The short answer is: at least once a year, and after any significant change to your environment. But the right cadence for your organization depends on how fast you change, what you protect, and which regulations apply. Treating a pentest as a one-time event is a common and costly mistake — your attack surface shifts constantly, and so does the threat landscape.
The baseline: annual plus on change
An annual penetration test is the widely accepted minimum, giving a regular, comparable measure of your security posture. But a yearly snapshot misses everything that changes in between, which is why testing should also be triggered by significant change.
Events that should trigger a test
- Major application releases or new features that change how data is handled.
- Significant infrastructure or cloud architecture changes, or migrations.
- Mergers and acquisitions that bring unfamiliar systems into your estate.
- Entering a new market or compliance regime that imposes testing obligations.
- After a security incident, to confirm the root cause is fully resolved.
What compliance requires
Different frameworks set different expectations. PCI DSS requires testing at least annually and after significant changes. ISO 27001 expects testing as part of risk-based assurance. Israel’s data-security obligations push toward regular, risk-driven assessment, and a growing number of enterprise customers demand a recent pentest report before they will sign.
Beyond point-in-time testing
Because environments change daily, the most resilient organizations supplement periodic pentests with continuous attack surface management and recurring testing of critical assets. A risk-based program tests crown-jewel systems more frequently than low-risk ones, rather than treating everything the same.
Persist Security helps clients move from one-off tests to a structured, risk-based penetration testing program, complemented by ongoing security assessments, and can build a multi-year testing roadmap through our vCISO service. Contact us to define the right testing cadence.
