Penetration Testing
A highly-skilled, specialist team of technical experts, dedicated to identifying potential weaknesses in your products, technologies you use and IT infrastructure. Using our penetration testing services gives you confidence that weaknesses that could be used in a cyber-attack are recognised, empowering remediation before the worst happens. We work alongside your technical teams to understand your critical assets and digital perimeter giving you deep insight into potential risks. Let CyPro handle your cyber security so you can focus on what you do best.
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What is Penetration Testing
Our penetration testing service is a proactive solution designed to identify and fix vulnerabilities within your IT infrastructure and products, safeguarding your business against potential threats. By simulating cyber attacks under controlled conditions, our certified experts uncover weaknesses in networks, applications, and security controls that attackers might target, giving you clear insights into your security posture.
Our Team brings a wealth of experience to offer detailed vulnerability assessments and tailored recommendations that prioritise security without compromising business operations. We deliver comprehensive, plain language reports and risk-based remediation strategies, helping you meet regulatory compliance with ease.
Our penetration testing service is designed to support you in strengthening your defences against internal and external threats, helping your business maintain security while not drawing your time and attention away from your operational goals.
Challenges addressed by Penetration Testing
Unknown Vulnerabilities
You run some basic security scanning tools on your applications or environments, but you’re unsure what more advanced vulnerabilities might exist in your products. How sure can you be that the products that you are selling to your clients are robust from a security and privacy standpoint? Unfortunately, it often takes a skilled technical penetration tester to find those crucial vulnerabilities that will be used to infiltrate your network.
Increasing Third Party Scrutiny
External stakeholders such as clients, prospective clients, regulators and supplier are becoming increasingly interested in seeing evidence of your security defences. In recent years, more and more are asking for evidence of an in-depth (broad scope) penetration test to have been performed on your infrastructure within the last 12 months. You will likely need redacted reports to send to these stakeholder groups in order to appease their compliance requirements and not stall commercial progress.
Compliance Requirements
Businesses face increasing regulatory requirements and industry standards, such as UK Data Protection Act, SOC2, the EU’s GDPR, PCI-DSS, NIS2 Directive, ISO 27001, etc. which demand a proactive approach to validating the effectiveness of existing security controls. One key ‘second line of defence’ control is a penetration test as it thorough checks whether other controls such as static vulnerability scanning are happening earlier on in the software development lifecycle. Due to the role penetration testing now plays, it is often cited in compliance standards such as SOC2 and ISO27001 as an explicit requirement that you need to meet and evidence annually.
Evolving Attack Techniques
With the proliferation of artificial intelligence and machine learning, more than ever cyber criminals are able to picot and alter their attack methods and techniques to create new and sophisticated ways to breach your systems. Staying ahead of these rapidly evolving cyber threats requires more than just ‘the basic’ traditional security measures.
What Our Clients Say
Benefits of Penetration Testing
Our penetration testing service provides a strategic approach to identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities across your businesses’ IT infrastructure. Each assessment within our service can be tailored to meet the unique needs of your organisation, ensuring personalised insights and practical recommendations. Whether you require ongoing monitoring, expert advisory, or robust risk management, our service adapts to provide the precise support your business demands, allowing you to focus on your core operations with confidence.
Jargon Free
The vast majority of penetration testing services are provided by ‘techies’ and as a result, non-technical stakeholders such as Head of Internal Audit, Chief Information Officer (CIO), etc. are often confused or misunderstand the significance, relevance or impact of the penetration test findings. Our penetration testing is designed by experience CISOs, delivered by technical experts – not the other way around. You get both technical and business focused reports that communicate the vulnerabilities in layman terms for each type of stakeholder involved.
Advanced Vulnerability Discovery
In depth insights into potential vulnerabilities across your applications, networks and systems will be gained through penetration testing. Our thorough assessments identify exploitable weaknesses that may have been overlooked by standard security measures. This method allows for a roadmap to be created for fortifying your defences.
Risk Based Prioritisation
We provide a transparent risk-based prioritisation of your findings to ensure you focus your remediation efforts in the right places. We provide technical scorings (such as the CVSS score) but also our own proprietary prioritisation based off the business or technological context of that specific vulnerability in your organisation.
