Professional Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking for Triangle Businesses
Discover the vulnerabilities in your network, applications, and workforce before attackers do. Petronella Technology Group delivers expert-led penetration testing—black box, white box, gray box, web application, network, wireless, and social engineering assessments—with actionable remediation guidance for businesses across Raleigh, Durham, RTP, and all of North Carolina.
Speak directly with a security expert: 919-348-4912
You Do Not Know What You Do Not Know—And Attackers Are Counting on It
Automated vulnerability scanners catch the obvious flaws. Penetration testing reveals the ones that actually lead to breaches—the chained exploits, logic flaws, and human weaknesses that scanners will never find.
Automated scans create a dangerous illusion of security. Your quarterly vulnerability scan comes back with a manageable list of findings, and your team marks the critical ones as patched. But automated scanners miss business-logic flaws, authentication bypasses, and chained exploit paths that skilled attackers chain together to breach your environment. Organizations across the Triangle rely on scan results alone and discover the hard way that a clean report does not mean a secure network.
Compliance mandates demand more than scanning. Frameworks including PCI-DSS, HIPAA, CMMC, NIST 800-171, and SOC 2 explicitly require penetration testing as a distinct control, separate from vulnerability assessments. An automated scan does not satisfy these requirements, and auditors in the Raleigh-Durham corridor are increasingly scrutinizing the difference. Failing to produce valid pen test documentation puts your certifications, contracts, and insurance coverage at risk.
Your employees are your largest attack surface. Technical defenses mean nothing when an attacker can call your front desk, impersonate a vendor, and talk their way into privileged credentials within fifteen minutes. Social engineering remains the most effective attack vector, and most organizations have never tested whether their people can recognize and resist these tactics. Without structured social engineering assessments, you are gambling on human nature.
Web applications harbor hidden, critical vulnerabilities. Custom-built web applications, customer portals, APIs, and SaaS integrations introduce unique vulnerabilities that off-the-shelf scanners are not designed to detect. Injection attacks, broken access controls, insecure direct object references, and session management flaws require human testers who understand application architecture. A single exploitable web vulnerability can expose your entire database, customer records, and proprietary data to exfiltration.
Rigorous, Expert-Led Penetration Testing That Thinks Like an Attacker
Penetration testing is not a commodity you can automate with a button click. It is a disciplined, intelligence-driven exercise conducted by certified ethical hackers who think, adapt, and attack like real adversaries. At Petronella Technology Group, our penetration testers bring decades of combined offensive security experience to every engagement, systematically dismantling your defenses layer by layer to expose the vulnerabilities that genuinely put your organization at risk.
Our methodology follows the industry-standard PTES (Penetration Testing Execution Standard) and OWASP frameworks, beginning with comprehensive reconnaissance and attack surface mapping. We identify your external and internal footprint, enumerate services and applications, and build a threat model specific to your business. From there, our team moves into active exploitation—testing every identified weakness with controlled, precision attacks designed to prove real-world impact without causing operational disruption.
What separates PTG from other penetration testing providers in the Raleigh-Durham market is what happens after we find vulnerabilities. We do not hand you a hundred-page report and disappear. Every engagement includes a detailed executive briefing, a technical findings walkthrough with your IT team, a risk-prioritized remediation roadmap with specific steps for each vulnerability, and complimentary retesting to verify that your fixes actually work. We partner with you to close every gap, because our job is not finished until your defenses are genuinely stronger than when we started.
Whether you are a healthcare practice in Raleigh preparing for a HIPAA audit, a defense contractor near RTP pursuing CMMC certification, a financial services firm in Durham meeting PCI-DSS requirements, or a growing technology company that simply wants to understand its true security posture, PTG delivers penetration testing that is thorough, honest, and immediately actionable. We have conducted thousands of pen tests over more than 22 years—and we have never had a client suffer a breach on our watch.
Five-Phase Penetration Testing Process
- 1 Reconnaissance & Scoping — Define engagement boundaries, rules of engagement, and testing windows. Gather intelligence through OSINT, DNS enumeration, network mapping, and attack surface discovery to build a comprehensive target profile.
- 2 Enumeration & Vulnerability Discovery — Identify open ports, running services, software versions, and potential weaknesses using both automated scanning tools and manual techniques. Map authentication mechanisms, access controls, and trust relationships.
- 3 Exploitation & Validation — Execute controlled attacks to exploit confirmed vulnerabilities. Validate real-world impact through proof-of-concept demonstrations, credential harvesting, privilege escalation, and data access testing.
- 4 Post-Exploitation Analysis — Assess the full scope of potential damage including lateral movement, persistence mechanisms, data exfiltration paths, and business impact quantification for each exploited vulnerability.
