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At PRISMA, we believe that real innovation doesn’t just come from building great products — it also comes from protecting them. As we continuously evolve our platform and services, maintaining the security and integrity of our systems remains one of our top priorities. That’s why regular external security assessments — known as penetration tests — play a central role in our security strategy.
The Origins of "Pen-Testing"
The concept of penetration testing dates back to 1965, during one of the first computer security conferences in the United States. There, an employee managed to bypass various system safeguards set up for the event — a revelation that prompted the formal use of “computer penetration” as a method of studying system vulnerabilities.
Fast-forward more than 50 years, and penetration testing (or pen-testing) has become a standard method for assessing digital security across industries.
What Is a Penetration Test?
Think of Ocean’s 11. You’re a casino owner, and Danny Ocean is hired to test how easy it is to break into your vault. That’s essentially what a penetration test is: hiring ethical hackers to try and breach your systems using the same methods a real attacker might use.
The goal? To identify vulnerabilities before someone with bad intentions does.
Our Approach to Pen-Testing: The Attack Model
At PRISMA, we follow a structured approach inspired by James P. Anderson, a foundational figure in information security. Our five-stage attack model ensures each test is methodical and informative:
Planning
The tester develops a roadmap, outlining which tactics they’ll use to try and compromise our system.
Scanning
A deep inspection of networks and applications begins, with the tester looking for weak spots to exploit.
Gaining Access
The tester attempts to breach the system using the identified vulnerabilities.
Maintaining Access
If access is achieved, the tester tries to install a “backdoor” for future entry — mimicking the long-term strategies of actual attackers.
Reporting
A full report is produced, highlighting the weaknesses found, the methods used, and suggestions for mitigation.
📝 Why the Report Is Just as Important as the Test
The pen-test report is where the real value lies. It serves as a comprehensive health check for our security posture — identifying gaps, highlighting strengths, and giving us clear next steps.
But we believe a report should go beyond just technical findings.
🤝 Going Beyond Off-the-Shelf Testing
To ensure our pen-testers deliver maximum insight, we invest time onboarding them into our business context before they start testing. We walk them through our platform, explain how our services work, and discuss the kinds of data we handle.
Why? Because the more they understand about our system, the better and more realistic their test will be. This tailored approach yields a much more useful report than a generic, out-of-the-box pen-test ever could.
Using Pen-Testing as a Training Tool
Pen-tests aren’t just for identifying weaknesses — they’re also excellent training exercises for our internal security team. At PRISMA, we use two main testing formats for this purpose:
Blind Tests
In these scenarios, our team isn’t told a pen-test is happening. When an issue arises, they react as if it were a real attack. Only after the fact do we reveal that it was a drill — offering insights into our real-time response capabilities.
Forensic Exercises
In contrast, here we do inform the team in advance. After the test, we dive deep into log data to understand how and when signs of a breach first appeared. We even try to predict the findings before reading the final report, allowing us to sharpen our forensic analysis skills.
What We Learn from Being "Hacked"
Penetration testing shows us what we otherwise can’t see. It gives us:
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A clear picture of our system’s vulnerabilities
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A real-time evaluation of our response capabilities
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Valuable training for our InfoSec team
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A stronger, safer platform for our users
In short, pen-testing isn’t just a security measure — it’s a strategic investment in PRISMA’s future.
Want to know more about how we safeguard our platform? Stay tuned for future posts where we’ll take a deeper dive into our security strategies.