Compliance Support
Our penetration tests align with compliance frameworks like SOC2, ISO27001, CIS18 and NIST and as such we are able to provide documented results to support compliance reporting.
Human-Led Testing
Most penetration testers will run a raft of automated tools and just send you the exported results. High margin for them, low value for you. Our testing is human-led meaning that whilst we use automated tooling, it is augmented into a human based testing methodology. Only humans are able to truly simulate real-world attacks to test your defences. Our team of skilled ethical hackers bring expertise in current attack techniques to ensure even the most advanced vulnerabilities are uncovered.
We Validate Your Fixes
One of the most important elements of a test is to check that any remediation has been effective in closing the vulnerability. As long as you remediate within one month of receiving the test findings, you’ll get included a re-test to validate all fixes have been successfully applied.
Fast Remediation
Rather than the traditional approach of sending excel spreadsheets that you then need to import manually into your ticketing tool such as JIRA, we automatically import all the vulnerabilities directly into your JIRA instance (or equivalent tool) so that you can focus your efforts on fixes the issues found rather than doing admin.
Evidence Your Compliance
Not only do we create technical reports for your engineering teams but we also create executive level reports for senior non-technical stakeholders and a summary report which can be shared externally. This is useful for when you need to evidence the testing that was performed. We ensure no sensitive vulnerability data is shared whilst still enabling you to give comfort to prospective clients, suppliers and other external parties.
Network to Source Code
You can get all levels of your IT infrastructure tested via one single process. From testing whether someone can externally penetrate your network perimeter, through to environment testing, application testing, mobile testing and all the way down to source code reviews, we can provide you the level of assurance you need.
Secure your business.
Elevate your security, accelerate your growth. We take care of cyber security for high-growth companies, at every stage of their journey.
Get in Touch
Case Study: UK Based Travel Firm
Client Challenge
A UK-based travel firm specialising in bespoke holiday packages faced growing cyber security concerns. With handing large volumes of customer data, including payment information and travel itineraries, the company needed to secure its online booking system and customer portal. The client wished to uncover and mitigate vulnerabilities that could lead to data breaches, especially as they were preparing for a major website update and mobile app launch.
Our Approach
In addressing these challenges, CyPro has deployed a specialised team with expertise in penetration testing. Key components to this approach included:
- Booking and Customer Portal Testing: Simulated realistic attacks on the booking platform and portal to identify weak points in access control and safeguard customer accounts and travel details.
- Payment Gateway Testing: Assessed vulnerabilities within payment processing to ensure security for each customer transaction, meeting industry PCI-DSS requirements and reducing
- Compliance Reporting and Next Steps: Delivered comprehensive reported with detailed findings, prioritised risks, and actionable recommendations.
Value Delivered
Regulatory Compliance
Achieved compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements, enhancing trust among clients and investors.
Culture Shift
Empowered staff to recognise and report security vulnerabilities, creating a proactive security culture.
Enhanced Security Posture
Identified and remediated critical vulnerabilities, significantly reducing the risk of cyber attacks.
Who needs Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing is an essential service for businesses aiming to proactively secure their systems, identify potential vulnerabilities, and meet compliance requirements.
Below, we outline who benefits most from penetration testing and those who may not find it as necessary.
- Organisations Seeking Certification:
Any organisation who seeks to achieve cyber certifications such as ISO27001, SOC2, PCI-DSS, NIS-2, etc. will need not only robust penetration testing but a regular cadence or testing that aligns to an annual or quarterly schedule. - Product Led Businesses:
Companies whose business model revolves around the design, development and sale of software based products will need to have a capable penetration testing process established. They will need to demonstrate to their market that not only do they take the security and privacy of the client data they hold in their products seriously, but that they can robustly and regularly evidence the effectiveness of their security controls. - Sectors Facing Heightened Cyber Risks:
Industries frequently targeted by cyber attacks, such as healthcare and finance require regular penetration testing to uncover and address potential entry points for attackers, e.g. a fintech company handling sensitive customer information that needs to secure its defences against advanced threats. - Organisations Undergoing Digital Transformation:
Change introduces risk. Companies subjected to a lot technological change should ensure they are regularly testing their IT infrastructure. adopting cloud platforms, IoT devices, or other digital technologies benefit from penetration testing to secure these transitions and identify vulnerabilities associated with new technology, e.g. a retail business moving its operations to the cloud, needing assurance that its data and applications are secure during and after migration. - Regulated Businesses:
Organisations that are subject to strict regulatory standards benefit from penetration testing to ensure compliance and demonstrate robust security practices during audits, e.g. a healthcare provider required to show GDPR compliance through routine vulnerability testing and remediation. - Companies Integrating with Third-Party Vendors:
Businesses that rely on vendor integrations benefit from penetration testing to evaluate potential gaps in security introduced by third-party applications and systems, e.g. a logistics provider using multiple third-party systems for supply chain management, requiring regular tests to secure data that is shared across these platforms.
