Why Should You Prepare for a Penetration Test?

The primary reason you need to prepare for a penetration test is simple: the tests are time-boxed. Testers have a limited window to investigate and attempt to compromise as many systems as possible. By proactively hardening your environment, you reduce the low-hanging fruit, allowing the testers to go deeper and focus on the most critical areas of your infrastructure, including those that must remain operational and are often the most vulnerable.

This approach not only leads to better results, but it also helps organizations focus on real, high-risk issues rather than getting bogged down with trivial, easily-preventable findings. Here are some steps to take before your next test and the reasons behind them:

• Compliance Burden or Opportunity? – Too often, penetration tests are seen as a compliance checkbox. But with the right preparation, they can become an annual opportunity to challenge your defenses, validate your controls, and expose risks that matter. Think beyond the report and focus on resilience.
• Reduce Your Footprint – Use open-source reconnaissance tools like DNSDumpster, Shodan, or Censys to understand your organization’s attack surface from the outside. If these tools can find exposed services or outdated platforms, so can an attacker.
• Address Common Findings Early – Some recurring issues we often see in pre-engagement discovery:
  • Organizations have not implemented split DNS, leaking internal addresses externally
  • Unused and/or outdated protocols are still enabled, such as LLMNR, NBNS, IPv6, and SMBv1
  • SNMP or monitoring platforms (e.g., SolarWinds) exposed externally
  • Default IIS/Apache/Linux pages unnecessarily increasing attack surface
  • Firewall or appliance admin interfaces exposed to the Internet
  • Legacy SMTP or VPN gateways still reachable and not protected with MFA
  • Unsupported operating systems/software that are no longer able to be patched
  • Insecure protocols and file transfer methods (like FTP, Telnet, or HTTP)
• Identify and Improve Segmentation – Testers love flat networks. Segment portions of your network (e.g., DMZ, internal servers, IT Admins), isolate old/unsupported systems, and ensure guest wireless networks don’t have direct access to the corporate network. Strong segmentation slows down attackers and makes a big difference in lateral movement.
• Harden Privileged Accounts – Make sure domain admins aren’t logging into systems across the network (e.g., create separate regular user accounts and dedicated admin accounts for employees that need them), review privileged group membership, and evaluate your service account hygiene. Attackers look for privilege escalation paths so try to close the common ones before a test begins.
• Validate Your SOC and SIEM Effectiveness – A pen test is a great opportunity to see if your security operations team or third-party security provider is alerting on real-world activity. Coordinate ahead of time: enable logging, tune your rules, and have someone watch the dashboards. Missed detections during a test could be missed breaches.

Penetration tests are most valuable when treated as more than a compliance requirement. With a bit of preparation, you can turn your next engagement into a meaningful assessment of your security maturity that provides actionable insights rather than just a list of easy wins. By reducing low-hanging fruit, validating your monitoring capabilities, and tightening up privileged access and network segmentation, you not only get more from your testers, but you also make real progress in defending your organization.  Don’t wait for the report to start improving. Prepare well and let your penetration test push you forward instead of exposing what you already knew was broken. Reach out to get your next penetration test scheduled today!