📚 Knowledge Base

Under SAMA CSF, financial institutions must conduct regular penetration testing as part of their security assessment obligations. Key requirements include: (1) Performing penetration tests at least annually and after significant infrastructure changes, (2) Using qualified internal teams or certified third-party providers, (3) Testing must cover all critical systems, applications, networks, and infrastructure, (4) Following recognized methodologies like OWASP, PTES, or NIST standards, (5) Documenting all findings with risk ratings and remediation timelines, (6) Ensuring executive management reviews results, (7) Retesting after remediation to verify fixes, (8) Maintaining detailed records for regulatory review. Tests should simulate real-world attack scenarios including external attacks, internal threats, web applications, APIs, and social engineering. Results must be treated as highly confidential and findings must be remediated based on risk severity within defined timeframes.

Vulnerability Assessment is an automated or semi-automated process that scans systems to identify known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and security weaknesses. It provides a comprehensive list of potential issues but doesn't exploit them. Penetration Testing goes further by actively exploiting discovered vulnerabilities to determine actual impact, simulating real attacker behavior to assess how deep an attacker could penetrate systems. Under NCA ECC, critical infrastructure operators must perform BOTH regularly. NCA ECC requires: (1) Continuous or quarterly vulnerability assessments using automated tools, (2) Annual penetration testing by qualified professionals, (3) Additional penetration tests after major changes or incidents, (4) Both internal and external testing perspectives, (5) Testing of all critical assets and systems. Vulnerability assessments help maintain ongoing security posture, while penetration testing validates actual exploitability and business impact. For Vision 2030 digital transformation initiatives, both are essential to protect critical national infrastructure and ensure cyber resilience of essential services.