Who doesn’t need Penetration Testing?
- Startups in Early Development Phases:
very early-stage startups without customer data, sensitive information, or critical infrastructure may not yet need penetration testing. These businesses may want to focus on foundational security measures such as firewalls and basic access controls before investing in advanced testing, e.g. a 3-person startup focused on product development without any external network connections or data storage needs. - Businesses with Low Digital Presence:
Organisations that operate almost entirely offline, with no significant customer-facing applications or online data, might not see an immediate need for penetration testing, e.g. a small local art gallery that only uses offline tools fir inventory and sales tracking. - Organisations with Comprehensive In-House Security teams:
Companies that already have a mature, dedicated cyber security team that is conducting regular security assessments may not immediately need additional external penetration testing, e.g. a large, multinational corporation with a full-time cyber security team performing continuous security assessments and regularly auditing their own infrastructure. - Businesses with Low Compliance and Security Requirements:
Companies that handle minimal data and have few regulatory requirements might prioritise basic security practices rather than full penetration testing, e.g. a small local landscaping business that primarily operates offline, only storing minimal client contact information on a single office computer.
Our Approach
At CyPro, we follow a rigorous and client-focused approach to deliver penetration testing as a service, ensuring that each step aligns with your organisations security needs and compliance requirements.
Our methodology is designed to be minimally disruptive whilst delivering in-depth insights into your security posture. Here’s how we do it:
Initial Consultation and Scoping
We begin with a consultation to understand your unique business objectives, security requirements and context. This allows us to define the scope precisely, covering your compliance needs, key assets and applications. By being able to understand your priorities, we ensure our testing will align with your goals from the start.
Project Planning and Documentation
Once the scope is defined, we develop a detailed project plan, including timelines, testing protocols and access requirements. At this stage, we will finalise any necessary documentation and establish communication protocols for efficient collaboration.
Reconnaissance and Information Gathering
Our expert team conduct both passive and active reconnaissance to gather valuable information about your environment, mapping network structures, identifying assets, and pinpointing potential vulnerabilities. This information gathering will guide us in developing tailored and targeted test scenarios.
Vulnerability Assessment and Testing
Our team will conduct in-depth testing to uncover vulnerabilities across the defined scope. This involves testing against common and sophisticated threats, ensuring that any identified weaknesses reflect the real-world risks
Exploitation and Impact Analysis
We will simulate controlled attacks on identified vulnerabilities to assess the potential impact that they may have. This will determine the severity of each vulnerability, focusing on areas that could pose the greatest risk to your data integrity and operations.
Technical Reporting
We provide detailed reports detailing each finding, its severity, and recommend actions for remediation. We integrate directly with tools like JIRA to automatically import all the findings directly into your work management flow to quick and easy remediation.
Non-Technical Executive Reporting
In addition to the technical reports issued to your engineering or network teams, we will provide executive level summary reports you can share with non-technical senior stakeholders as well as redacted reports to evidence your testing to third parties.
Remediation Support
Our team will assist and advise on your prioritisation and implementation of remediation actions based on the actual risk facing the business. We will work with your team to provide technical guidance from the testers themselves and ensure that vulnerabilities are effectively addressed.
Re-Testing
One of the most important (and exciting!) elements of a penetration test is checking that all your hard work in fixing the issues has paid off. We encourage all our clients to fix all critical and high-risk vulnerabilities immediately following the test, but we will happily perform a re-test as part of your service one month following the testing to validate that all remediation efforts have been effective.
Secure your business.
Elevate your security, accelerate your growth. We take care of cyber security for high-growth companies, at every stage of their journey.
