In today’s fast-paced digital world, creating a “culture of security” means building security awareness, responsibility, and best practices into daily life at your organization. Security goes beyond IT and security teams —it’s everyone’s responsibility.

Continuous Penetration Testing (CPT) promotes a security-first culture. Unlike point-in-time tests that provide a snapshot, CPT offers a proactive approach to threat detection and mitigation. By continuously monitoring systems, organizations can promote vigilance, cross-functional collaboration, and a true security-first mindset for all employees.

Why a Security-First Culture Matters

The volume and complexity of cyber threats are increasing daily. As attackers become more sophisticated, checking the compliance box is no longer enough. Regulatory frameworks set minimum standards, but true resilience requires going further.

Consider that most data breaches are not due to advanced attacks but simple misconfigurations, lack of awareness, or weak internal protocols. The 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report cited human error as a primary factor with 68% of breaches involving a non-malicious human element, such as falling victim to social engineering attacks. This highlights the critical role of employee awareness training to prevent security incidents and the importance of fostering a culture where security is everyone’s responsibility —from engineers to executives.

Driving Cultural Adoption Across Teams

Creating a security-first culture requires more than tools. Executive teams and leadership have to champion the effort and communicate to the organization its importance. When new employees are onboarded, security awareness and training should be included on day one. Launch monthly security awareness campaigns around phishing simulations or tips of the month. Finally, sharing the wins, such as a vulnerability that was found and fixed or a phishing email that was reported, will reinforce the program’s value. When employees see tangible results, engagement grows.

Getting Started

  • Define what “security-first” means for your organization. Include cultural, technical, and operational elements.
  • Get executive buy-in to align on the importance and ROI of a security-first approach.
  • Assign a security culture champion from each major department to drive local accountability.

Traditional vs. Continuous Penetration Testing

How you test your systems for vulnerabilities directly influences how your teams think about security. Understanding these differences is key to building a culture where security becomes part of everyone’s daily mindset.

Traditional penetration testing typically happens once or twice a year and often in isolation from daily operations.

  • Quickly outdated reports
  • Risk at one moment
  • Isolates security from product and engineering teams
  • Remediation is a project

Traditional penetration testing promotes a reactive mindset.

  • Periodic frequency: Teams respond to reports, making remediation a fire drill and not built-in to the development process.
  • Siloed workflow integrations: Security belongs to the security teams when the checks happen in these isolated events, eliminating shared responsibility.
  • False sense of security: With the infrequency, vulnerabilities could go unnoticed for too long.
  • Lack of learning opportunity: Limited feedback limits real-time education or behavior change.

Continuous Penetration Testing (CPT) is an always-on approach that integrates directly into DevSecOps pipelines, adapts to changes in real-time, and provides actionable feedback at every stage, resulting in:

  • Faster threat detection
  • Real-time vulnerability detection
  • Ongoing visibility into risk posture
  • Remediation is a habit

Continuous testing is not just a technical tool —it’s a catalyst for cultural change. By implementing CPT, you embed security into day-to-day operations and foster a proactive security culture.

  • Ongoing vigilance: Frequent tests keep security top-of-mind for every team.
  • Collaboration: Security becomes a shared goal, enhancing communication between development, operations, and leadership.
  • Threat awareness: Real-time findings offer practical learning moments for the organization.
  • Education: Teams learn real vulnerabilities, reinforcing how best practices reduces future risk for your organization.

Implementing Continuous Penetration Testing

Transitioning to CPT may feel like a big leap, but with the right approach, it’s highly achievable. Below are some key steps and considerations for a successful rollout.

  • Audit your current security posture by evaluating current testing and response workflows, identifying opportunities for improvement, and documenting how vulnerabilities are currently reported and resolved.
  • Set key CPT goals, such as time to remediation, frequency of high-risk vulnerabilities, or number of teams receiving findings.
  • Partner with a CPT provider to start baseline assessments. Look for solutions offering real-time alerts, contextual findings, and risk prioritization.
  • Establish reporting and feedback loops that can be shared with the broader organization.

Reinforce through training to show how real issues were identified and resolved.

Overcoming Common Challenges

Adopting continuous testing can raise concerns internally. Changing from legacy testing to something unknown can cause resistance, but if you break down each concern, you’ll uncover all the benefits your organization would gain from CPT.

Challenge

Response

Budget Constraints

While upfront costs may seem slightly higher for CPT rather than point-in-time testing, it can prevent expensive breaches and reduce remediation costs by identifying issues earlier. The shift from reactive to proactive security will reduce costs in the long term.

ROI Uncertainty

Regular on- demand reporting to executives on vulnerability closure rates, risk posture improvements, and reduction in incident costs show measurable value.

Change Fatigue

CPT will support security teams, not burden them. Mundane tasks can be automated, and developers gain actionable feedback.

Noise vs. Signal

Pairing CPT with human analysis gives you better signal quality. Tuning alerts to focus on exploitable or high-risk findings will help teams block out the noise.

Case Study: SaaS Company Building Culture of Security with Shift to CPT

A SaaS company with a rapidly growing product suite was relying on traditional penetration tests to meet compliance requirements. While these tests satisfied auditors, they routinely surfaced the same types of vulnerabilities, like weak configurations, outdated dependencies, and exposed internal APIs.

The challenge? Vulnerabilities often went undetected for months, and developers felt blindsided when a year’s worth of issues showed up all at once. Security was viewed as a bottleneck, not a partner.

The shift: The company implemented Continuous Penetration Testing (CPT). They began receiving real-time alerts tailored to each team’s domain. Findings were triaged and routed directly to the right developers via their existing Jira workflow.

The results:

  • Time to remediate critical vulnerabilities dropped from 26 days to 6 days.
  • Developers reported feeling more empowered and they better understood how their work impacted security.
  • The company reduced recurring issues.
  • Security became a standing topic in sprint reviews and product demos.

Key takeaway: By shifting from a reactive point-in-time test to a proactive continuous test, the company didn’t just find more vulnerabilities, but it built a culture where every team became part of the security solution.

Conclusion

A security-first culture isn’t built overnight, but an ongoing effort. With Continuous Penetration Testing as a foundational practice, organizations can stay ahead of evolving threats and foster shared responsibility for security.

Take the first step toward transforming a culture where security is part of everything you and discover how Sprocket Security can help your organization every step of the way.