The Cyber Kitchen Episode 010: A New Recipe for Penetration Testing: AI, Continuous Testing, and Attack Paths
Welcome back to The Cyber Kitchen, where cybersecurity gets sliced, diced, and served up with just enough spice to keep things interesting. Hosted by TrustNet’s Jamie Kerem with CISO and founder, Trevor Horwitz. “A penetration test doesn’t reduce risk when the tester finds the vulnerability. Risk changes when that vulnerability can no longer be used against you.” In this episode, Jamie and Trevor explore how penetration testing is being reinvented as modern environments change faster than traditional annual testing cycles can keep up with. The conversation breaks down what organizations are actually buying when they invest in a penetration test, from internal and external testing to web applications, APIs, cloud environments, and identity. They examine why scope matters, why automated vulnerability scanning isn’t the same as human-led penetration testing, and why an annual pentest should be viewed as a snapshot rather than a year-round picture of security. Jamie and Trevor also explore how AI, Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS), continuous testing, and attack-path analysis are changing offensive security. As technology makes it possible to discover vulnerabilities faster and across a much larger attack surface, they discuss why finding more issues doesn’t necessarily mean reducing more risk—and why remediation may ultimately be the bigger bottleneck. Along the way, they look at why security teams should focus less on individual findings and more on the attack paths connecting them, how identity, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and AI systems are reshaping what penetration testers need to assess, and what CISOs should demand from modern penetration testing. Ultimately, the conversation asks organizations to rethink the metric that matters most: how quickly can you move from “this can be exploited” to “it can’t be exploited anymore”? Take the conversation further: * TrustNetInc.com * https://www.linkedin.com/company/trustnet-inc * https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorhorwitz/ * https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-kerem * info@TrustNetInc.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trustnetinc.substack.com
