Internal and External Penetration Testing
back to our services...
Infrastructure penetration testing covering both external attack surface and internal network compromise paths, with clear reporting on exploitable weaknesses across internet-facing and internal systems.
Our infrastructure penetration testing service combines external and internal testing into a single engagement so organisations can understand how an attacker might gain initial access, move through the environment, and reach critical systems.
What this service covers
This service is designed for organisations that want a joined-up view of infrastructure risk rather than treating the perimeter and the internal network as separate problems.
We assess both:
- internet-facing systems and services
- remote access exposure such as VPN, RDP, and SSH
- mail, DNS, and SSL/TLS configuration
- internal estate weaknesses once network access or user-level access has been obtained
- opportunities for privilege escalation, lateral movement, and data access
Web application penetration testing remains a separate service where the main focus is the application itself rather than the surrounding infrastructure.
External penetration testing
On the external side, we typically assess:
- exposed IP addresses, ports, and services
- firewall and filtering posture
- remote access services
- mail security configuration
- DNS weaknesses and domain-related risks
- outdated software, weak configurations, and known vulnerabilities
This gives you a clear picture of what an attacker can see and attempt from the internet.
Internal penetration testing
On the internal side, we typically assess:
- authenticated vulnerability exposure across servers and endpoints
- network trust relationships and segmentation
- privilege escalation paths
- credential reuse and lateral movement opportunities
- insecure shares, weak permissions, and sensitive data exposure
- misconfigurations across core infrastructure
This helps show what a capable attacker, compromised device, or malicious insider could do after gaining a foothold.
What you get from the engagement
- a scoped infrastructure penetration test covering internal and external attack paths
- clear findings with severity and practical remediation guidance
- evidence of exploitability rather than just scanner output
- a debrief with technical stakeholders to explain what matters most
Who this is for
- You need a broader infrastructure security assessment rather than a web app test.
- You want to understand both perimeter exposure and internal compromise risk.
- You are preparing for a customer requirement, audit, or assurance exercise.
- You want a realistic view of how far an attacker could progress in the environment.
Typical testing activities
- network and service enumeration
- authenticated and unauthenticated validation where appropriate
- review of exposed services and configurations
- segmentation and trust boundary testing
- privilege escalation and lateral movement testing
- sampled validation of sensitive data exposure paths
Useful references
Want to learn more?
WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY
Our internal IT team were in need of expert consultancy to help us strengthen our cybersecurity measures and protect our sensitive data.
We engaged the services of Punk Security and were thoroughly impressed with the level of professionalism and knowledge they brought to the table.
The team was able to provide valuable insights and recommendations, and their guidance helped us implement effective security protocols that have greatly enhanced our overall security posture.
We originally sought Punk’s services to support us with a potential cyber-attack. The team responded immediately, out of hours, and calmly and professionally walked us through the necessary steps to determine that our environment hadn’t been compromised.
Since then, we have engaged Punk to carry out a third party audit of our cloud environment and a gap analysis against the Cyber Essentials and ISO270001 criteria. The team provided a thorough report with recommendations and are now working with us to improve our processes and systems.
I feel assured that we are walking towards best practice security operations.
Having attended a live hack demo held at C4DI we approached Punk Security to help sure-up our cyber security and DevOps processes. Punk not only completed this audit but passed on valuable gained knowledge to our team to broaden their skills and insight in this area.
We have since continued to work in partnership with Punk to implement a WAF and frequently consult their expertise in DevOps in relation to our application so we can all learn and grow in a collaborative way.
Punk are approachable, knowledgeable and also adept at explaining in layman’s terms for the less technical! We look forward to continuing our fruitful working relationship.
Our team at Illumio recently participated in a custom CTF event hosted by Punk Security, and it was a great experience! The CTF was not only challenging but also immensely educational, especially in the realm of cloud security principles.
The challenges presented during the CTF were designed to cover a broad spectrum of cloud security topics. This approach allowed our team to dive deep into practical scenarios that tested our skills and pushed us to explore new strategies and technologies. The balance between difficulty and learning outcomes was perfectly struck, ensuring that each team member, regardless of their prior level of expertise, found the event to be rewarding.
Punk Security were happy to perform external scans pro bono due to our status as an NGO.
The team also spent meeting time on two separate occasions to discuss our requirements and provide advice without any commitment or expectation. I’ll certainly be coming to Punk Security again in future should we need further security services
Punk Security provided exceptional DevSecOps training for our engineers here at Sage and delivered an outstanding talk at our Securing Sage Summit.
Their expertise and knowledge were evident throughout the sessions.
Not only were they efficient and great to work with, but their presentation was also the highest rated session of the entire event. We highly recommend Punk Security for any security-related needs.
We initially reached out to Punk Security to help us out with our hosting architecture and were impressed with their breadth of knowledge.
With their expertise we were able to implement additional controls into AWS and successfully scale our systems. When we needed to gain more performance insights, their engineers configured our datadog platform end to end.
We’ve found that they really take the time to understand our problem and then put forward a great solution.