Penetration Testing FAQ

This entry in our penetration testing FAQ explains the fundamentals of a pentest and why it matters. A penetration test, or pentest, is an authorized cybersecurity assessment used to identify and safely exploit vulnerabilities in your infrastructure. The goal is to simulate a real-world attack to reveal both weaknesses and strengths across your systems, networks, and applications.

Penetration testing gives your organization clear insight into your current security posture and provides actionable steps to remediate flaws before attackers can exploit them.

Many organizations rely on their internal security teams and assume they’re fully protected. But internal familiarity often leads to blind spots as it’s easy to overlook misconfigurations or assume certain systems are secure when they’re not. This is where a penetration test adds critical value.

A professional penetration test brings in a fresh, external perspective to simulate real-world attacks against your infrastructure. These assessments uncover vulnerabilities that may not be visible to your internal team. These range from overlooked system flaws to chained attack paths that adversaries could exploit.

Beyond simply identifying weaknesses, a penetration test also demonstrates how those flaws could be used in an actual breach. It gives you a clearer understanding of your security posture, reveals how resilient your defenses really are, and provides actionable remediation guidance.

For enterprise organizations, it’s not just about passing compliance checkboxes, it’s about preventing real-world incidents before they happen.

Choosing the right penetration testing company is critical, not just for meeting compliance requirements, but for truly understanding and improving your organization’s security posture. Here’s what to look for:

1. Deep IT and Security Experience
Look for consultants who didn’t just take a training course, they’ve lived in real environments. A qualified penetration tester should have years of experience in system administration, networking, and application architecture. This background is essential for identifying misconfigurations, privilege escalation paths, and logic flaws that others might miss.

At Artifice Security, all of our consultants were seasoned IT professionals before becoming penetration testers. This means they understand how enterprise systems are supposed to function, which allows them to detect what’s broken or exploitable.

2. Verified Skills and Certifications
Certifications aren’t everything, but they help verify a consultant’s baseline competency. Look for respected credentials like OSCP, OSCE, OSWE, CREST, Microsoft, and relevant cloud certifications (AWS, Azure, etc.). A well-rounded tester has both formal training and hands-on experience.

3. Integrity and Transparency
You’re trusting someone with access to your most sensitive assets — so integrity matters. Ask who will be performing the test, not just who owns the company. Request a sample report to ensure the deliverable is a true penetration test and not an automated vulnerability scan repackaged as one.

4. Strong Internal Security and Background Checks
Make sure the company performs background checks on its employees and has documented internal security policies. You want assurance that your data won’t be mishandled — even internally.

5. Clear, Documented Methodology
Reputable firms follow structured methodologies like PTES, OSSTMM, or OWASP. Ensure the vendor provides a detailed statement of work (SOW) outlining test scope, tools, timelines, and expected deliverables. If they’re vague about their process, consider it a red flag.

6. Data Protection Practices
Ask how your data will be handled. Will it be encrypted at rest and in transit? How long is data retained? Is an NDA in place to protect sensitive information? A professional testing firm should have clear policies for data lifecycle management.

7. Insurance and Liability Coverage
A legitimate penetration testing company should carry liability insurance that covers errors, omissions, and potential impact from testing. This protects both you and them in the unlikely event that something goes wrong.

The cost of a penetration test depends on several factors, including the size and complexity of your environment, the number of systems or applications in scope, and whether social engineering or physical testing is included. Variables like the number of IPs, external/internal networks, web apps, cloud infrastructure, and time constraints can all affect pricing.

At Artifice Security, we tailor every assessment to your actual risk profile, not a cookie-cutter model. Because our tests are performed entirely by senior-level consultants (no juniors or outsourced contractors), we’re able to deliver deeper results with fewer wasted hours. That means your spend goes toward meaningful findings, not learning curves.

We keep our pricing competitive and transparent, and we scope each project carefully to make sure you’re only paying for what you need, nothing more. Some projects start as low as $5,000, while enterprise-scale engagements may run significantly higher depending on the attack surface.

