Regular internal network penetration testing is a fundamental part of meeting your organisation’s cybersecurity and compliance goals
Regular internal network penetration testing ensures that weaknesses in your internal systems are identified so they can be addressed, protecting against cyber-attack
Regular internal network penetration testing provides assurance to stakeholders that your internal systems and applications are secure
Blackfoot’s internal network penetration testing service makes finding and fixing security weaknesses across your internal networks simple, no matter how complex your environment might be.
Internal network penetration testing focuses on evaluating the vulnerabilities and weaknesses in your organisation’s internal network infrastructure.
It involves conducting authorized simulated attacks from within the network to identify potential security flaws that could be exploited by internal actors or malicious insiders.
Internal network penetration testing assesses the effectiveness of your internal cybersecurity controls, identifies potential entry points within the network and provides recommendations to enhance overall security resilience.
Performing internal network penetration testing helps organisations proactively identify and address vulnerabilities, ensuring the protection of sensitive data and maintaining the integrity of your internal network infrastructure.
Blackfoot’s manual penetration testing, or exploit testing, builds on vulnerability assessment results to simulate real-world attack methods.
Unlike automated vulnerability scanning, our manual penetration testing is delivered by our highly skilled testers who actively seek to progress vulnerabilities through the cyber kill-chain. They will assess the security of your environment by employing a combination of tools, techniques and, most importantly, creativity. As a CREST-certified organisation, Blackfoot penetration tests follow an approved, structured methodology.
A Blackfoot penetration test starts with a well-defined scope that dictates the targets to be tested in a five-stage approach:
Information gathering
During this phase, our testers use open source intelligence (OSINT) to gather and collate publicly known information about the organisation to facilitate a cyber-attack.
Network mapping and target enumeration
This stage maps the application and local and adjacent network environments, to determine routes to business-critical systems and the enumeration of services presented by in-scope systems including service versions.
Target and vulnerability analysis
Once all services have been mapped and identified, analysis of the identified services will be performed to identify known vulnerabilities and common weakness and misconfiguration.
Controlled exploitation attempts of all identified vulnerabilities
Exploitation attempts are performed using known, verified methods. Common vulnerabilities such as injection-based attacks may require manual exploitation and generation of custom payloads created by the Blackfoot internal research team.
Access review and privilege escalation
Often, initial exploitation can result in unprivileged access to a system. Post-exploitation testing can be performed to elevate a threat actor’s privilege or allow lateral movement. These actions feed back into stage one and the process is repeated until the test objectives are achieved.
Q: What is internal network penetration testing?
A: Internal network penetration testing assesses the security of your organisation’s internal network environment, simulating the actions of an attacker who has already gained a foothold inside your perimeter. This could represent a malicious or compromised insider, a contractor with network access, or an attacker who has phished credentials or exploited a perimeter vulnerability. The test evaluates how far an attacker could move laterally, what data or systems they could access, and whether they could achieve goals such as gaining domain administrator privileges.
Q: Why is internal penetration testing important even if we have good perimeter security?
A: Perimeter controls reduce the risk of external attackers gaining direct access, but they do not eliminate all routes in. Phishing attacks, credential theft, supply chain compromise and physical access breaches can all place an attacker inside your network. Internal testing ensures that your defences are effective at limiting the damage a threat actor can cause once inside, and identifies weaknesses in areas such as network segmentation, privilege management and lateral movement controls.
Q: How is internal penetration testing conducted?
A: Blackfoot’s testers typically begin with access equivalent to a standard user on the internal network, either on-site or via a secure remote connection. From this starting point, they attempt to escalate privileges, move laterally across the network, and access sensitive systems or data. The methodology mirrors the techniques used by real-world attackers, ensuring that findings are relevant and actionable.
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