PTaaS vs Crowdsourcing

With the ability to draw fresh ideas from large crowds, save costs and generate brand awareness, it’s easy to see the attractiveness of crowdsourcing. But it can always leave you wide open to more failure and generate unprecedented turbulence, especially around intellectual property, cross-border data sharing and work quality. With the increased likelihood of such threats, crowdsourcing can be a questionable choice.

PTaaS (Penetration Testing as a Service) is a secure, scalable and efficient way for businesses to solve their security testing problems. They can initiate an on-demand security test that uses a streamlined approach to identify and manage vulnerabilities. This also provides assurance on intellectual property protection.

Is PTaaS a Better Alternative?

No Confidentiality or Intellectual Property Infringement Issues

Crowdsourcing involves approaching the public for fresh perspectives, which means businesses are often required to share sensitive information. This usually involves user credentials, product documentation, source code or even an internal network access.

Since intellectual property laws are struggling to keep up with the rapid development of new technologies, organisations are often uncertain about protecting themselves. Also, competitors can use the shared data to their advantage, making plagiarism a real possibility.

Further issues arise after the crowdsourcing is completed, as conflicts around the intellectual property rights of the new idea can occur. For this reason, a framework needs to be put in place to ensure clarity, which is a resource-intensive process.

With PTaaS, you can be assured of complete confidentiality and protection of your intellectual property. For example, Blacklock follows a strict vetting process when hiring testers, which includes screening resumes, shortlisting candidates and interviewing them to demonstrate skills and experience. Also, professional certification validity, reference and background checks are carried out.

With employment and confidentiality agreements in place and mandatory adherence to data security and handling policies, everything is kept confidential. Any possibility of idea theft is eliminated, too.

No Room for Failure or Low-Quality Work

Regardless of the type of work you crowdsource, there’s always the chance of receiving low-quality work. This is to be expected when you put faith in the unknown. While it’s true that you can come across a genius idea, there’s more likelihood of you receiving work from an amateur.

Another problem is when the crowd doesn’t have the answer, which means the whole thing ends up as a failure. If your problem is urgent and you’re solely relying on crowdsourcing for an outcome, then it can prove costly.

PTaaS provides an approach to expert human-augmented security testing performed by certified and experienced security professionals. With an expert at the helm, you can be assured that PTaaS will find the right solution to your security problem without risking anything to strangers.

Faster Turnaround Times

Crowdsourcing can be implemented quickly but is often a time-consuming process once underway. This is usually because of the number of people involved, varying time zones and the number of submissions received. Another time-draining issue is the intellectual property conflict that can result from a new idea.

There’s also no guarantee that the crowdsourcing project will be successful, which means the whole thing turns out to be a waste of time and money. But even if you find a new idea, there’s a chance that your entire business might not be on board with it. If everyone’s not on board, keeping everyone happy and implementing the idea can be time-consuming.

Unlike traditional penetration testing, PTaaS has a much faster delivery time as automation takes care of the repeated tasks. Depending on the service, a business can get their test results within 24 hours through Blacklock, which results in a faster outcome than typical crowdsourcing projects.

Greater Process Control

A big advantage of crowdsourcing is its hands-off approach. But this means there’s less control over the crowdsourcing process since it’s more challenging to manage people’s behaviour. Things can easily take an unexpected turn and throw swerving curveballs.

PTaaS transfers the remote control to businesses, ensuring full control over the process and greater flexibility. For example, they can initiate an on-demand penetration test whenever they like and scale it accordingly to their needs — without any hiccups.

Summary

PTaaS is an efficient method that isn’t costly and guarantees high-quality work at all times. All the work is undertaken by expert security professionals with utmost privacy, so you don’t have to worry about sensitive issues like intellectual property and cross-border data sharing. It’s really easy to get started and initiate a test, so get your assets protected now.