Penetration Testing
Identify vulnerabilities before attackers do. Professional penetration testing in Canberra — covering external, internal, web application, wireless, and social engineering attack vectors.
Why Penetration Testing Matters
Automated vulnerability scanning identifies known weaknesses, but it cannot tell you what a determined attacker can actually achieve. Penetration testing bridges that gap by simulating real-world attack techniques against your environment to uncover exploitable vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and security control failures that scanners miss.
For Australian organisations, penetration testing is not just good practice — it is increasingly a regulatory expectation. The Information Security Manual (ISM) requires regular security assessments including penetration testing for systems processing government data. The Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF) mandates that entities evaluate the effectiveness of their security controls. The Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018 (SOCI Act) places obligations on critical infrastructure operators to adopt and maintain risk management programs that include testing security measures.
Beyond compliance, penetration testing provides the evidence your board, executive, and risk committees need to make informed decisions about cybersecurity investment. A well-executed pen test quantifies risk in business terms and gives you a prioritised roadmap for remediation. If you are preparing for an IRAP assessment, penetration testing is a critical preparatory step that identifies technical vulnerabilities before they become formal findings.
Our Testing Types
Every engagement is tailored to your threat profile, environment, and compliance requirements. We offer five core testing disciplines.
External Penetration Testing
Simulates an attack from the internet targeting your perimeter defences. We enumerate your external attack surface including web servers, mail gateways, VPN endpoints, DNS infrastructure, and cloud-hosted services.
Testing covers firewall rule analysis, service enumeration, vulnerability exploitation, credential attacks against exposed services, and identification of shadow IT assets you may not know are publicly accessible.
Internal Penetration Testing
Simulates an insider threat or an attacker who has gained initial access to your internal network. This is where most organisations discover their greatest exposure — flat networks, excessive privileges, and weak segmentation.
We test Active Directory security, network segmentation effectiveness, privilege escalation paths, lateral movement opportunities, and access to sensitive data stores. Internal testing often reveals the gap between assumed and actual security posture.
Web Application Penetration Testing
Focused assessment of your web applications against the OWASP Top 10 and beyond. Web applications are the most common entry point for external attackers and deserve dedicated, specialist testing.
We test for injection vulnerabilities (SQL, command, LDAP), broken authentication, sensitive data exposure, XML external entity attacks, broken access controls, security misconfiguration, cross-site scripting (XSS), insecure deserialisation, and server-side request forgery (SSRF).
Wireless Network Assessment
Evaluates the security of your wireless infrastructure including corporate WiFi, guest networks, and any rogue access points operating within your premises.
Testing covers WPA2/WPA3 configuration analysis, rogue AP detection, evil twin attack simulation, wireless client isolation verification, and assessment of wireless network segmentation from your corporate LAN.
Social Engineering Assessment
Tests the human element of your security posture. Technical controls are only effective if your people are trained to recognise and resist social engineering attacks. We conduct targeted phishing campaigns, pretexting scenarios, and — where scoped — physical social engineering to evaluate staff awareness and organisational resilience.
Results are reported with sensitivity and used constructively to inform your Essential Eight user application hardening and security awareness training programs.
Our Methodology
We follow industry-standard methodologies to ensure comprehensive coverage, repeatable results, and safe testing practices. Our approach draws from three recognised frameworks.
OWASP Testing Guide
The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Testing Guide provides our framework for web application assessments. It defines a structured approach covering information gathering, configuration management testing, identity management, authentication, authorisation, session management, input validation, error handling, cryptography, and business logic testing.
Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTES)
PTES provides our overarching engagement framework covering pre-engagement interactions, intelligence gathering, threat modelling, vulnerability analysis, exploitation, post-exploitation, and reporting. It ensures consistency across engagements and aligns our testing activities with your specific threat landscape.
NIST SP 800-115
The National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-115 (Technical Guide to Information Security Testing and Assessment) provides additional rigour for government and critical infrastructure engagements. It defines planning, discovery, attack, and reporting phases with particular attention to authorisation, scope control, and coordination with system owners.
What You Get
Every engagement delivers actionable intelligence, not just a list of CVEs. Our reporting is designed for two audiences: your executive leadership and your technical teams.
Executive Summary
Board-ready overview of risk exposure, key findings, and strategic recommendations. Written in plain language for non-technical stakeholders.
Detailed Technical Report
Full vulnerability descriptions with exploitation evidence, screenshots, and proof-of-concept details. Each finding includes CVSS scoring contextualised to your environment.
Prioritised Remediation Plan
Findings ranked by business impact with specific remediation steps, effort estimates, and quick wins your team can action immediately.
Post-Remediation Retest
Complimentary retesting of critical and high findings within 60 days of report delivery to verify your remediation efforts have been effective.
Who It's For
Find Your Vulnerabilities Before Attackers Do
Get a clear picture of your security exposure with a professional penetration test from Tech Blaze. Canberra-based, security-cleared, and experienced across government, defence, and enterprise environments.