If you’re unsure where your needs fall, we’re happy to schedule a scoping call and provide a custom quote based on your goals and environment.

A vulnerability assessment uses automated tools like Nessus or Nexpose to scan your environment for known weaknesses, missing patches, outdated software, exposed ports, misconfigurations, etc. It’s fast, repeatable, and helpful for identifying a baseline level of technical risk.

A penetration test, on the other hand, goes far deeper. It simulates real-world attacks to exploit vulnerabilities and demonstrate how a threat actor could chain together weaknesses to gain unauthorized access to your critical assets. Penetration testing involves manual analysis, custom logic, and attack simulation that automated tools simply can’t replicate.

Here’s the key difference:

• Vulnerability assessments identify what’s potentially wrong.

• Penetration tests prove what’s exploitable and how far an attacker can go.

Penetration tests also eliminate the noise of false positives. A skilled tester manually verifies each finding with proof-of-concept exploitation, so you’re left with actionable results, not guesswork.

For example, a vulnerability scanner might miss a misconfigured file share that grants “Everyone” read/write access, but a manual pentest would uncover it and show how an attacker could exfiltrate sensitive data through it.

Both services have their place, but for organizations serious about understanding real-world risk, penetration testing offers significantly more value.

While both red team assessments and penetration tests simulate real-world attacks, their objectives are very different.

A penetration test focuses on discovering and exploiting as many vulnerabilities as possible within a defined time frame. The goal is broad coverage, identifying technical flaws across systems, networks, and applications. These engagements are usually collaborative and transparent, with your internal IT or security team aware of the testing activity.

A red team assessment, by contrast, is designed to test your detection and response capabilities. It mimics a targeted attacker using stealth, social engineering, and lateral movement to access sensitive assets without being detected. The red team isn’t trying to find everything, it’s trying to find a single viable path to compromise, just as a real adversary would.

For example, a red team may choose to walk in through a building’s side entrance and physically extract a device, not because it’s the most technical attack, but because it’s the most effective one. These operations are covert, and your security team is typically not informed in advance.

In short:

• A penetration test answers: “What vulnerabilities exist in my environment?”

• A red team answers: “Can we detect and respond to an active attack before it causes damage?”

Both are valuable and often used together, but serve distinct purposes within a mature security program.

These three types of penetration tests differ based on how much information is shared with the tester before the engagement begins. Each approach serves a different purpose, depending on your goals and threat model.

Black-Box Testing

In a black-box penetration test, the tester receives no internal information — no IP addresses, credentials, or system maps. The test begins with external reconnaissance, simulating how a real-world attacker would approach your systems with no insider access.

This approach provides the most realistic attacker simulation, but it also carries the highest risk of missing internal vulnerabilities due to limited visibility and time constraints. A black-box test is useful for assessing perimeter defenses and external exposure.

Gray-Box Testing

A gray-box test offers the tester partial access or limited knowledge, such as user-level credentials, internal IP ranges, or basic network architecture. This represents the scenario of an attacker who’s already breached the perimeter or a malicious insider with restricted access.

Gray-box testing balances realism with depth. By starting with a baseline level of internal visibility, the tester can efficiently focus on critical assets and identify higher-risk vulnerabilities that might be missed in black-box engagements.

White-Box Testing

In a white-box penetration test, the tester is granted full access — including admin credentials, system architecture diagrams, source code, and configuration files. This enables the most comprehensive and methodical review, uncovering logic flaws, insecure development practices, and deep misconfigurations.

Because white-box testing is more time-intensive, it’s typically reserved for high-value systems that handle sensitive data, such as financial platforms or healthcare applications. It’s the closest thing to a full security audit, performed from an attacker’s perspective with insider knowledge.

At Artifice Security, we follow a structured, standards-based approach to every engagement, not just scanning and reporting. Our penetration testing methodology is built on industry-recognized frameworks that ensure consistency, safety, and depth.

