Why is penetration testing important to an organization’s risk management strategy?

Penetration testing should be an integral part of every organization’s risk management strategy because it can help determine whether existing security policies are effective, uncover unknown vulnerabilities and provide organizations an opportunity to remediate the identified vulnerabilities before a data breach occurs. Data breaches are not only very costly but also impact the reputation of an organization, so a controlled test that detects vulnerabilities an attacker could actually exploit is invaluable.