penetration testing services
Penetration Testing Services Built for Regulated Businesses
A penetration test should give you two things: findings you can actually fix, and a report your auditor accepts without a fight. Essendis penetration testing is built around both — senior testers emulating real attacker behavior against your networks, applications, cloud, and AI systems, with results written for the people who have to act on them.
Because our team includes former Big Four auditors alongside top-tier security engineers, every engagement is scoped to the compliance requirement driving it — CMMC, PCI DSS, SOC 2, HIPAA, or FedRAMP — and documented so the evidence holds up in your next assessment.
Compliance-Driven Penetration Testing
So we start from the obligation. CMMC and NIST 800-171 contractors get testing scoped to their CUI boundary before the C3PAO arrives. PCI DSS 4.0 merchants get the internal, external, and segmentation testing the standard actually requires. SOC 2 and HIPAA clients get reports mapped to the controls their auditor samples. Our team has helped clients manage toward the most popular industry standards:
HIPAA/HITECH
HITRUST
ISO/IEC 27001
SOC 1 (SSAE 18)
PCI DSS 4.0 (Requirement 11 testing)
SOC 2
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)
Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS)
NIST SP 800-171
Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)
Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP)
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)
NIST CyberSecurity Framework (CSF)
NIST SP 800-53
CMMC 2.0
OWASP Top 10 / ASVS testing standards
Need a penetration test your assessor will accept?
Scope Your Test TodayWhat We Test
Network Penetration Testing
External and internal network testing that emulates how attackers actually move: exposed services, credential attacks, lateral movement, and the segmentation weaknesses that turn one compromised host into a breach.
Engagements include:
Explore Network Penetration Testing Services
Tell Me MoreApplication Penetration Testing
Web applications, APIs, and mobile backends tested against the OWASP Top 10 and business-logic abuse — the flaws scanners can't find. Ideal before major releases, customer security reviews, and SOC 2 audits.
Explore Application Penetration Testing Services
Tell Me MoreCloud & Microsoft 365 Configuration Review
Identity, conditional access, storage exposure, and tenant hardening reviewed against vendor baselines and hardening benchmarks — because most cloud breaches start with configuration, not exploits.
Running critical workloads in Azure or Microsoft 365?
Scope a Cloud ReviewAI System Penetration Testing
LLM-backed applications introduce new attack surface: prompt injection, data leakage through model outputs, and abuse of connected tools. We test AI features the way attackers will — before your customers' security teams ask whether you did.
Shipping AI features to regulated customers?
Talk to an AI TesterOur Method: Scoping to Retest
Every engagement follows the same spine. Scoping first: what's in bounds, and which compliance requirement is driving the test. Then written rules of engagement — authorization, testing windows, and emergency contacts — before a single packet moves. Testing itself is manual and tool-assisted, with evidence preserved as we go. The report separates what an attacker did from what your team should do about it, with reproduction steps and prioritized fixes, followed by a debrief with your technical staff. Retesting of remediated findings and an attestation letter for customers and assessors round out the engagement.
What a Penetration Test Costs
Pricing depends on scope: how many external IPs and internal hosts, application size and authentication complexity, compliance-driven reporting requirements, and whether retesting is bundled. Market ranges vary widely — from modest single-application tests to six-figure red-team engagements. We quote fixed-fee after a short scoping call, so there are no hourly surprises — and if a smaller test satisfies your requirement, we'll say so.
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Why Essendis: Former Auditors Write Reports Auditors Read
Our testers know what a QSA, a SOC 2 auditor, or a C3PAO will do with your report — because our team includes people who have sat on that side of the table. Findings are written twice, in effect: technically enough for your engineers to reproduce and fix, and formally enough for your assessor to accept as evidence. Testing is performed by senior US-based staff, and clients who want continuous coverage between tests can pair testing with our managed security and vulnerability management services, backed by a US-based 24x7 Secure Operations Center.
Penetration Testing FAQ
How often should we test?
Most frameworks expect at least annual testing, plus retesting after significant changes — PCI DSS is explicit about it, and customer contracts increasingly are too. Between tests, continuous vulnerability management keeps the gaps from accumulating.
What's the difference between a pen test and a vulnerability scan?
A scan enumerates known weaknesses; a penetration test exploits and chains them to demonstrate real impact. Auditors know the difference — submitting a scan where a test is required is one of the most common assessment findings we see.
Will testing disrupt production?
Engagements run under written rules of engagement with agreed testing windows and emergency stop contacts. Disruption is a scoping failure, not an inherent risk of testing — and it's exactly what the rules of engagement exist to prevent.
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