We primarily base our testing on:

• OSSTMM (Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual) – A comprehensive framework for assessing operational security across networks, systems, and people.

• PTES (Penetration Testing Execution Standard) – A widely adopted model that defines every stage of a professional pentest, from intelligence gathering to post-exploitation reporting.

• OWASP Testing Guide – The industry standard for assessing web applications and APIs, especially useful in identifying business logic flaws, injection risks, and session vulnerabilities.

We also integrate elements of NIST 800-115 for reporting clarity and risk rating.

By combining these proven methodologies with our hands-on manually-performed penetration testing approach, we ensure each assessment is both thorough and tailored to your specific environment, from initial reconnaissance to post-exploitation analysis and detailed remediation guidance.

Penetration testing is designed to simulate real-world attacks in a controlled manner, but like any test that interacts directly with live systems, it’s not entirely without risk. The goal is to identify and exploit vulnerabilities safely, but if a system has unstable hardware or software bugs already present, even basic actions like a port scan can cause disruption.

That said, professional penetration testing is overwhelmingly safe when performed by experienced consultants using proper safeguards.

At Artifice Security, our team is made up of seasoned professionals with backgrounds in system administration, network engineering, and web development, not just testers, but people who’ve built and managed production systems. We treat your infrastructure with the same caution and respect we’d use in our own environments.

To ensure safety, we:

• Never run unapproved Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks

• Avoid aggressive tools that generate excessive traffic

• Scope and validate all testing methods with your team in advance

• Use manual testing techniques that are controlled and intentional

With this careful, risk-aware approach, we’re able to simulate meaningful attack scenarios without jeopardizing business continuity, a key reason clients trust us with even their most sensitive systems.

Certifications are an important way to validate a consultant’s knowledge, skills, and commitment to the field. At Artifice Security, every assessment is led by senior professionals who hold a broad range of respected IT and security certifications, covering offensive security, cloud platforms, network engineering, and system administration.

Here are the collective certifications held by our team:

• CompTIA A+

• CompTIA Network+

• CompTIA Security+

• Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA)

• Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer with Specialization in Security (MCSE+S)

• Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP)

• Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP)

• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)

• EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)

• EC-Council Certified Security Analyst (ECSA)

• Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP)

• Offensive Security Certified Expert (OSCE)

• Offensive Security Web Expert (OSWE)

• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)

• CREST Certified

• Portswigger Burp Suite Certified Practitioner

• National Security Agency INFOSEC Assessment Methodology (NSA IAM)

• National Security Agency INFOSEC Evaluation Methodology (NSA IEM)

These credentials reflect both depth and breadth — from hands-on offensive security to cloud architecture and government-grade evaluation methodologies.

At Artifice Security, we believe a penetration test is only as good as its report. That’s why every deliverable we provide is clear, actionable, and written with both technical and non-technical audiences in mind.

Here’s what’s included:

Executive Summary
The report begins with a plain-language overview that summarizes the overall results of the test, including areas where our consultants successfully bypassed security controls. This section outlines your organization’s current risk exposure and provides high-level takeaways that leadership can act on without digging into technical details.

Positive Findings
We also highlight what’s working well. Identifying strengths alongside vulnerabilities helps demonstrate progress over time and supports internal reporting and compliance efforts.

Attack Narrative (Storyboard)
Next, we include a visual and written “storyboard” showing how vulnerabilities were exploited and chained together to gain access to sensitive assets. This section mimics how a real attacker would move laterally and escalate privileges within your environment.

Threat Ranking Methodology
We use the NIST 800-30 risk assessment framework to prioritize findings. Each vulnerability is scored based on its exploitability and impact, giving you a clear understanding of what to fix first.

Detailed Findings with Proof-of-Concepts
Each issue is documented with technical details, proof-of-concept evidence, and step-by-step reproduction instructions. This ensures your team can validate and address every vulnerability with confidence.

