In a world where digital threats evolve faster than ever, Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) has become non-negotiable for any business with an online presence. But before you book your first pentest, there's a lot to consider-from defining your scope to choosing the right testing model.

More importantly, the way you approach VAPT can drastically impact not just your security posture, but also your time, resources, and budget.

This guide will walk you through the key prerequisites to start a VAPT engagement-and why using a modern PTaaS (Penetration Testing as a Service) platform like Capture The Bug is a more cost-effective and scalable option for today's digital businesses.

The first step in a successful pentest is knowing why you're doing it.

Are you aiming for compliance like SOC 2, ISO 27001, or PCI-DSS?

Trying to build customer trust ahead of a product launch?

Or perhaps you're proactively managing security risk before a potential breach occurs?

Defining the "why" helps tailor the scope, methodology, and reporting. On Capture The Bug, you can select your testing goal upfront-compliance, pre-launch, or general risk assessment-ensuring your entire VAPT journey aligns with your business outcomes.

Your pentest can only be as effective as the scope you define. Make a clear list of assets you want to test-web apps, APIs, mobile apps, cloud instances, internal tools, third-party services, etc. Decide what's in-scope and what's not.

Capture The Bug makes this step easy by letting you upload or sync your assets, define separate scopes for production and staging, and manage it all in one centralized dashboard. No messy spreadsheets. No back-and-forth.

Since penetration testing simulates real attacks, it can trigger alerts or-even worse-create system disruptions if not coordinated properly. You'll need formal authorization to test systems, especially if you're using cloud platforms like AWS or GCP.

You'll also want to alert your internal teams so they don't misinterpret test traffic. Capture The Bug helps you automate this with built-in templates for authorizations and pre-alerts for IT and DevOps teams, so your testing stays smooth and safe.

Traditional VAPT models are slow, costly, and hard to scale. You're typically paying for a fixed number of hours, with a single PDF report at the end, no real-time updates, and limited support for retesting.

PTaaS flips that model. It brings flexibility, transparency, and cost-efficiency to your security program. With Capture The Bug, you get:

• On-demand testing without waiting weeks to schedule
• Real-time dashboards showing findings as they're discovered
• Collaboration tools to chat directly with testers and assign tasks
• Unlimited retesting, ensuring fixes are verified-without extra cost
• Compliance-ready reports customized for audits, clients, or board updates

Instead of paying for one large, rigid test once a year, PTaaS allows you to spread your security investment over time, making it ideal for agile product teams and growing businesses.

Before testing begins, do some basic hygiene checks. Patch outdated systems, enforce strong authentication, remove exposed debug endpoints, and disable unused services.

This won't replace a pentest-but it ensures your testers can go deeper and find complex vulnerabilities that truly matter. Capture The Bug offers pre-assessment checklists to help you clean house before the engagement even begins.

While professional pentesters follow safe methodologies, there's always a small chance that tests could disrupt production environments-especially on legacy systems.

Make sure you have fresh backups in place and a rollback plan ready. Capture The Bug prioritizes safe testing practices, and we also offer the option to test in staging environments that closely mirror your live setup.

Pentesting is not a one-way street. You'll need to coordinate with your testers, understand findings, and assign fixes. Make sure everyone knows how updates will be shared-email, Slack, Jira-and who's responsible on both sides.

Capture The Bug streamlines this with built-in collaboration tools, real-time notifications, and integration with Slack, Jira, and GitHub. Everything happens in one place, so no task or insight falls through the cracks.

Once your test is done, it's time to fix the issues. You'll receive a list of vulnerabilities sorted by severity and business impact. Assign them to your team, track progress, and once patched-request a retest.

Here's where Capture The Bug shines. We offer free, unlimited retesting on all verified fixes and provide a final "clean bill of health" report for your internal or external stakeholders. There's no need to pay for a whole new engagement just to confirm your patches work.

For startups and growing businesses, cost is a major factor. Traditional VAPT providers often charge thousands of dollars per test, with rigid scopes and long turnaround times. You pay extra for retests, audits, or small changes.

With Capture The Bug, you get:

• Transparent, usage-based pricing with no hidden fees
• Free retesting and updates
• Flexibility to scale up or down as your app or infrastructure evolves
• No long-term lock-in or enterprise-only pricing
• Enterprise grade security -without the enterprise price tag

We're built for founders, CTOs, CISOs, and dev teams who want continuous visibility into their security posture-without blowing up their budgets.