Organizations deploy CAD environments such as DMZs (demilitarized zones), internal clouds or application ecosystems to protect critical internal systems from Internet-based threats before allowing third-party organizations to access enterprise resources via APIs or web services. Penetration Tests in CAD environments are necessary to ensure that the Application Programming Interface (API) gateway components and APIs themselves are secure. This will help prevent unauthorized access, denial of service or information leakage.

Organizations use penetration testing for compliance validation with standards such as GLBA, FISMA and PCI-DSS.

As organizations add more third-party, Internet-connected devices to their environment they are vulnerable when these external components are not secure against vulnerabilities such as remote code execution (RCE) and cross-site scripting (XSS). Penetration tests help in identifying the flawed design of the IoT applications and/or systems and highlight any flaws that can compromise confidentiality, integrity or availability of data.

As enterprises try their best to fortify their defenses against cyberattacks, hackers are continuously developing new ways of compromising systems. Some organizations have been breached despite having deployed multiple layers of advanced security. Enterprises require penetration testing services to identify and verify security gaps that exist between their current defense infrastructure and the new attack vectors used by cybercriminals in compromising systems.

Enterprises conduct penetration testing to identify vulnerabilities in their mobile applications. The organization's security team can use manual, external pen-test contractors to test the target app for known vulnerabilities. A dedicated tool can be used by an internal or external pen-test contractor to simulate exploit attempts that may lead to compromised operation on the client device. This capability is necessary when it comes to data leakage due to memory-based attacks (e.g., SQL injection).