A penetration testing quote arrives with a price and a defined scope. A cyber incident arrives with questions: which systems can we trust, how long will recovery take, and what do we tell customers?
That difference makes the comparison awkward. A global breach average will not tell you what an incident would cost your business. A cheap testing quote will not tell you how much useful coverage you are buying, either.
Work out what an interruption would mean for you
Choose one realistic scenario. For example, your team cannot access its main business application for a day. Map out the consequences using your own figures and assumptions.
- Work that stops: which staff cannot do their normal jobs, and what can they do manually?
- Income delayed or lost: which orders can wait, and which customers might go elsewhere?
- Recovery effort: who investigates, restores systems and checks that they are safe to use?
- Customer support: who handles enquiries and explains service delays?
Keep direct costs separate from estimates. Lost revenue and lost profit are different measures; adding both for the same sale would overstate the impact. Write down what you know, what you have assumed and what remains uncertain.
This exercise is a planning aid, not a prediction that a particular incident will happen. Its value is making the business dependency visible.
Compare testing quotes on coverage
Two proposals can both say “penetration test” and describe quite different jobs. One might cover a small public website. Another might include authenticated customer and administrator roles, an API and a complex approval workflow.
Ask each provider to explain the included systems, access they need, testing time, exclusions and deliverables. Ask how they handle a serious finding during the engagement, how they explain results to your team, and whether remediation retesting is included.
A narrower test can be the right first step when it answers your most important question. The problem is buying a narrow test while assuming it covers the whole business.
Budget for fixing what the test finds
Testing is one part of the cost. Your team may need time to change permissions, update an application, remove a service or work with a supplier. Some fixes are straightforward; others need careful change planning.
Reserve capacity for that work before the engagement starts. Ask who will own each finding and who can approve changes. If a supplier maintains the affected system, involve them early enough to avoid a report sitting unanswered between organisations.
Be realistic about the benefit
A test does not guarantee that you will avoid a breach, and it is not a substitute for backups, monitoring or an incident response plan. Its value is the information it gives you about the systems and scenarios tested.
The ASD guidelines for security assurance describe security assessment activities as a way to identify vulnerabilities and understand exposure. That is a useful basis for a purchasing decision: what uncertainty will this engagement help us resolve?
Ask Invado Tech for a scoped proposal. We can discuss what matters to your business, what the engagement will cover and what your team will need to do afterwards.