As I mentioned before, there are companies out there who we admire and respect. We have worked with companies who were pinging our network, waiting for us to open the firewall to them and start the test. They worked round the clock, were courteous, communicated with us when necessary, and didn't stop until we closed the connection at the end of the test. Then there were those that started late, and finished at 5 p.m. on the dot, even though they still had much more to do. There were those that read the briefing notes, and those that didn't. Those which scanned all 65k+ ports, and those which did a quick scan only.


All consultants and vendors are not equal. Some of the less competent vendors are nevertheless good at selling their services to clients who may not be aware how to judge the difference. More often nowadays we see companies choosing their Penetration Testing vendors based on incorrect metrics, such as accreditations of varying value, and of course on price. My hope is that an independent body of technically competent people with experience in Penetration Testing, but who are not vendors, set up a program which works in a way similar to how we have run Sentinel, and to award technical accreditations to individual consultants, not companies, in a range of technical security assessment areas. Until then, as a vendor, we'll continue to be put under pressure to 'buy' every new PCI, CISSP,CREST, CEH, et all accreditation to be competitive in the market, and most companies will continue to operate in the dark without a set of good, industry standard, technical metrics to guide them.