 63% precision, so PRs need validation on a running app.

Drawing on Gartner's Innovation Insight on PTaaS, this piece argues continuous pentesting beats point-in-time engagements, with remediation cycles twice as fast for adopters by 2028.