Penetration Testing Services for Growing Businesses
You don’t need an enterprise security budget to know where your real vulnerabilities are. Our penetration testing services simulate real-world attacks against your network, applications, and people, so you find the gaps before someone else does. Right-sized for SMBs. Delivered by a team with 30+ years of IT experience.
What Penetration Testing Actually Is, and Why Your Business Needs It
What Penetration Testing Actually Is
Penetration testing is a controlled, authorized security exercise in which trained professionals attempt to breach your systems, networks, and applications using the same techniques a real attacker would use. The goal is not to cause harm: it is to find exploitable vulnerabilities before a malicious actor does, and to give you a clear, prioritized roadmap for closing them.
A Pen Test Goes Further Than a Vulnerability Scan
A vulnerability scan tells you what might be exploitable. A penetration test tells you what actually is. Our team exploits confirmed vulnerabilities, chains them together, and demonstrates the real-world impact, so you understand not just what’s there, but what an attacker can actually do with it. That distinction matters when you are making decisions about where to invest your security budget.
Why Growing Businesses Need This
For small and mid-size businesses, penetration testing has historically felt like an enterprise-only service: too expensive, too complex, too much. We disagree. If your business stores customer data, processes payments, operates on Microsoft 365, or holds any information a competitor or criminal would value, the question is not whether you need a pentest. It is whether you can afford not to have one.
Part of a Complete Security Program
Penetration testing is a core component of a complete managed cybersecurity program. This page covers our standalone and recurring pen testing services: the full methodology, what types of testing we conduct, and what you get in the final report.
Your Security Tools Tell You What's There. A Pentest Tells You What's Exploitable.
Most SMBs have more exposure than they realize, and the wrong tools to find it.
Firewalls, antivirus, and Microsoft Defender are essential layers of defense. But they are designed to stop known threats, not to simulate a determined attacker who has time, patience, and specific knowledge of your environment. That is what penetration testing is for.
Your Firewall Has Gaps That Aren't in Any Signature Database
Modern attackers don’t rely on known malware signatures that your security tools can flag. They chain together low-level misconfigurations, weak credentials, and unpatched services, each innocuous on its own but exploitable together. A pentest surfaces exactly these paths.
You Don't Know What an Attacker Sees From the Outside
Your internal team knows your network. An attacker approaches your organization from the outside, without credentials, without access, and probes for every opening your team has forgotten about or never knew was there. External penetration testing replicates that perspective exactly.
Remote Work Expanded Your Attack Surface in Ways You Haven't Fully Mapped
VPNs, remote desktop, cloud apps, personal devices on corporate networks: the shift to hybrid work created dozens of new entry points. Many SMBs patched the obvious ones and moved on. A thorough pentest finds the ones that are still open.
Compliance Requirements Are Increasingly Specific About Testing
CMMC Level 2, NIST SP 800-171, PCI-DSS, and cyber insurance underwriters increasingly require documented penetration testing, not just vulnerability scans. If your compliance program doesn’t include regular pentests, you may already be out of alignment with your contractual obligations.
Your M365 Environment Has Security Configurations That Drift Over Time
Microsoft 365 deployments accumulate configuration drift: conditional access policies, sharing settings, admin role assignments, and app permissions that were set correctly and then quietly changed. An application-layer pentest against your M365 tenant surfaces the permissions gaps that monitoring tools miss.
A Security Incident Costs Far More Than a Pentest
The average cost of a data breach for a small business is north of $200,000: legal, notification, remediation, and reputational damage combined. A penetration test is a fraction of that cost, and it is the only proactive measure that validates whether your defenses actually hold.
Knowing you have a vulnerability is only useful if you find it before an attacker does.
What We Test, and How We Test It
No two businesses have the same attack surface. We scope every engagement to match your actual environment: the systems, applications, and people that represent your real exposure. Here is what each type of penetration testing covers and what it is designed to find.
External Network Penetration Testing
All internet-facing systems: firewalls, VPNs, web servers, email gateways, public cloud endpoints. We look for open ports with unnecessary services, unpatched systems, weak authentication on remote access points, SSL/TLS misconfigurations, exposed admin interfaces, and credential exposure through public data sources. External testing is the starting point for organizations new to penetration testing.
Internal Network Penetration Testing
What an attacker can do once they are already inside: whether through a phishing email, a compromised vendor, or a rogue device. We look for privilege escalation paths, lateral movement opportunities, Active Directory misconfigurations, weak service account credentials, and unpatched internal systems. If your team wants to validate NIST 800-171 controls, internal network testing is a natural complement.
