// Comparison

Pentesting Azure Applications vs The Hacker Playbook 3: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Pentesting, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.

Intermediate

3/52018

Pentesting Azure Applications

The Definitive Guide to Testing and Securing Deployments

Matt Burrough

Matt Burrough on attacker behaviour against Azure tenants: identity, storage, VMs, key material handling, and the recon paths that work against real subscriptions.

Intermediate

4/52018

The Hacker Playbook 3

Practical Guide to Penetration Testing — Red Team Edition

Peter Kim

Peter Kim's hands-on red-team field manual: assumed-breach scenarios, lateral movement, AV/EDR evasion, and the operational rhythm of a real engagement rather than a checklist of CVEs.

Read this if

Cloud pentesters whose scope includes Azure subscriptions. Burrough covers identity (Entra ID), storage account abuse, VM-level recon, key material handling, and the role-based access patterns that drive real Azure post-exploitation.

Junior-to-mid red teamers and pentesters moving past CTFs into corporate engagements who want a coherent narrative of how an op flows. The strongest part is the assumed-breach mindset — the assumption that you start from a foothold and have to make it count.

Skip this if

Readers focused on AWS or GCP, or anyone wanting current Azure tradecraft. The book pre-dates the current AAD-now-Entra-ID rebrand and several major service updates; treat it as foundational, not current.

Readers expecting 2024-current tradecraft. Cobalt Strike, Sliver, EDR-bypass research, and modern identity attacks (AAD, conditional access, OAuth abuse) have all moved on since 2018. Treat the techniques as concepts, not commands.

Key takeaways

Azure attack patterns center on identity and roles, not network-level vulnerabilities; the book's framing reflects that.
Storage account misconfigurations remain one of the most common Azure findings; the book's coverage of access-key abuse is still relevant.
Cloud pentest reporting differs meaningfully from network pentest reporting; the book's deliverable templates are useful starting points.

Assumed breach is the right starting frame for almost any modern engagement; perimeter-to-DA scenarios are increasingly fiction.
The book's value is the workflow — recon, foothold, escalate, persist, exfil — not the specific tools used to demonstrate it.
Pair every chapter with a current blog source; the toolchain rotates faster than print can track.

How they compare

We rate The Hacker Playbook 3 higher (4/5 against 3/5 for Pentesting Azure Applications). For most readers, that means The Hacker Playbook 3 is the primary pick and Pentesting Azure Applications is a useful follow-up.

Both books target intermediate-level readers, so the choice is about topic, not difficulty.

Pentesting Azure Applications and The Hacker Playbook 3 both cover Pentesting, Offensive, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

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