Identify and eliminate risks before attackers reach your environment.
Your external attack surface is the first thing an attacker sees. Misconfigurations, exposed services, weak authentication, and internet-facing assets can lead to compromise long before an attacker touches your internal environment.
Packet33 provides external network penetration testing to help organizations identify real weaknesses across their internet-facing systems, focusing on practical, exploitable issues that could be leveraged by an external threat actor.
External systems face continuous scanning and probing from automated bots, opportunistic attackers, and targeted threat actors. A single exposed port or misconfigured service can lead to a breach, especially when tied to cloud services or leaked credentials.
An effective external penetration test shows how far an attacker could get without internal access or credentials.
- Vendor risk assessments
- SOC 2 or audit preparation
- Annual security testing expectations
- New cloud deployments or infrastructure changes
- Strengthening controls before enterprise procurement reviews
- Validating remediation after past vulnerabilities
External reconnaissance and enumeration
- DNS and domain discovery
- Subdomain enumeration
- Identification of exposed assets
- Certificate and SSL configuration review
- OSINT for leaked credentials or data
Service and port analysis
- Open port identification
- Weak or misconfigured services
- Version analysis for known vulnerabilities
- Exposure of internal services or admin panels
Authentication and access issues
- Weak or default credentials on exposed network services
- Exposed SSH, RDP, and remote access interfaces
- Unprotected VPN and administrative interfaces
- Credential exposure via public-facing services
Cloud configuration review
- Publicly accessible storage buckets or blob containers
- Exposed endpoints or functions reachable from the internet
- Misconfigured security group or firewall rules
- Open ports on cloud-hosted instances
Scoping and information gathering
We identify your authorized targets, domains, cloud assets, and any areas of concern.
Testing and validation
Testing is performed against your external perimeter without internal access. Every finding is validated manually.
Reporting and recommendations
A clear, structured report with risk ratings, reproduction steps, and remediation guidance.
Retesting
Optional retesting to confirm issues are resolved before providing results to auditors or customers.
- Detailed technical report
- Executive summary for audit and leadership teams
- Severity ratings for each issue
- Reproduction steps and screenshots
- Remediation guidance
- Cloud configuration review summary (if in scope)
- Optional retest
- Support for SOC 2 and audit-related questions
- SaaS companies with public endpoints.
- Healthcare and HIPAA-regulated companies.
- Organizations preparing for SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audits.
- Startups exposing new cloud environments.
- Any company with public domains or infrastructure.
- Teams without dedicated security resources.
Fixed quote before work begins.
Is external penetration testing required for SOC 2? +
SOC 2 does not explicitly require external penetration testing, but auditors expect independent testing of external controls as part of a strong security program. Most enterprise customers and auditors will ask for it.
What systems are included in an external pentest? +
Any publicly accessible network assets you authorize — domains, subdomains, IP ranges, VPN gateways, exposed services, and cloud-hosted infrastructure. Scope is confirmed in writing before testing begins.
How often should an external pentest be performed? +
Most companies perform external penetration testing annually or after major infrastructure changes, such as new cloud deployments or significant architecture updates.
Do you test cloud environments during an external pentest? +
A cloud configuration review can be included as part of the engagement, covering publicly visible misconfigurations and exposures across your AWS or Azure environment. It is not a manual cloud penetration test.
Will testing disrupt our production environment? +
Testing is designed to be non-disruptive. We coordinate timing with your team, avoid destructive actions, and can schedule testing during off-peak hours if needed.
Let’s scope your external assessment.
Book a short scoping call and we will confirm scope, timeline, and pricing before any work begins.