Get in Touch
Your Team
Rob McBride
Rob leads our Cyber-Security-as-a-Service offering at CyPro and is a highly experienced CISO. Starting his career with a successful tenure at Deloitte, Rob has since built a distinguished career in cyber security, notably advising multinational corporations on their cyber resilience and leading security initiatives for financial institutions.
At CyPro, Rob leverages his extensive experience as a CISO across multiple industries including finance, telecommunication, travel, manufacturing, and energy. He is passionate about empowering small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with cutting-edge cyber security solutions to safeguard their operations and drive sustainable growth.
Rob’s expertise and strategic vision are instrumental in delivering tailored, comprehensive security services to our diverse client base.
Additional Consultants
Comparison: Vulnerability Scanning vs Penetration Testing
If you are deciding between vulnerability scanning and penetration testing, here is a breakdown of what each of the services has to offer. Both services assess security weaknesses, but they suit different needs and risk management strategies:
Vulnerability Scanning
- Overview: Automated process to identify and report on known vulnerabilities within systems, networks and applications.
- Efficient detection: Quickly identifies a wide range of known issues, providing a broad snapshot of risks.
- Proactive security maintenance: When running frequent scans, organisations can track new vulnerabilities over a long period of time and respond to emerging threats before they escalate into issues.
- Limitations: Vulnerability scans provide a list of risks within systems; however, they do not assess real-world exploitability of them. This requires further analysis to understand the potential impacts.
- Who is this best for? Organisations who are looking for a baseline, automated check of their security, without the need for in-depth testing. It is ideal for teams with established security practices who need fast and regular vulnerability insights.
Penetration Testing
- Overview: A simulated attack is conducted by security experts to identify then exploit potential vulnerabilities within systems, which mimic real-world threat tactics.
- Comprehensive Assessment: This service goes beyond detection, by testing actual security defences and highlighting weaknesses in ways that vulnerability scanning cannot do.
- Detailed Reporting: The reporting provides in-depth information on each vulnerability, which includes potential impact, risk levels and tailored remediation advice.
- Who is this best for? Organisations that want an in-depth assessment of their defences, especially those with regulatory requirements, or those that handle sensitive data. Valuable for organisations seeking to strengthen their security beyond vulnerability scans, enhancing risk management with actionable insights.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How Often Should Penetration Testing be Conducted?
It depends on the business, regulatory environment, your compliance requirements etc. but we generally advise that each business should define a testing schedule which outline what types of testing are required, how frequently and what should be tested.
Generally, network level penetration tests should be conducted at least annually, but more so if there are significant changes in your IT infrastructure. For software and applications, security testing should be fully integrated into your secure software development lifecycle (SSDLC) and so again depending on the context, you might be able to perform slightly less frequent testing here (e.g. every 2 years).
- How Long Does a Penetration Test Take?
The duration of the penetration test depends on the scope and type of testing performed. A small-scale test of a single web application may a day or two, whereas more advanced tests across multiple network segments may take several weeks.
- What Should I Expect in a Penetration Test Report?
Typically, you would just receive one excel based export report that the pen tester has simply exported from their scanning tools.
At CyPro, we like to do things properly. We provide three types of report tailored to the three main stakeholder groups;
- Technical Reports – we feed vulnerabilities and findings directly into your JIRA (or equivalent workflow management tool) for quick and easy remediation. This is directed at technical stakeholders such as developers, engineers and network architects.
- Non-Technical Executive Reports – for non-technical stakeholders such as executive and senior management, we produce a summary report in layman’s terms that translate what the findings mean from a business perspective.
- Third Party Redacted Summary – many suppliers, investors, prospective clients, etc. now ask for evidence that a recent penetration test has been conducted and so we provide a high-level summary of the testing performed, the scope, etc. ensuring to exclude any information on specific vulnerabilities. This ensure that whilst sensitive vulnerability information is not shared, they still receive the assurance they require.
- Can Penetration Testing Disrupt Business Operations?
Yes, absolutely. If penetration testing is not performed according to best practice (i.e. testing live production systems during business hours) then penetration testing can cause significant business disruption.
We use only CREST accreditated testers which ensures that our penetration tests are carefully planned to avoid disruption to your business operations.
- What is another word for penetration testing?
Penetration testing can often also be referred to as ‘ethical hacking’ or a ‘pen test’.
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