Frequently Asked Questions

Timelines depend on the agreed scope, environment complexity, testing objectives, access requirements, and operational constraints. A focused external test and a full red team engagement are scheduled differently, and compliance-driven assessments are scoped to your specific requirements. We establish an estimated schedule during scoping and document it in the engagement proposal.

A penetration test is comprehensive and systematic, we're trying to find all vulnerabilities within a defined scope. A red team engagement simulates a real, targeted threat actor operating stealthily toward a specific objective while remaining undetected. Red team tests your detection and response capabilities as much as your technical defences.

Absolutely. We're happy to sign an NDA before any sensitive discussions begin. All initial consultations are treated as confidential regardless of whether an NDA is in place.

Every engagement includes: a full technical report with reproduction steps and remediation guidance; an executive summary with business risk narrative for leadership and board. A debrief or findings presentation is included as agreed for your engagement. Remediation support, such as review calls, and retesting to verify remediations may be included in your engagement or arranged separately, as defined in the approved proposal.

We scope based on your environment size, number of targets, test type, and compliance requirements. Pricing is transparent, we provide a fixed-fee proposal after an initial discovery call so there are no surprises. Engagements are never billed on a time-and-materials basis.

Yes, safely operating in production environments is a core competency. We define detailed rules of engagement before every engagement, including out-of-scope systems, fragile systems to treat carefully, and emergency contacts.

Yes. Retesting and remediation validation may be included in your engagement or arranged separately, with scope, timing, and terms defined in the approved engagement proposal. Once your remediation work is complete, a targeted retest verifies that findings have been correctly resolved and that the same or similar attack paths are no longer viable.

Yes, and we particularly enjoy helping organisations build a security testing programme from scratch. We'll guide you through scoping your first engagement and creating a roadmap for ongoing testing.

Internal teams should own continuous security work such as vulnerability management, monitoring, and secure code review, but they cannot provide an independent, adversarial penetration test of their own environment. Familiarity bias and conflict of interest mean internal staff tend to find individual issues while missing the chained attack paths an external specialist surfaces. See can internal employees do penetration testing? for the full breakdown.