In our experience as cybersecurity experts and highly qualified penetration testers, there are typically three reasons why you may move forward with a penetration test and start looking around for a provider. Making that initial decision to move forward with an assessment like this is a big step, but what should you do after you make it?

Picture this: you've signed up for a social engineering attack as part of your organization's penetration test, specifically an email-based phishing campaign. The penetration testing firm is asking you to allow list their campaign through your mail filters and other technical controls. You have all those advanced protections in place - spam filters, web proxies, next-generation phishing protections - designed to protect your end users from phishing attacks. Yet, when it comes to assessing the very risk these controls are meant to mitigate, should you lower them for the tester specifically for the purpose of the test?

When many think of a “penetration test,” the first thing that may spring to mind is cybersecurity. But in fact, you do have the option to conduct a physical penetration test—or, a simulation of a physical attack on your premises.

If you’re a penetration tester, you know that for any test or phishing campaign, you begin with setting up your infrastructure with a domain name and redirectors. You might also know that this step is straightforward, and many have created walkthroughs on different ways to architect and automate infrastructure deployments.

If you’ve decided to undergo a red team assessment and engaged Schellman to perform it, you may be wondering what the next steps entail—as in, how will the next stages of the process work and what should you expect?

When a software production company requests a security assessment of its Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline, they usually want an evaluation of the strength of its existing security measures and identification of potential security risks associated with the different components involved in storing, updating, building, and deploying their application.

Penetration testing and red team assessments are often conflated or confused—though they’re both advantageous cybersecurity solutions, there are distinct differences between them that any organization considering either should know. Just to be clear, a penetration test is not a red team assessment.