Cyber Services
Penetration Testing
Systematic testing of digital infrastructure — standalone, or as part of a full Red Team operation.
Find it before somebody else does
A vulnerability scan tells you what is theoretically exposed. A penetration test tells you what an attacker can actually reach, chain together and do once inside. The difference matters, because the finding that ends up in a breach report is almost never the one at the top of the scanner output.
Testing is scoped in writing before it begins — objective, systems in scope, rules of engagement, and what happens if we find something live. You receive a prioritized remediation roadmap developed against real business impact, not a raw tool dump.
What is included
Infrastructure Testing
External and internal network, server and endpoint testing against current attacker technique.
Red Team Operations
Full-scope adversary simulation combining digital, physical and social-engineering approaches.
Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerabilities, gaps and exposure identified across the entire environment before an adversary finds them.
Risk Assessment & Roadmap
Technical and operational risk evaluated, prioritized, and turned into a practical remediation sequence.
Who this is for
- Corporate IT
- Law firms
- Government contractors
- Financial services
- Healthcare
- Pre-acquisition due diligence
- Compliance programs
A vulnerability scan is not a penetration test
This distinction is worth more to a buyer than anything else on this page, because a large share of what is sold as penetration testing is an automated scan with a logo on the cover.
A vulnerability scan is a tool comparing your systems against a database of known issues. It is fast, cheap, useful for hygiene, and it produces a long list ranked by a generic severity score that knows nothing about your environment. Run it monthly. It is not a test.
A penetration test is a person attempting to achieve an objective in your environment, chaining findings together the way an actual attacker does. The value is not the list of issues; it is the demonstration — this medium-severity finding plus this misconfiguration plus this reused credential gets to your file server, and here are the steps. A scanner cannot make that chain, and a chain is what an intrusion actually is.
The corollary is uncomfortable and worth stating: a clean penetration test report from a narrow scope is not reassurance. If the scope was one application on one weekend, “no critical findings” means very little. Scope honestly or do not bother.
What gets tested
External network. What is reachable from the internet and what can be done with it — the perimeter appliances, remote access, exposed services and forgotten hosts that nobody has inventoried since a migration.
Internal network. The more revealing test for most organisations. Assume an attacker has a foothold — a phished user, a compromised laptop, a contractor’s machine — and see how far that goes. In most environments it goes to domain administrator faster than leadership expects, and the path is usually credential reuse and over-permissioned service accounts rather than an exotic exploit.
Identity and directory. Active Directory and cloud identity assessed specifically: privilege paths, delegation, stale accounts, service account exposure, multi-factor coverage gaps and legacy authentication.
Web applications and APIs. Tested against OWASP methodology, with authenticated testing across roles — because the interesting flaws are almost always authorisation flaws only visible when you are logged in as the wrong user.
Cloud configuration. Identity and access policy, storage exposure, network boundaries and logging coverage, which is a different discipline from network testing and is where a large share of modern exposure sits.
Social engineering. Phishing and pretext calling, scoped carefully and agreed with leadership, because the objective is a measurement rather than a humiliation.
Wireless and physical. Wireless authentication and segmentation, and authorised physical access testing where the client wants the whole picture — always with a written authorisation letter carried by the tester and a named contact reachable in real time.
Rules of engagement, and the parts that protect you
Everything is agreed in writing before anything is touched: scope by address and application, what is explicitly out of scope, testing windows and blackout periods, whether production systems may be tested and what is off-limits within them, data handling — including what happens if we access real customer records, which is that we stop and document rather than extract — the escalation contact if something breaks, and the stop condition.
Testing is authorised in writing by someone entitled to authorise it. Where systems are hosted by a third party, their authorisation may also be required, and that is checked rather than assumed. A test conducted without proper authorisation is a computer crime regardless of intent.
Methodology follows recognised practice — PTES and NIST SP 800-115 for the process, OWASP for applications, MITRE ATT&CK for describing what was done — so the report speaks the language your auditor, your insurer and your own engineers already use.
The report, and the part most vendors skip
Every finding comes with: what it is, where it is, how it was found, reproduction steps a competent engineer can follow, the realistic impact in your environment rather than a generic score, and a specific remediation — not “apply best practice”.
Findings are ranked by exploitability and impact together. A theoretically critical issue that requires physical access to a locked room ranks below a medium issue reachable from the internet by anybody. Ranking by scanner severity alone is how remediation budgets get spent on the wrong things.
The report opens with an executive summary written for a board — what was tested, what an attacker could achieve, and what the three things worth doing first are. And it closes with an attack narrative: the actual path taken, start to finish. That narrative is what makes a technical finding legible to the people who approve budgets.
Retesting is included. After you remediate, we verify. A test without a retest tells you what was wrong; a test with a retest tells you what is fixed, which is the only thing an auditor or an insurer actually wants to see.
Compliance, and how often to test
Testing is required or expected under a number of frameworks — PCI DSS mandates it on a defined cycle and after significant change, CMMC and DFARS reach defense supply chain, SOC 2 examinations expect it, and HIPAA security risk analysis is generally not satisfied by a scan alone. Cyber insurance questionnaires increasingly ask, and answering carelessly on a proposal form is its own risk.
Frequency: annually as a baseline, and after significant change — a migration, a merger, a new external application, a major architectural shift. Continuous scanning between tests is a complement, not a substitute.
Where it connects, and how it is priced
Findings feed straight into detection work: every technique we used should have generated something visible, and where it did not, that is a gap for monitoring to close. Phishing results feed awareness training. Physical findings feed security consulting. And if a test uncovers evidence of a real prior intrusion — which happens — it stops being a test and becomes forensics immediately.
Tests are quoted per engagement from scope, environment size, application count and complexity, whether social engineering and physical testing are included, and whether the engagement is announced or unannounced. Retesting is included. Quoted separately: red team engagements, remediation engineering, and ongoing scanning between tests.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from the scan our IT provider runs?
A scan compares you against a database of known issues. A test is a person chaining findings together to reach an objective, the way an intrusion actually works. Both are useful; only one tells you what an attacker could do here.
Will testing break something?
Rarely, and the risk is managed rather than dismissed. Production constraints, blackout windows, off-limits systems and a stop condition are agreed in writing beforehand, with an escalation contact reachable during testing. Anyone who tells you there is zero risk has not tested a real environment.
Should we test externally or internally?
If you can only afford one, internal is usually more revealing. External perimeters are often reasonably tight; internal environments frequently allow a single compromised laptop to reach domain administrator through credential reuse and over-permissioned service accounts.
Do you phish our staff?
Only if you want it, scoped with leadership in advance. The output is a measurement and a training input, not a list of people to embarrass. How an organisation handles those results determines whether anyone reports the next real one.
What if you find evidence of a real breach?
We stop, notify your named contact immediately, preserve rather than continue, and the engagement converts to incident response and forensics. It happens more often than people expect, and continuing to test through it would destroy the evidence.
Do we get a retest after we fix things?
Yes, included. A test without a retest tells you what was wrong. Auditors, insurers and boards want to know what is fixed, and that requires verification rather than an assurance from whoever did the remediation.
In detail
Penetration Testing, also known as Pen-Testing, involves systematically examining a digital infrastructure to uncover potential vulnerabilities and exploits. This practice can be integrated into Red Team operations or utilized as part of a vulnerability assessment. Equipped with cutting-edge tools, we are capable of executing sophisticated attacks, both in physical and digital domains.
Scope your requirement
Tell us the scope, the systems involved, any compliance driver behind the test, and your appetite for disruption. Rules of engagement are agreed and documented before any testing begins.