Anyone can run a scanner and hand you a list of CVEs with a CVSS score attached. We test your defenses the way an attacker actually would, black-box, gray-box, or white-box depending on what we're validating, so you know which findings are real risks, and get a fix it plan you can hand to your team, not a PDF nobody reads.
We attempt to exploit your environment the way a real attacker would, not just run automated vulnerability scans and stop there. That includes web application testing against the categories of flaws OWASP tracks as most common (injection, broken access control, misconfigurations, and the like) and attempting to chain smaller findings together: a weak password here, an over-permissioned account there, the same way a real intrusion actually unfolds, rather than testing each system in isolation.
Findings are ranked by what's actually exploitable and what it would let an attacker do, not just the base CVSS severity score pulled from the CVE database. A "critical" CVSS rating from an automated scanner that turns out to be unreachable from outside your network, or blocked by a compensating control, gets flagged as such, so your team isn't burning a sprint on a finding that was never truly dangerous.
You get clear, actionable remediation steps your team can work through, written to be used, not archived. Each finding includes what was done to exploit it, what it would let an attacker access, and the specific fix, so your team can start work the same day the report lands rather than spending a week interpreting it.
A typical engagement runs one to three weeks depending on scope: the number of systems in play, whether it's external (internet-facing), internal (assuming a foothold already exists inside your network), or both, and whether web applications are in scope alongside infrastructure. We also agree up front on testing style: black-box (no prior knowledge of your environment, closest to a real outside attacker), gray-box (some credentials or architecture info provided, to focus effort where it matters), or white-box (full access to source or configuration, for the deepest coverage). Scoping happens up front: we agree in writing on what's in bounds, what's explicitly off-limits, and the testing window, so there's no ambiguity about what "authorized" means once testing starts.
Testing itself follows a standard progression: reconnaissance, vulnerability scanning to identify potential entry points, then careful, controlled exploitation attempts against anything that looks promising, always within the agreed rules of engagement. That last step is what separates a penetration test from a scan: scanning flags what could theoretically be wrong, exploitation proves what actually is. Nothing is tested to the point of causing an outage. The goal is proof a path exists, not disruption. Findings are documented as they're confirmed, each with a CVSS-based severity score adjusted for real-world reachability, then consolidated into the final report and walked through with your team.
Scanners find thousands of theoretical issues and rank them by CVSS score alone. A real penetration test tells you which ones an attacker could actually chain together to get in, so your team spends its limited time fixing what's actually dangerous, not everything that technically appears on a list.
It's also worth testing on a regular cadence, not just once. Your environment changes: new vendors, new cloud services, new employees with new access. Testing annually, or after a major change, is how you catch what shifted since the last time someone looked, rather than relying on a snapshot that's a year stale.
Book a preparedness call to see exactly where your gaps are.