Web Application Penetration Testing
Customer portals, partner portals, internal web applications, and APIs. Testing follows the OWASP Top 10 framework, the industry-standard reference for web application vulnerabilities. We look for injection vulnerabilities, broken authentication, insecure direct object references, XSS, and API authentication weaknesses.
Social Engineering Testing
Your people, the most consistently exploited entry point. Testing includes simulated phishing campaigns, vishing (voice phishing) calls, and physical pretexting scenarios where applicable. We report click rates by department and role, credential submission rates, and callback rates on vishing attempts.
How We Conduct a Penetration Test
Every engagement follows a structured methodology, not a checklist that gets rubber-stamped. We scope carefully, test thoroughly, and deliver findings you can actually act on.
- ✓Scoping and written authorization: rules of engagement defined before any testing begins
- ✓Open-source reconnaissance: domain records, SSL certs, job postings, and any passive exposure your systems reveal
- ✓Exploitation and attack path documentation: confirmed vulnerabilities chained from initial entry to highest-value target
- ✓Executive summary + technical report + walkthrough call: every finding severity-rated with a specific remediation step
- ✓Retest and documented confirmation: verified evidence for compliance, cyber insurance, or board review
Why SMBs Choose Abel Solutions for Penetration Testing
Scoped for Your Business, Not a Fortune 500
- ✓Scoped to your actual environment: your systems, your risk profile, your team’s capacity to act on findings
- ✓You don’t pay for testing that doesn’t apply to you
- ✓You don’t get a 200-page report your team can’t action
- ✓Most pentest firms are built for enterprise contracts; we’re built for the other 99% of businesses
Security Testing in the Context of Your Full IT Environment
- ✓30+ years managing SMB IT infrastructure across Atlanta and beyond
- ✓When we find a vulnerability, we understand your full stack: M365, Azure, SharePoint, hybrid environments
- ✓Recommendations grounded in what your team can realistically implement, not what works at a company five times your size
Native Microsoft Ecosystem Expertise
- ✓Microsoft Solutions Partner with deep M365 and Azure security expertise
- ✓We know the configurations that drift: conditional access policies, admin permissions, sharing settings
- ✓Testing covers the Microsoft environment your business actually runs on
Reports Built for Decision-Making, Not Compliance Theater
- ✓Every finding: severity rating, plain-language risk explanation, specific remediation step
- ✓Executive summary gives leadership context to make budget decisions
- ✓Technical report gives your IT team the detail to fix the issues
Penetration Testing Questions: Answered
What is penetration testing and how is it different from a vulnerability scan?
A vulnerability scan is an automated process that identifies known security weaknesses in your systems. It tells you what could potentially be exploited. A penetration test goes further: our team attempts to actually exploit those vulnerabilities, chain them together, and demonstrate the real-world impact of a successful attack. A vulnerability scanner will identify an open port. A penetration test will show you what an attacker can actually do once they get through it.
How long does a penetration test take?
A focused external network test for a small organization typically runs 3–5 business days of active testing, plus reporting. A full-scope engagement covering external, internal, and web application layers for a mid-size organization runs 2–3 weeks of testing, plus a week for reporting and findings review. We give you a clear timeline estimate during scoping, and we stick to it.
Will the penetration test disrupt our business operations?
We design every engagement to minimize disruption. Scoping establishes exactly what is in and out of bounds, testing windows are defined to avoid peak business hours where sensitive, and our team maintains emergency contact protocols throughout. The vast majority of our engagements complete without any noticeable impact on operations.
What does a penetration test report include?
Every pentest report includes two components. The executive summary covers overall risk rating, critical findings, what was accessed during testing, and business implications, written for leadership. The technical report covers detailed vulnerability documentation for each finding, proof-of-concept evidence, CVSS severity scores, step-by-step attack paths, and specific remediation recommendations. We also schedule a findings review call to walk your team through the report directly.
How often should we conduct a penetration test?
Annual penetration testing is the baseline for most SMBs, and the minimum required by most compliance frameworks (CMMC, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and many cyber insurance policies). Beyond that cadence, consider retesting after significant infrastructure changes: a major cloud migration, a new application deployment, a merger or acquisition, or a security incident. We help you build a testing cadence that matches your risk profile and compliance requirements.
Find Your Vulnerabilities Before an Attacker Does
You don't need an enterprise security team to run enterprise-grade penetration testing. Abel Solutions delivers right-sized pen testing services for growing businesses: scoped to your environment, reported in plain language, and backed by 30+ years of IT expertise. Whether you need a single external network test or a full-scope annual assessment, we'll help you understand your real exposure and close the gaps that matter most.