- 5 Reporting & Remediation — Deliver comprehensive documentation with executive summary, technical findings, CVSS risk ratings, proof-of-concept evidence, and a prioritized remediation roadmap. Includes team walkthrough and complimentary retesting.
Comprehensive Penetration Testing Services for Every Attack Surface
PTG's certified ethical hackers test every layer of your defense—network, application, wireless, and human—using the same tools and techniques that real-world threat actors deploy against organizations like yours.
Network Penetration Testing
Comprehensive testing of your internal and external network infrastructure to identify exploitable vulnerabilities in firewalls, routers, switches, VPN gateways, DNS servers, and all network-accessible services. PTG's testers simulate both external attackers attempting to breach your perimeter and internal threat actors who have already gained a foothold inside your network. We map trust relationships between network segments, test firewall rule sets for bypass opportunities, attempt lateral movement across VLANs, and validate whether your network segmentation actually prevents an attacker from reaching critical assets. Every discovered path to your sensitive data is documented with proof-of-concept evidence and specific remediation steps for your Raleigh, Durham, or RTP-area network environment.
Web Application Testing
Deep-dive security testing of your web applications, customer portals, APIs, and SaaS platforms following the OWASP Testing Guide and OWASP Top 10 methodology. PTG's application security testers manually probe for SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), broken authentication, insecure direct object references, server-side request forgery (SSRF), XML external entity (XXE) attacks, and business-logic vulnerabilities that automated scanners consistently miss. We test every input field, API endpoint, authentication mechanism, session management function, and authorization control to ensure your web-facing applications do not become the entry point for a devastating data breach. Our findings include reproducible proof-of-concept exploits and developer-friendly remediation guidance.
Black, White & Gray Box Testing
PTG offers all three primary penetration testing methodologies to match your security objectives and compliance requirements. Black box testing puts our team in the shoes of an external attacker with zero prior knowledge, testing whether your defenses can withstand a determined adversary operating from scratch. White box testing provides our testers with full access to source code, architecture diagrams, and internal documentation, enabling the most thorough analysis possible for organizations that want to leave no stone unturned. Gray box testing simulates insider threats and compromised accounts by giving testers partial access, revealing what damage an attacker could inflict after clearing your initial defenses. We recommend the right approach for your specific threat model and regulatory obligations.
Wireless Penetration Testing
Targeted assessment of your wireless network infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi access points, authentication protocols, encryption configurations, rogue access points, and guest network isolation. PTG's wireless pen testers deploy specialized hardware and software to attempt WPA2/WPA3 attacks, evil twin access point creation, client deauthentication, wireless traffic interception, and credential capture. We test whether your wireless segmentation actually isolates guest traffic from production networks, whether employees can be tricked into connecting to malicious access points, and whether an attacker in your parking lot in Raleigh, Durham, or anywhere in the Triangle could gain access to your internal network through your wireless infrastructure. Comprehensive remediation includes specific configuration changes for every identified weakness.
Social Engineering Testing
Targeted human-layer security assessments that evaluate your organization's resistance to phishing, vishing (voice phishing), pretexting, baiting, tailgating, and other social engineering attack vectors. PTG designs custom social engineering campaigns that simulate the tactics real adversaries use to manipulate employees into divulging credentials, clicking malicious links, transferring funds, or granting unauthorized physical access. Our campaigns measure click rates, credential submission rates, reporting rates, and time-to-detection, providing quantifiable metrics on your human security posture. We deliver detailed analysis of which departments and roles are most susceptible, along with targeted security awareness training recommendations to transform your workforce from a vulnerability into a defense layer.
Remediation & Retesting
PTG does not stop at finding vulnerabilities—we partner with your team to fix them. Every penetration testing engagement concludes with a comprehensive remediation roadmap that prioritizes findings by CVSS severity, exploitability, and business impact. Our reports provide specific, actionable guidance for each vulnerability: not generic recommendations, but exact configuration changes, code fixes, architecture improvements, and policy updates tailored to your environment. PTG's security engineers are available to implement remediation measures directly when your team needs hands-on support. We include complimentary retesting within 90 days to verify that every remediated vulnerability is genuinely resolved, ensuring you can demonstrate measurable improvement to executives, auditors, and compliance assessors.
Trusted by 2,500+ Organizations Across North Carolina
Over 22 years of penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, and ethical hacking engagements—with a strong security track record for clients on our managed program that speaks louder than any marketing claim.
Ready to see what PTG can do for your business? Schedule a free consultation and join the businesses across the Triangle that trust us with their technology.
919-348-4912Penetration Testing for Every Industry in the Triangle
PTG delivers specialized penetration testing engagements calibrated to the unique threat landscape, compliance requirements, and operational constraints of your industry vertical.
