External Penetration Testing

An external penetration test evaluates your organization's internet-facing attack surface from the perspective of an outside attacker with no insider access or credentials. This is the most common starting point for businesses that have never had a security assessment.

What Gets Tested

Your public IP ranges, firewalls, VPN gateways, mail servers, DNS infrastructure, web servers, and any other services exposed to the internet. The goal is to identify misconfigurations, unpatched vulnerabilities, weak authentication, and attack chains that could give an outsider access to your internal network.

How It Works

Testing begins with reconnaissance and enumeration of your external footprint, identifying open ports, running services, and software versions. From there, discovered vulnerabilities are manually validated and exploited in a controlled manner to determine actual risk, not just theoretical scanner output. The entire engagement is conducted remotely and typically takes one to two weeks depending on scope.

What You Receive

A detailed report documenting every finding with severity ratings, evidence of exploitation, and specific remediation steps your IT team can follow. You also receive an executive summary suitable for leadership or board-level reporting. A findings debrief call is included to walk through results and answer questions.

Who Needs This

Any business with internet-facing infrastructure. If you have a public website, email server, VPN, or cloud-hosted services, an external penetration test tells you what an attacker sees and whether they can get in.

How an engagement works

01

Scope

We define what's in bounds, your goals, and any operational constraints. For OT and production systems, safety and uptime come first.

02

Test

Hands-on testing the way a real attacker works. Findings are exploited and verified manually, proof of impact, not just a scanner flag.

03

Report

A prioritized report with clear remediation steps and proof of impact, written to be acted on, not a 200-page scanner dump.

04

Retest

Once your team has remediated, I re-verify the fixes so you can prove the issues are actually closed.

Frequently asked

How long does this take?
Most small-business engagements run one to two weeks from kickoff to final report, depending on scope and the number of targets. You'll get a clear timeline before any testing starts.
Will testing disrupt my operations?
Safety and uptime come first, especially for OT and production systems. We agree on rules of engagement up front, schedule intrusive testing around your operations, and I check in before doing anything risky.
Is the testing automated or manual?
A human drives every engagement and validates each finding by hand. Modern tooling (including AI) helps widen coverage and speed up the tedious parts, but you're paying for verified, exploitable findings, not raw scanner or model output.
Do you offer a retest after we remediate?
Yes. Once your team has fixed the findings, I re-verify the affected issues so you can demonstrate to customers, auditors, or leadership that they're actually closed.

Ready to assess your external attack surface?

Let's discuss your infrastructure and how an external penetration test can help protect your business.

Request a Consultation

Other Security Services

Internal Penetration Testing Web Application Testing Vulnerability Assessment Wireless Testing OT/ICS Assessment Security Consulting Louisiana Penetration Testing