Infosec Professionals Sour on Automated Pentesting Tools
The Register, Tuesday, June 30th, 2026
Support for fully automated pentesting collapsed to 9 percent as tools miss critical AI-related vulnerabilities.
Support for fully autonomous penetration testing has collapsed among information security practitioners. According to Cobalt's 2026 State of Pentesting report, only 9 percent of security professionals now support fully automated approaches, down from 29 percent the previous year.
The primary reason is that automated scanners suffer significant blind spots, with 78 percent of respondents experiencing critical false negatives. Cobalt notes that while scanners excel at signature-based vulnerabilities, they fail at AI security, struggling with exploits requiring multi-turn interactions and creative reasoning.