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Penetration Testing

External infrastructure

Identify and eliminate vulnerabilities in your external-facing infrastructure to prevent unauthorised access and breaches.

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Objective
entry points across internet-facing systems
Maturity
an agreed internet-facing scope
Approach
reconnaissance, exploitation and pivot testing
Result
an evidence-backed view of the perimeter

Protecting your external attack surface

External infrastructure exposes systems and services to attackers on the internet. Penetration testing examines vulnerabilities within targeted systems; broader, continuous assessment addresses the perimeter as it changes.

SilentGrid's External Infrastructure Penetration Testing simulates real-world attack scenarios to assess the security of internet-facing systems, identifying misconfigurations, unpatched services, and potential entry points for adversaries.

For a broader evaluation of the attack surface, Perimeter Assessment extends beyond traditional penetration testing, uncovering and cataloguing all internet-exposed assets across your environment.

What sets us apart

Real-world attack simulation

Consultants use attacker techniques to identify and validate exploitable misconfigurations, outdated services and exposed entry points in external infrastructure.

Focused testing or perimeter analysis

External penetration testing targets specific systems or environments. A Perimeter Assessment examines your entire internet-facing footprint. This service identifies forgotten or misconfigured assets that could inadvertently expose your organisation to risk.

Advanced manual testing

Consultants combine detailed manual testing with automated scans to investigate chained exploits, overlooked misconfigurations and complex flaws that tools often miss. Findings include guidance to fix them.

Technical innovation

SilentGrid uses custom tooling and continuous research to investigate emerging attack vectors targeting external environments and adapt testing as adversary techniques change.

Methodology

SilentGrid's external penetration testing adheres to established frameworks such as OWASP, CIS Benchmarks, and NIST 800-53 to structure assessments against recognised security standards.

  1. 01

    Reconnaissance and asset mapping

    • Enumerating exposed systems, DNS records, and cloud resources
    • Identifying misconfigurations, open ports, and forgotten systems
  2. 02

    Vulnerability discovery and exploitation

    • Running automated scans and manual tests to uncover exploitable vulnerabilities
    • Validating and safely exploiting findings to demonstrate impact
  3. 03

    Privilege escalation and lateral movement

    • Assessing pathways from compromised external systems to internal environments
    • Identifying risks associated with exposed credentials, misconfigurations, and open services
  4. 04

    Reporting and remediation

    • Providing comprehensive, actionable reports designed to prioritise high-risk issues and outline remediation steps

Plan the year

One external test, or a planned year.

A single external infrastructure test finds the misconfigurations and unpatched services exposed to the internet. Where new infrastructure goes online through the year, an annual program puts external testing on a twelve-month plan, agreed a quarter at a time, with retesting each quarter.

Explore annual programs

Deliverables and reporting

Reports give technical teams remediation guidance and executive leadership a summary of risks and business impact.

Comprehensive vulnerability report

A detailed overview of all identified vulnerabilities, including severity and impact

Proof of concept (PoC)

Demonstrations validating critical vulnerabilities

Remediation roadmap

Clear and prioritised recommendations for remediation

Executive summary

A concise overview highlighting risks and the business impact of findings

Consultation and retesting

Post-engagement guidance and retesting to validate the effectiveness of remediation efforts

Why SilentGrid

SilentGrid's consultants are hand-picked, and between them they have delivered penetration testing globally over decades. Their sector experience covers banking and financial services, insurance, government, critical infrastructure and healthcare, so findings are assessed in the context of how those systems operate.

Consultants find 0-day vulnerabilities in commercial software and speak or teach at security conferences. That research produces the custom tooling used to investigate flaws automated scanning misses and keeps testing techniques current. Testing follows concepts set out in NIST, OWASP, PTES and OSSTMM.

CREST ANZApproved company

Individual credentials across our team include

  • OSEE
  • OSCE3
  • OSED
  • OSEP
  • OSWE
  • GXPN
  • CRTO
  • CRTE
  • CRTP
  • OSCP
Meet the team

From our research

What we have found doing this.

All research

Common questions

What is external infrastructure penetration testing?

External infrastructure penetration testing examines the internet-facing systems in an agreed scope the way an outside attacker would: enumerating exposed hosts, DNS records and cloud resources, finding misconfigurations and unpatched services, safely exploiting them to prove impact, and checking whether a compromised external system leads into the internal network. A perimeter assessment, by contrast, first discovers everything that is exposed.

What does external infrastructure testing cover?

Internet-facing systems within the agreed scope. Exposed systems, DNS records and cloud resources are enumerated, then tested for misconfigurations, unpatched services, open ports and forgotten systems that offer an entry point.

How is this different from a perimeter assessment?

External penetration testing targets specific systems or environments. A perimeter assessment examines your entire internet-facing footprint, uncovering and cataloguing assets, including forgotten or misconfigured ones you may not know about.

Do you exploit the vulnerabilities you find?

Yes. Findings are validated and safely exploited to demonstrate impact, which also rules out false positives before anything is reported.

Do you test whether external access leads inside?

Yes. Pathways from compromised external systems into internal environments are assessed, along with the risks from exposed credentials, misconfigurations and open services.

What standards does the testing follow?

Assessments adhere to established frameworks including OWASP, the CIS Benchmarks and NIST 800-53, in line with recognised industry practice.

Can testing run on an ongoing basis?

Yes. Continuous external infrastructure assessments run in regular cycles, commonly every 6 or 12 months, retesting prior vulnerabilities, assessing newly deployed infrastructure and applying emerging attack techniques as they appear.

What do we receive at the end?

A comprehensive vulnerability report covering severity and impact, proof-of-concept demonstrations for critical findings, a prioritised remediation roadmap, an executive summary, and post-engagement consultation with retesting to confirm fixes.

Strengthen your perimeter

Get started with external infrastructure testing

Assess the systems exposed to the internet

Schedule an External Infrastructure Penetration Test or learn more about our Perimeter Assessment service.

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