Vulnerability & Pen Testing Label
Explore our full vulnerability and penetration testing services catalog.
Network Security Audit
Comprehensive auditing of your entire network infrastructure and security controls.
IT Security Testing
Industry-specific security testing solutions across all major verticals.
Schedule a Pen Test Consultation
Speak with our ethical hacking team about your security testing needs.
PTG conducts penetration testing engagements for healthcare organizations requiring HIPAA security risk analysis and pen testing documentation, defense contractors pursuing CMMC Level 2 and Level 3 certification across the RTP corridor, financial services firms meeting PCI-DSS Requirement 11.3 for annual penetration testing, legal practices protecting attorney-client privileged data and case files, manufacturing companies securing operational technology and SCADA systems, and technology startups building security into their products from the ground up. Each engagement is scoped and executed to address the specific regulatory frameworks, threat actors, and business risks unique to your industry.
The Difference Between a Pen Test Report and a Secure Organization
Many firms deliver penetration testing reports. PTG delivers penetration testing results. Our goal is not to produce documentation—it is to make your organization measurably harder to breach. Here is why organizations across the Triangle choose PTG for their most critical security testing:
- 22+ years with zero breaches among clients who implemented our full security recommendations—Our track record is not a marketing slogan. Over more than two decades serving businesses across Raleigh, Durham, RTP, and all of North Carolina, no PTG-managed client has ever suffered a data breach. Our penetration testing identifies and eliminates the vulnerabilities that lead to breaches before attackers can exploit them.
- Certified ethical hacking professionals—Our pen testing team holds OSCP, CEH, GPEN, CompTIA PenTest+, and CISA certifications. These are not junior analysts running automated tools—they are experienced offensive security practitioners who have conducted thousands of engagements across every industry.
- Remediation is included, not upsold—Every PTG pen test includes a detailed remediation roadmap with specific, actionable steps for each finding. We also provide hands-on remediation support and complimentary retesting within 90 days, because a list of vulnerabilities without fixes is just a to-do list for attackers.
- Full-spectrum testing capabilities—Network, web application, wireless, social engineering, cloud, API, and physical security testing—all conducted by a single team that understands how vulnerabilities across different layers can be chained together for maximum impact.
- Compliance-aligned reporting—Our reports are specifically formatted to satisfy the documentation requirements of PCI-DSS, HIPAA, CMMC, NIST 800-171, SOC 2, and other frameworks, saving your team the effort of translating findings into compliance evidence.
- Local expertise, enterprise standards—Headquartered right here in Raleigh, PTG combines the accessibility and responsiveness of a local partner with the technical depth, methodology rigor, and capacity of a national firm. On-site testing is available for Triangle-area businesses whenever physical presence enhances the engagement.
From Assumed Secure to Genuinely Hardened
A multi-location healthcare organization in the Triangle had been passing quarterly vulnerability scans for three years and believed their network was secure. Their cyber insurance renewal required a formal penetration test, and they engaged PTG to conduct a comprehensive assessment.
PTG's ethical hackers discovered 47 exploitable vulnerabilities including a critical authentication bypass in their patient portal, unencrypted PHI accessible through a misconfigured file share, and default credentials on network equipment that allowed full internal access from the guest Wi-Fi. Our team remediated every finding, retested to confirm, and produced HIPAA-compliant documentation.
Penetration Testing Questions Answered
Get answers to the most common questions about PTG's penetration testing and ethical hacking services for businesses in Raleigh, Durham, RTP, and the Triangle.
Penetration testing, also known as ethical hacking or pen testing, is a controlled, authorized simulation of real-world cyberattacks against your organization's systems, networks, and applications. The purpose is to identify exploitable vulnerabilities before malicious actors discover them. Your business needs penetration testing because automated vulnerability scanners alone miss up to 40% of critical security gaps, including logic flaws, chained exploits, and business-logic vulnerabilities that only skilled human testers can uncover. For businesses in Raleigh, Durham, and the Triangle area, PTG provides comprehensive pen testing with detailed remediation guidance to close every gap we find.
Black box testing simulates an external attacker with no prior knowledge of your systems, mimicking a real-world breach attempt where the tester must discover targets, map the attack surface, and find vulnerabilities from scratch. White box testing provides the tester with full access to source code, architecture documentation, and credentials, enabling the deepest possible analysis of your security posture. Gray box testing falls between the two, giving testers partial knowledge such as user-level credentials or network maps, simulating an insider threat or a compromised employee account. PTG recommends the appropriate methodology based on your compliance requirements, threat model, and security maturity level.
