No matter how secure one believes a network to be the need to conduct vulnerability assessments is of the upmost importance if a company or organization has information that is confidential or vital in nature. The need to conduct penetration testing should be an ongoing task for organizations as new technologies emerge. Even with security measures in place hackers continue to find ways around the roadblocks which are put in place to secure our networks. Just this month alone the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s network was compromised as a hacker was able to penetrate the emails of one of the organization’s special agents (Brito, 2012). The FBI has some of the most sophisticated computer security measures in place known to man and if their systems can be hacked I assure you that no one is safe. In order to properly examine a computer network for vulnerabilities a company’s information systems manager needs to determine whether such testing can be completed in house or should be outsourced to a penetration testing contractor. It is my belief that penetration testing is best left to contractors whose sole function is in conducting these types of tests, as they are better equipped with the tools and knowledge needed to get an accurate overview of a business network. However, penetration testing should be completed periodically by a business internal IT staff as they can apply updates to prevent vulnerabilities throughout the year and can assist a third party vendor in getting the best snapshot of a network’s vulnerabilities. Take for instance if IT staff does nothing to conduct any testing when the third party penetration company becomes involved they are going to have a mess to examine. The contactors are likely to find hundreds or thousands of vulnerabilities, many of which could have been circumvented had some testing been conducted in house. By