Practice Area 04
Structured adversarial assessment of your network, applications, and workforce. We find what attackers find — and tell you how to fix it before they exploit it.
Penetration testing — sometimes called ethical hacking or adversarial simulation — is the practice of authorized, structured attacks against your own systems, applications, and people to identify exploitable vulnerabilities before real threat actors discover them. Unlike vulnerability scanning, which identifies known weaknesses through automated comparison against signature databases, penetration testing employs human-driven attack chains that simulate the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of actual threat actors.
The distinction matters enormously. Automated scanners find what their databases contain — they cannot discover logic flaws in your application, social engineering susceptibility in your staff, or chained attack paths that cross system boundaries. A skilled penetration tester identifies the vulnerabilities that exist at the intersection of your technology, your processes, and your people — the multi-vector attack chains that produce catastrophic breach scenarios.
Our adversarial assessments are mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework — the industry-standard knowledge base of real-world adversary tactics used by APT groups, ransomware operators, and financially motivated cybercriminals. This ensures our testing scenarios reflect actual threat behavior rather than theoretical attack patterns.
Every penetration test concludes with a dual-audience report: a detailed technical finding report for your security and IT teams, and a concise executive report that quantifies risk in business terms and provides board-level visibility into your true security exposure. We do not just find problems — we provide the context and remediation guidance that makes fixing them achievable.
External perimeter assessment and internal network lateral movement simulation. Identifies unpatched systems, misconfigured services, exposed credentials, and exploitable trust relationships across your network infrastructure.
Manual testing of web applications, APIs, and authentication systems for OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, business logic flaws, authorization weaknesses, injection vulnerabilities, and insecure direct object references.
Controlled phishing simulations, spear-phishing campaigns, and vishing (voice phishing) scenarios to measure workforce susceptibility to social engineering — the root cause of over 80% of enterprise breaches.
Assessment of cloud infrastructure configurations (IAM, storage policies, network security groups), Microsoft 365 tenant hardening, and SaaS application permission sprawl — the fastest-growing attack surface in enterprise environments.
Comprehensive adversarial assessment across technical infrastructure, web applications, cloud environments, and human attack vectors.
A structured, phased methodology aligned to PTES (Penetration Testing Execution Standard) and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
We begin with a detailed scoping call to define assessment boundaries, identify in-scope and out-of-scope systems, establish communication protocols, and document emergency escalation procedures. A signed Statement of Work and Rules of Engagement document protects both parties and ensures the assessment proceeds within defined legal and operational parameters. No system is touched without written authorization.
Passive and active reconnaissance techniques are used to build a comprehensive target profile. This includes OSINT collection across public DNS records, certificate transparency logs, WHOIS data, LinkedIn profiles, job postings (which reveal technology stacks), GitHub repositories, and Shodan/Censys scans. This phase mirrors exactly what a real attacker would do before launching an active attack campaign against your organization.
Using the attack surface map developed in reconnaissance, we actively probe in-scope systems for exploitable vulnerabilities — combining automated scanning with manual testing techniques. Discovered vulnerabilities are exploited where authorized to confirm exploitability and establish proof-of-concept, with all actions logged for post-test review. MITRE ATT&CK technique identifiers are assigned to each finding to provide adversary context.
Where initial access is established, we simulate the post-exploitation phase of an actual attack — pivoting through the network, escalating privileges, dumping credentials, and attempting to reach defined high-value targets (Domain Admin, database servers, financial systems, sensitive data repositories). This phase answers the question every organization should ask: if an attacker gets in through one door, how far can they get?
Every finding is documented with: the vulnerability description, the attack chain used to exploit it, a CVSS risk score, proof-of-concept evidence (screenshots, output logs), business impact narrative, and specific remediation steps for your technical team. The executive report translates all findings into business risk language. We deliver both reports and schedule a debrief call to walk through findings with your team.
After your team has addressed reported findings, we offer a targeted retest engagement to validate that remediation was effective and that no new vulnerabilities were introduced during the fix process. This closes the loop on the assessment cycle and provides the documented evidence of remediation that compliance frameworks and cyber insurers require.
PCI-DSS v4, SOC 2, HIPAA, and CMMC 2.0 all require regular penetration testing as part of their control environments. A compliant pentest is scoped, documented, and delivered in a format that satisfies auditor requirements.
Organizations launching new applications, migrating to cloud infrastructure, or acquiring another company need pre-launch penetration testing to validate security posture before exposure to the public internet or enterprise customer scrutiny.
Mature organizations that patch, update, and deploy new technology throughout the year and need annual adversarial validation that their evolving environment remains defensible against current attack techniques.
Underwriters increasingly require penetration test evidence as part of cyber insurance applications and renewals. A well-documented pentest report with remediation evidence demonstrates active risk management and may qualify for premium reductions.
A black-box test simulates a fully external attacker with no prior knowledge of your systems. A gray-box test provides the tester with limited context — such as network diagrams or an authenticated user account — to simulate an insider threat or a post-phishing scenario. White-box tests provide complete documentation and are most efficient for code review and architecture analysis. We recommend gray-box for most engagements as it provides the best signal-to-noise ratio and most efficiently covers the highest-probability attack scenarios.
Our standard engagement scope explicitly excludes denial-of-service testing and destructive payloads unless specifically agreed upon in writing. We conduct testing with production-safe techniques by default and can schedule active testing during off-peak hours. Emergency escalation contacts are established prior to testing, and we maintain real-time communication with your team throughout the active testing window.
Most compliance frameworks require annual penetration testing at minimum. In practice, we recommend a full external and web application penetration test annually, with targeted retests following significant infrastructure changes — new application deployments, major network changes, or cloud migrations. Phishing simulations should be conducted quarterly for maximum behavioral impact.
Many underwriters now include penetration testing as part of their security control questionnaire or as a condition of higher coverage limits. While requirements vary by carrier and policy, a well-documented penetration test report with remediation evidence is increasingly viewed as a positive underwriting signal and may support lower premiums. We can provide attestation letters suitable for cyber insurance submission.
To scope accurately, we need: the number and type of in-scope IP addresses or application URLs, whether the test is internal, external, or both, the preferred testing approach (black/gray/white box), any specific areas of concern, and your timeline requirements. We provide a scoping questionnaire during the initial consultation and produce a fixed-fee proposal within 48 hours of receipt.
Critical findings — those involving remote code execution, active exploitation of sensitive data, or domain compromise — are communicated to your designated point of contact immediately via the emergency escalation channel defined in the Rules of Engagement. We do not wait for the final report to notify you of findings that require urgent attention. This real-time escalation protocol is established before any testing begins.
Describe your environment and we will provide a fixed-fee penetration test proposal within 48 hours. All engagements include MITRE ATT&CK mapping, dual-audience reporting, and a post-test debrief.