Industry best practices and most compliance frameworks recommend conducting penetration testing at least annually, with additional tests performed after significant infrastructure changes, application deployments, or mergers and acquisitions. Organizations subject to PCI-DSS must perform pen testing at least once per year and after any significant change. HIPAA-regulated healthcare organizations in the Triangle area should test annually as part of their risk analysis requirements. CMMC and NIST 800-171 frameworks also call for regular security assessments. PTG works with your organization to establish a testing cadence that satisfies compliance obligations while providing continuous assurance of your security posture.
PTG's penetration testing follows a structured, industry-standard methodology consisting of five phases. First, we conduct scoping and reconnaissance to define test boundaries, gather intelligence, and map your attack surface. Second, we perform enumeration and vulnerability discovery using both automated tools and manual techniques. Third, our certified ethical hackers execute controlled exploitation attempts to validate vulnerabilities and determine their real-world impact. Fourth, we conduct post-exploitation analysis to assess the potential damage of successful attacks, including lateral movement and data access. Finally, we deliver a comprehensive report with executive summary, technical findings, risk ratings, proof-of-concept documentation, and prioritized remediation guidance. We also offer retesting to verify that remediation efforts have been successful.
PTG takes extensive precautions to minimize any impact on your business operations during penetration testing. We work with your team to establish testing windows, define out-of-scope systems, and set rules of engagement before any testing begins. Our testers use controlled exploitation techniques designed to validate vulnerabilities without causing system crashes, data loss, or service interruptions. In over 22 years of conducting penetration tests for Triangle-area businesses, PTG has maintained a zero-disruption track record. We maintain real-time communication with your designated contacts throughout the engagement and can pause testing immediately if any unexpected impact is observed.
PTG's penetration testing team holds industry-recognized certifications including Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP), GIAC Penetration Tester (GPEN), CompTIA PenTest+, and Certified Information Security Auditor (CISA). Our testers bring decades of combined experience in offensive security, vulnerability research, and real-world incident response. Every engagement is conducted under strict ethical guidelines, with all findings reported exclusively to your organization and handled with the highest confidentiality standards.
Yes. PTG goes far beyond simply identifying vulnerabilities. Every penetration testing engagement includes a detailed remediation roadmap with specific, actionable steps to address each finding. Our reports prioritize vulnerabilities by risk severity, exploitability, and business impact, so your team knows exactly where to focus first. For organizations that need hands-on support, PTG's security engineers can directly implement remediation measures, patch vulnerable systems, harden configurations, and update security policies. We also offer complimentary retesting within 90 days to verify that all identified vulnerabilities have been properly resolved.
A vulnerability assessment is an automated or semi-automated scan that identifies known vulnerabilities in your systems and generates a list of potential weaknesses ranked by severity. Penetration testing goes significantly further by having skilled ethical hackers actively attempt to exploit those vulnerabilities, chain multiple weaknesses together, and demonstrate the real-world impact of a successful attack. While a vulnerability scan might identify that a system is running outdated software, a penetration test proves whether that outdated software can actually be exploited to access sensitive data, move laterally through your network, or escalate privileges. PTG offers both services and recommends combining regular vulnerability assessments with periodic penetration tests for comprehensive security coverage.
PTG conducts penetration testing across your entire digital attack surface. This includes external network infrastructure such as firewalls, routers, VPNs, and public-facing servers; internal network environments including Active Directory, file servers, and database systems; web applications, APIs, and web services; mobile applications on iOS and Android platforms; wireless networks and access points; cloud environments across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud; IoT devices and operational technology systems; and human-layer security through social engineering assessments including phishing, pretexting, and physical security testing. We tailor the scope of each engagement to address the specific systems and threat scenarios most relevant to your organization.
Penetration testing costs vary based on the scope, complexity, and type of testing required. Factors that influence pricing include the number of IP addresses and applications in scope, the testing methodology selected (black box, white box, or gray box), compliance requirements that dictate specific testing standards, and whether social engineering or physical security testing is included. PTG provides detailed, transparent proposals after an initial scoping call so there are no surprises. Most small to mid-sized businesses in the Raleigh, Durham, and Triangle area invest between several thousand and tens of thousands of dollars for a comprehensive penetration test—an investment that typically costs a fraction of what a single data breach would cost your organization. Contact PTG at 919-348-4912 for a customized quote.
Ready to Find Out What an Attacker Already Knows About Your Network?
Schedule your penetration testing engagement with Petronella Technology Group. Our certified ethical hackers will systematically test every layer of your defense, document every exploitable vulnerability, and provide a prioritized remediation roadmap to harden your organization against real-world attacks. No surprises, no generic reports—just thorough, honest security testing from a team with 22+ years and zero breaches among clients who implemented our full security recommendations. Serving Raleigh, Durham, RTP, and businesses throughout North Carolina.
Prefer to talk now? Call us directly at 919-348-4912