Cybercrime is a constant risk for Australian organisations. In 2025–26, ASD’s ReportCyber received more than 82,000 cybercrime reports, about one every six minutes.
Even worse, the average self-reported cost of cybercrime per report was $55,400 for small businesses and $141,300 for medium businesses, according to ASD’s Annual Cyber Threat Report 2025–26.
It’s no joke. A major cyber attack can derail operations and bring an organisation to its knees.
But as the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This definitely rings true when it comes to cybersecurity.
Never has it been more critical for companies to be proactive and take measures to mitigate threats rather than respond to a crisis that’s already in full effect. Two of the most effective techniques for accomplishing this are performing continuous vulnerabilities assessment and penetration testing.
These two terms are often used interchangeably. However, there are some fundamental differences.
A vulnerabilities assessment typically involves using automated testing tools such as security scanners to generate reports on website or network weaknesses. Some specific elements of the process include:
From there, a list of vulnerabilities are generated. At that point, the results are evaluated to determine where potential risks lie along with recommended solutions.
Note that you often have an option of storing the vulnerability data locally or remotely so that it’s not sent out across the Internet.
Penetration testing is more goal-oriented and involves an authorised attempt by registered testers to exploit flaws and gain access to your company’s data assets. It mimics what would happen during an actual cyber attack and attempts to obtain sensitive data and/or disrupt normal operations.
After which, you’ll receive a comprehensive report along with suggestions of how to remediate any known issues. Some common areas that are covered include:
The key difference between the two is that a vulnerabilities assessment is primarily list-oriented while penetration testing is more goal-oriented.
This is an integral strategy for taking a proactive stance against cyber crime. It allows you to identify critical weaknesses and potential exploits before attacks are able to.
By scanning things like operating systems, network devices and desktop applications, you’ll be alerted of any issues that may be present both internally and externally. This form of early detection is crucial for addressing security deficiencies and thwarting would-be attacks.
Another benefit is that it helps you create a comprehensive network map of your organisation’s digital infrastructure. For instance, you can take inventory of all of the devices on your network including device type, operating system, application version and so on. This is important because you can pinpoint machines that were unofficially connected to your network and are therefore unsecured.
A vulnerability assessment will also check for misconfigurations with your network and systems. In turn, steps can be taken to ensure that everything is properly configured to enhance the efficiency of your network/system.
On top of this, it can aid in your organisation’s cybersecurity planning. A report will highlight which issues are most serious and which are of lesser significance. In turn, this allows you to effectively prioritise your efforts and ensures that you’re tackling the most pressing problems first.
In the long run, you’re able to allocate your IT resources in a way that enhances cybersecurity without overspending on needless features.
You can think of this as a cybersecurity self-assessment. Testers are essentially performing mock attacks with the goal of finding vulnerabilities. Therefore, it’s ideal for staying ahead of cyber criminals.
One of the top benefits is that it reveals real risks that could be used to initiate attacks. Forget about hypotheticals. You’ll know exactly which issues are compromising your organisation’s cybersecurity and putting your data assets in peril. This is huge because you’ll know which specific areas need to be addressed and in which order.
There’s also the issue of compliance. Multiple laws, regulations and industry standards have been set in place that are designed to protect sensitive information, including the personal information of consumers as well as employees. Some examples are Australia’s Privacy Act 1988, APRA CPS 234, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and ISO 27001.
Depending on your industry, your company may be required to perform a certain level of penetration testing in order to safeguard sensitive information. For example, PCI DSS requires internal and external penetration testing, and APRA CPS 234 requires regulated entities to test the effectiveness of their information security controls through a systematic testing program. Even if it doesn’t, you can greatly reduce the risk of putting this data in harm’s way and ultimately getting hit with costly penalties.
Sometimes this can mean the difference between your company’s longevity and having to close your doors prematurely after sifting through the wreckage of an attack.
It’s also advantageous from a business continuity standpoint. If a cyber criminal is able to execute something like a ransomware or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, your company’s operations will come to a screeching halt.
And as studies have discovered, downtime can be incredibly costly. In fact, the 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey by Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC), which polled more than 1,000 firms worldwide, found that a single hour of downtime costs over US$300,000 for more than 90 percent of mid-size and large enterprises.
Just imagine the implications if your company experienced multiple hours or even multiple days of downtime. The consequences would be catastrophic. You could lose a large percentage of your customers and see your profitability plummet.
Penetration testing is ideal because it uncovers potential threats that could leave you exposed to disruptive attacks. As a result, you can drastically reduce the chances of your company experiencing major downtime.
In turn, this can be advantageous for preserving your reputation. If you’re hit with a major cyber attack or data breach, this can quickly dissolve any level of trust or loyalty you’ve established with your customers. Many will feel compelled to turn to a competitor with whom they feel their personal information is safe.
