Internal Penetration
Testing
While perimeter security remains essential, the reality is that once attackers breach your network boundary, they often find minimal resistance to lateral movement. At Vulnerex, our Internal Penetration Testing service simulates what happens after an initial compromise, revealing how attackers could escalate privileges and access critical systems and sensitive data from within your network.
Why Internal Penetration Testing Matters
Internal networks typically contain numerous security weaknesses that go undetected by vulnerability scans and external assessments. With studies showing that attackers spend an average of 280 days inside compromised networks before detection, thorough internal security testing is essential for:
Preventing Lateral Movement
By identifying and addressing weaknesses that would allow attackers to navigate between systems and escalate privileges within your internal environment.
Evaluating Security Segmentation
To ensure that network segments, security zones, and access controls effectively contain potential breaches and prevent unauthorized access between environments.
Protecting Sensitive Data Repositories
By uncovering internal paths that could lead to unauthorized access to intellectual property, customer information, or financial data.
Testing Detective Controls
By measuring your organization’s ability to identify suspicious activity, unauthorized access attempts, and unusual data movements within your internal network.
Validating Your Defense-In-Depth Strategy
By ensuring multiple layers of security controls are functioning as intended to protect critical assets even if perimeter defenses are compromised.
Our Expert Approach
Our comprehensive internal penetration testing methodology simulates realistic attack scenarios by skilled adversaries:
Network Discovery & Mapping
We begin by mapping your internal network environment to identify all accessible systems, services, and potential attack paths. This includes identifying hosts, open ports, running services, trust relationships, and network segmentation to develop a comprehensive understanding of your internal attack surface.
Vulnerability Identification
Using a combination of automated tools and manual techniques, we identify security weaknesses across your internal infrastructure. This includes misconfigurations, missing patches, insecure protocols, weak passwords, and other vulnerabilities that could be leveraged to gain or escalate access within your environment.
Exploitation & Privilege Escalation
Going beyond identification, we actively attempt to exploit discovered vulnerabilities to gain initial access and elevate privileges. This includes leveraging common misconfigurations, password reuse, Kerberos attacks, and other techniques to demonstrate how attackers could gain administrative access to critical systems.
Lateral Movement & Persistence
We simulate how attackers would move between systems and establish persistence within your network. This includes harvesting credentials, exploiting trust relationships, bypassing access controls, and identifying methods to maintain access that would enable long-term presence in your environment.
Sensitive Data Access Assessment
After establishing privileged access, we identify paths to sensitive data and critical assets. This critical step demonstrates the ultimate business impact of internal vulnerabilities by showing what valuable information attackers could access after compromising your internal network.
Comprehensive Reporting & Remediation Guidance
You receive detailed documentation including an executive summary of business risks, technical findings with reproduction steps, and prioritized remediation guidance. Each vulnerability includes demonstration of attack paths, screenshots of successful exploitation, and specific recommendations for implementing effective controls.
Multiple Service Options
Security Sound Solutions to Support Your Path to Success
Focused Penetration
A targeted evaluation of specific critical network segments or systems, providing detailed technical findings and remediation guidance. This service includes testing from specific network access points to evaluate the security of your most sensitive assets and systems from internal threats.
Enterprise Penetration
Our most thorough internal security assessment, evaluating your entire internal network environment. This service starts from multiple network entry points and systematically explores all accessible systems, applications, and data repositories to identify potential attack paths throughout your organization.
Assumed Compromise
For organizations seeking to understand the potential impact of specific breach scenarios. This service begins with the assumption that certain systems or user accounts have already been compromised, then determines what additional access attackers could gain from these starting points.
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