Penetration tests reveal the true strength of your organization’s security posture. Approached correctly, they also serve an important role in continuously improving your ability to find and stop real threats quickly. At Recon InfoSec, we view our customers’ penetration tests as invaluable opportunities to test and improve our detection capabilities against skilled attackers in a controlled environment.
This approach directly benefits our customers. A pentest for one of our customers is a pentest for all of our customers. Your organization gets proven security backed by real-world testing, not theoretical protections. Plus, you benefit from collective intelligence and lessons gathered across our entire customer base.
Pentests go further than regular vulnerability assessments because they actively exploit vulnerabilities and insecure configurations to demonstrate real attack chains. Good penetration testers stay current with the latest real-world attack methods. Every engagement with them becomes an intelligence-gathering session with our team. They often share insights about new tools and techniques that we fold into our detection and threat hunting programs.
Pentests come in many variations, but most combine a few key elements. Understanding these components helps you build the right assessment for your needs.
External Assessments These start from outside your network, mimicking how real attackers approach your organization. Testers target public-facing systems and may include social engineering attempts against your employees.
Internal Assessments These assume attackers already have some level of access ("assumed breach") and focus on what damage they could do from within your network. This approach saves time and provides clear insights into your internal security posture.
Application-Focused Tests These dive deep into specific applications, hunting for vulnerabilities in custom code and application-specific attack vectors.
Cooperative vs. Uncooperative
When penetration testing begins in a customer environment, our SOC doesn't go into "test mode." Unless the customer has proactively deconflicted the assessment with specific instructions on how to respond, we will respond as if facing an actual threat actor. Here's our approach:
When our detection systems flag suspicious activity during a pentest, we respond as if facing a real attacker. Our analysts investigate, correlate events, and prepare containment actions. We escalate to our customers with everything we know and what we think they should do next. We treat every alert seriously, regardless of whether we suspect it might be part of a test. This validates our detection and response capabilities under realistic conditions.
Like a real incident, we work to identify the earliest signs of the simulated attack. “Day zero” is the most important entry to investigate on our incident timeline. We will work backwards from our initial detection to look for any opportunities where we could have responded more quickly.
After each pentest, we conduct internal post-incident reviews just as we would for a real threat. We analyze our performance with tough questions:
Every pentest reveals new attack techniques, even when we successfully detect the testers. We use these insights to write new detection rules and refine existing ones. Our detection-as-code approach means these improvements deploy across all customer environments quickly.
If a simulated attack took too long to detect, escalate, or contain, we adjust our procedures. If our communication protocols broke down, we fix them. Each test makes our entire operation more efficient.
We don't view penetration testing as a compliance checkbox. We see it as an opportunity to face skilled adversaries in a controlled environment and come out stronger.
Our hunger for improvement means we extract every possible lesson from these interactions. We escalate fast, analyze thoroughly, and implement changes immediately.
When you work with Recon InfoSec, you get more than an MDR provider. You get a security partner that treats every challenge as a chance to make your defenses stronger. That's how we help you Secure With Confidence.