In fact, the OAIC’s 2026 Australian Community Attitudes to Privacy Survey found that 87 percent of Australians are more concerned about privacy than they were five years ago, and 68 percent would be more likely to use digital services requiring personal information if they knew their data was handled fairly and responsibly.
But by using penetration testing to find and fix weaknesses before attacks and breaches happen, your brand reputation needn’t take an unnecessary hit.
Although both processes are beneficial on their own, it’s best to use them both in tandem. This is known as vulnerability assessment and penetration testing (VAPT).
VAPT is ideal because it will provide your organisation with a more detailed, comprehensive evaluation than would be possible with a single test on its own. Not only are you scanning for weaknesses for potential threats, you’re also performing an authorised attack to identify real issues.
As a result, your testing is more robust, which helps better protect your company from the full scope of cyber attacks. Any advantage you can have in this day and age, the better.
The key word with testing is continuous. You really want to get into the habit of having testing done on a consistent basis. After all, a one-off approach is usually insufficient for addressing the serious cybersecurity concerns that modern organisations face.
In fact, it’s required for many companies. PCI DSS v4.0.1 requires internal and external vulnerability scans at least once every three months, and internal and external penetration tests at least once every 12 months and after any significant infrastructure or application upgrade or change. Service providers that use segmentation must also have their segmentation controls penetration tested at least once every six months.
In Australia, ASD’s Essential Eight maturity model sets an even faster pace for vulnerability scanning. Even at Maturity Level One, it expects a vulnerability scanner to be used at least daily for online services and the operating systems of internet-facing servers and network devices, at least weekly for office productivity suites, web browsers, email clients, PDF software and security products, and at least fortnightly for the operating systems of workstations and other servers and network devices. Beyond these minimums, you may want to have VAPT performed even more frequently depending on your industry and level of risk.
With cyber criminals becoming more and more sophisticated and their attacks increasingly advanced, diligence is necessary for keeping the edge in this never-ending game of cat and mouse.
Cyber crimes that compromise the sensitive personal information of consumers happen all the time. And if these attacks can affect multi-billion dollar companies, what does that mean for much smaller businesses with limited protection?
Although serious measures are being taken to combat these attacks, the threat keeps growing: in 2025–26, ASD’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) responded to more than 1,500 cyber security incidents, up 20 percent on the previous year. This means that companies need to be meticulous and more diligent about cybersecurity than ever and take every possible precaution to mitigate their risk level. They need to stay on the offence.
Two of the best ways to do this is through continuous vulnerabilities assessment and penetration testing. These techniques have proven to be instrumental in helping organisations pinpoint weaknesses before actual cyber criminals do.
Utilising them is what helps your company make the necessary fixes to keep cybersecurity at the level it needs to be. Ideally, these two processes will be used in conjunction with one another for more comprehensive, robust cybersecurity.
What are your company’s primary cybersecurity concerns?
StickmanCyber’s CREST-accredited penetration testing and vulnerability management services help you find, prioritise and fix exploitable weaknesses on an ongoing basis. Book a free consultation to discuss them with our team.
A vulnerability scan is the automated part: a tool checks systems against a database of known weaknesses and produces a list of findings. A vulnerability assessment goes further. Someone reviews the scan results, removes false positives, rates each issue by how exploitable it is and what it would affect, and recommends what to fix first. A scan gives you data; an assessment turns it into a prioritised plan.
An unauthenticated scan looks at your systems from the outside, the way an attacker without an account would see them, so it mainly finds exposed services and weaknesses visible over the network. An authenticated scan logs in with approved credentials, so it can check installed software, missing patches and configuration settings in much more detail. Using both gives you a fuller picture of your exposure.
Continuous penetration testing means testing on an ongoing basis rather than once a year. It usually combines automated testing that safely tries to exploit weaknesses, to confirm which ones are really exploitable, with periodic manual tests by skilled testers. Because new vulnerabilities and system changes appear all the time, it helps you catch new exposures sooner than a single annual test would.
You receive a report that lists the findings, rates their severity and recommends how to fix them. Your team, or your security provider, then remediates the issues in order of risk, starting with critical and high-risk findings. Finally, the affected systems are rescanned or retested to confirm the fixes worked. PCI DSS, for example, requires rescans to confirm that high-risk and critical vulnerabilities have been resolved.
Yes, scaled to their size and risk. ASD says the Essential Eight’s Maturity Level One may generally suit small to medium enterprises, and that level already expects regular vulnerability scanning to find missing patches. A penetration test of your most important systems, such as your website, cloud services and remote access, can then show whether those weaknesses could actually be exploited. Small businesses reported an average cybercrime cost of $55,400 per report in 2025–26.