Tailored Remediation Guidance
Because our consultants come from hands-on IT backgrounds, including system administration, network engineering, and development, we provide practical, environment-specific remediation advice. No generic copy-paste recommendations.

At Artifice Security, protecting client data is fundamental to how we operate. We enforce a strict internal security policy that governs how data is stored, accessed, and deleted, with controls applied at both the organizational and individual consultant level.

Here’s how we ensure your sensitive information stays secure:

• Encryption Everywhere – All devices, emails, phones, and data transmissions are encrypted end-to-end.

• Endpoint Security – We deploy next-generation antivirus and monitoring software across all systems.

• Password Hygiene – Every device and application is protected by a strong, unique passphrase, no reuse, no exceptions.

• Access Controls – Only authorized team members involved in your engagement have access to your data.

• Data Retention Policy – We retain client data for a maximum of 90 days, solely for follow-up questions or retesting. After that period, all data is securely and permanently removed from our encrypted cloud storage.

• Independent Testing – Our systems are regularly audited and tested, both internally and by third parties to validate our defenses.

This layered approach ensures that your data is not just stored securely, but actively protected at every stage of the engagement lifecycle.

At Artifice Security, we specialize in manual penetration testing, because real-world attacks aren’t automated, and neither should your security assessment be.

While we use automated tools like Nmap and Nessus during the initial reconnaissance phase (to identify open ports or known CVEs), the core of our testing is performed manually by experienced consultants. This approach allows us to uncover vulnerabilities that scanners routinely miss, including:

• Misconfigured file shares

• Weak internal permissions

• Authentication flaws

• Complex logic vulnerabilities

• Attack paths that require chaining multiple systems or conditions

Manual testing also eliminates false positives. Every finding we report is validated and exploited, with clear proof-of-concept evidence, so your team isn’t left chasing phantom issues.

In short, automation has its place, but our results are driven by expertise, not scan output.

Yes, every consultant at Artifice Security undergoes a rigorous screening process, including criminal background checks, before joining our team. We take trust seriously, and that starts with who we hire.

Many of our consultants and leadership staff are former military or government agency personnel who previously held Top Secret security clearances, with some still actively cleared. This background brings both discipline and discretion to every engagement we perform.

You’re not just hiring technical experts, you’re working with trusted professionals who’ve been vetted to handle sensitive information with integrity.

The timeline for a penetration test depends on several factors, including the number of systems in scope, the complexity of the environment, and whether the engagement is internal, external, or application-focused.

At Artifice Security, we typically see engagements that range from one week for smaller assessments to several weeks or even months for enterprise-level environments.

Additional variables that affect the testing schedule include:

• The number of IP addresses or applications in scope

• Whether social engineering or physical testing is included

• The need for onsite access vs. remote testing using a virtual machine (VM)

Before any project begins, we hold a scoping meeting with your team to determine exactly what needs to be tested. This ensures that the engagement is appropriately sized, efficient, and aligned with your goals.

Most major cloud providers no longer require formal approval to run a penetration test, but each platform has strict guidelines that must be followed to avoid service disruption or policy violations.

Here’s what you need to know:

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

As of early 2019, AWS no longer requires prior approval for penetration testing. You’re free to test resources in your own account, but AWS still expects testers to follow their Acceptable Use Policy and avoid disruptive activities like Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks or excessive traffic generation.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

GCP also does not require prior notification for penetration testing. However, your testing must comply with Google’s Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits targeting assets you don’t own and explicitly disallows certain actions (like DoS testing).

Before initiating any potentially disruptive activity, Artifice Security always coordinates with your team to avoid accidental service impact.

Microsoft Azure

Since June 2017, Azure penetration testing no longer requires pre-approval. However, Microsoft prohibits:

• Denial-of-Service (DoS) testing

• Scanning out-of-scope services

• Running automated scanners that generate excessive traffic

These restrictions are in place to protect other Azure customers on shared infrastructure.