The "RISKY BUSINESS" Blog

Just spent the finer part of my afternoon in a meeting further refining our Penetration Testing services to better align with the differing objectives of our diverse client base. Many of our banking clients want a penetration test for one reason (and one reason only), to hand to the FDIC/OTS/SEC auditor to satisfy their requirements. On the other end of the spectrum many of our government clients want a high level of assurance that a knowledgeable and intentioned malicious individual with an extended time window can't gain access to certain facilities/systems/data. The challenge is that as an industry we have failed to "package" Penetration Testing in a manner that is relevant and easily consumable. Only intelligent and innovative consumers can wade through the idiosyncrasies of the varying ill-defined activities to arrive at a solution that is optimized to their requirement.

I have overcome a similar challenge to the one I just raised, in my shower. I have recently grown fond of the Axe shower gel my son left in our shower. The problem is that the packaging is almost comical. It's in an oversized bottle that becomes as slippery as a watermelon seed the minute that it gets wet. It's virtually impossible to squeeze out anything but 3X the amount of gel that you need to cleanse your entire body. Worse, you lose most of down the drain before you can leverage it across more than a single leg and midriff. So, back to the bottle, which is impossible to pick up now that your hands are soapy, and repeat the folly.

Problem solved. I bought a $1.49 foaming hand soap product, dumped the hand soap, and watered down the shower gel 5 to 1.  Life is good: oodles of perfectly fluffy shower gel foam with nary a drop wasted.

So why is it that the multi-billion dollar consumer product companies haven't properly packaged shower gel and we have to live with a one-size-fits-all ill-packaged offering?  My guess is they don't know enough to know, they don't actually use shower gel themselves, they make more money with a poorly designed product, and they don't think we are smart enough to differentiate product offerings.

I wish there was a $1.49 (Walmart) solution to the penetration testing packaging as well. Unfortunately, it's not quite that easy,  but we are confident that we have solved the problem and that our clients are smart enough to differentiate the product offerings and ultimately benefit from our approach. We'll be rolling out our new services over the next few weeks ... so please stop back.

For further information, check out our white paper – available for download – “Stop Wasting Money on Penetration Testing" - on our Penetration Testing resource page.