Pentesting
How often should you pentest? A guide by company stage.
Should you test annually, quarterly, or on every release? Recommendations tailored for seed-stage MVPs, scaling Series A/B platforms, and regulated enterprise tech.
Priya NairHead of Security
6 min read
A frequent question from engineering leadership is how to budget security testing without either over-spending early or failing vendor security questionnaires later. The answer depends directly on release velocity, regulatory surface, and deal sizes.
Recommended Testing Cadence by Stage
| Company Stage | Scanning Frequency | Pentest Cadence | Primary Catalyst |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed / MVP | Weekly automated scans | Annual or on-demand | First enterprise pilot or SOC 2 kickoff |
| Series A / Growth | Continuous (daily/PR triggers) | Semi-annual or major architectural shifts | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, customer procurement |
| Scale-up / Regulated | Continuous + CI/CD gating | Quarterly scoped + annual comprehensive | RBI, CERT-In, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS obligations |
When to trigger an unscheduled pentest
Regardless of calendar schedule, you should trigger targeted pentests whenever you deploy major architectural updates: rolling out multi-tenancy, replacing your authentication provider, or integrating payment transaction pipelines.
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Pentesting · 6 min