Strengthen Your Security with Continuous Penetration Testing and CDW’s PTaaS

January 09, 2026

Article
8 min

Strengthen Your Security with Continuous Penetration Testing and CDW’s PTaaS

As cyberattacks become faster and more frequent, are annual penetration tests enough to keep you safe? Discover how Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) bridges security testing gaps with CDW’s targeted security services.

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What's Inside
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As Canadian organizations accelerate their adoption of cloud services and AI, cyberthreats continue to grow in sophistication. According to CDW’s 2025 Canadian Cybersecurity Study, the attack-to-incident success rate has risen for the second year in a row, with 86.5 percent of organizations experiencing a cyberincident in the past 12 months.

Threat actors are increasingly exploiting active vulnerabilities and adapting their tactics faster than many organizations can respond. Yet many teams still rely on annual or point-in-time penetration tests, an approach that often fails to keep pace with today’s rapidly evolving threats.

To reduce cyberincidents, Canadian organizations need more than occasional testing. They need a continuous, repeatable security testing program that helps ensure ongoing readiness and strengthens their ability to defend against sophisticated attacks. However, building such a program can introduce new budget, staffing and technical challenges for IT leaders.

This is where Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) can make a meaningful difference. PTaaS provides ongoing access to testing capabilities, streamlined workflows and faster visibility into vulnerabilities, helping IT teams overcome resource constraints and stay ahead of emerging threats.

In this blog, we explore why more frequent penetration testing is essential and how CDW’s new PTaaS offering delivers a practical, scalable solution for Canadian organizations.

What is Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS)?

Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) is a modern approach to cybersecurity testing that shifts traditional, point-in-time penetration testing to a continuous, scalable and cost-effective model.

This service typically includes a cloud-based reporting platform and ongoing access to security experts, enabling organizations to test more frequently, gain real-time visibility into vulnerabilities and remediate issues faster. This model helps teams stay prepared for evolving cyberthreats and maintain a more resilient security posture.

Traditional penetration testing versus PTaaS

Criteria

Traditional penetration testing

Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS)

Testing frequency

Conducted periodically (often annually or quarterly)

Continuous or on-demand; aligned with environment changes

Visibility into findings

Findings shared after completion in a static report

Real-time interactive dashboards and ongoing insights throughout testing

Remediation cycle

Fixes applied after reports are delivered

Vulnerabilities can be remediated and retested instantly

Cost model

Large, one-time project expenditure

Predictable subscription or usage-based cost

4 ways PTaaS can help improve cybersecurity resilience

PTaaS enhances cybersecurity resilience by helping organizations detect vulnerabilities sooner, accelerate remediation, strengthen security maturity while managing costs and skill gaps, and adapt testing as their environments change.

1. Discover vulnerabilities in near real time

According to CDW’s Canadian Cybersecurity Study, only 13.7 percent of organizations with mid-level security maturity perform continuous testing. As environments expand and new cloud resources or applications are introduced, vulnerabilities can emerge faster than traditional testing cycles can detect them.

“In the current threat landscape, you should want to be more diligent in addressing vulnerabilities instead of waiting an entire year to start looking at your environment,” said Chris Graziano, Managing Consultant – Offensive Security Team at CDW Canada.

How PTaaS helps discover vulnerabilities early

PTaaS provides ongoing or on-demand testing through a managed cloud platform that merges automated tools with human expertise. Findings are shared as they are validated, allowing vulnerabilities to be identified far more quickly than in annual testing cycles.

This approach reduces the window of exposure and helps teams stay ahead of evolving threats rather than reacting after the fact.

Key benefits for IT teams

  • Lower risk of exploitation by reducing the opportunity for attackers to act.
  • More predictable and efficient vulnerability management cycles.
  • A proactive testing model that improves overall readiness.

2. Create a pathway to quicker remediation

In a traditional penetration testing cycle, the gap between discovery and remediation can stretch for weeks. By the time reports are finalized and fixes implemented, the environment may have changed, introducing new risks.

How PTaaS brings quicker remediation

PTaaS delivers iterative findings throughout the testing process. Security and development teams can begin addressing issues immediately instead of waiting for a final report. Automated or assisted retesting verifies that fixes are successful, significantly shortening the remediation lifecycle.

“The key difference in continuous testing enabled by PTaaS compared to point-in-time testing is that you can identify vulnerabilities in almost real time, which allows you to patch them more proactively,” said Courtney Larmand, Team Lead – Risk Advisory Sales at CDW Canada.

Key benefits for IT teams

  • Immediate findings support fix-as-you-go remediation.
  • Reduced mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to remediate (MTTR).
  • Improved collaboration between security, development and operations teams.

3. Strengthen security maturity while managing costs and skill gaps

Continuous penetration testing requires specialized skills, experience and methodology; resources that many organizations struggle to maintain in-house. At the same time, one-off external engagements can be expensive, especially amid ongoing cybersecurity talent shortages.

How PTaaS helps organizations meet skill and cost expectations

PTaaS offers continuous access to qualified penetration testers under a predictable subscription or usage-based model. This gives organizations an affordable way to run more frequent tests while benefiting from expert guidance that helps contextualize findings and prioritize remediation.

By combining automation with human insight, PTaaS offers both cost-efficiency and depth of coverage, helping teams overcome skills gaps without compromising test quality.

Key benefits for IT teams

  • Offloads routine testing work, enabling internal teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.
  • More predictable budgeting and clearer total cost of ownership (TCO).
  • Expert support that ensures high-impact issues are addressed efficiently.

4. Scale and adapt testing to changing environments

As organizations adopt hybrid and multicloud infrastructure, maintaining consistent and effective testing becomes more challenging. Different platforms require different testing methods and environments often evolve rapidly.

How PTaaS improves testing flexibility

PTaaS allows testing scopes, frequencies and coverage areas to evolve alongside technology changes. Whether moving workloads to the cloud, deploying new applications or expanding infrastructure, organizations can ensure these environments are tested thoroughly and consistently.  

“Any change in an environment should really have a penetration test done,” Larmand explained. “You have more flexibility on what you can test and when you can test it.”

Key benefits for IT teams

  • Scale testing based on business and technology needs.
  • Leverage cloud and hybrid expertise from experienced penetration testers.
  • Maintain a high degree of assurance across distributed environments.

Strengthen your testing program with CDW’s PTaaS offering

CDW’s Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) delivers a structured, continuous approach to security validation that helps organizations move beyond periodic assessments.

Comprehensive coverage and expertise

CDW provides deep penetration testing capabilities across infrastructure, web applications, cloud platforms and even operational technology (OT) or Internet of Things (IoT) environments. This ensures consistent risk visibility across modern, diverse IT landscapes.

Depth that goes beyond automation

Automation accelerates testing, but expert judgment remains essential for identifying complex logic flaws and minimizing false positives. CDW’s specialists blend automation with human intelligence to deliver more accurate, actionable insights.

“CDW’s PTaaS offers specialized expertise that helps uncover vulnerabilities beyond the limitations of automated penetration testing, reducing false positives and improving overall testing outcomes,” said Graziano.

Guided maturity and strategic partnership

Beyond test execution, CDW works as a strategic advisor, helping organizations advance toward an intelligence-driven, continuous security model. This partnership supports both immediate needs and long-term resilience.

Learn how CDW can help strengthen your security posture

Discover how CDW’s Penetration Testing as a Service can help elevate your testing program and keep your organization ahead of cyberthreats.