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Physical Security Testing

Physical security testing is a service designed to evaluate and, more importantly – enhance the protection of your premises, assets, and the security awareness of the personnel. Scenarios in this test correspond to real threats in the daily activities of your organization and its location. We check not only access devices, such as employees’ cards or fingerprint scanners, but also perform a series of social engineering activities targeting crucial ways to access your organization. 

Physical security test for your business 

In the face of a genuine attack, breaching physical security can have devastating consequences for an organization – no matter whether it is a financial institution, software development company or an e-commerce – sensitive data exists in each case.  

The potential impact of an attacker successfully gaining access to critical areas, like a server room or an unattended employee’s workstation, may lead not only to compromising the company image and data leakage but also to significant financial losses caused by the deliberate disruption of a production environment. 

During our testing, we prioritize different resources to focus on the most important in your case. Through a combination of simulated real-world scenarios, advanced techniques, and industry best practices, we help to safeguard your organization against these potential threats. This encompasses not only evaluating the robustness of access controls, surveillance systems, and alarms but also assessing the resilience of your physical barriers, such as fences, gates, doors, and windows. By simulating various threat scenarios, we ascertain the efficacy of your security measures in preventing unauthorized access, theft, vandalism, or other physical breaches. 

What does a physical security test look like? 

Physical security testing encompasses a wide range of tests tailored to the specific requirements of your organization. We do not rely on schematic operations – we prepare a separate attack scenario for each case. The team conducting the tests behaves like genuine attackers, acting discreetly and under the radar. 

Before each project, we perform quick threat modeling to determine the most effective scope of the tests that we will cover during the assessment. 

Sample attack scenarios that may be executed within your organization: 

  • Attempting to clone employees’ or cleaning service personnel’s access cards to gain unauthorized entry to the office and high-security areas (e.g., server rooms) inside. 
  • Gaining access to the internal network from visitor rooms or other less secure areas. 
  • Posing to be an external employee, such as an air conditioning technician, to gain physical access to the office premises via social engineering and then planting a network device to enable external access. 
  • Bypassing the fingerprint scanner. 
  • Executing social engineering attacks targeting building staff to gain unauthorized access to the office premises. 
  • Employing drone technology to conduct aerial surveillance and obtain sensitive data from the organization. 
  • Identification and exploitation of vulnerabilities in the physical security of the facility (e.g., checking the ability to activate a motion sensor inside the office to open doors from outside). 

Benefits of physical security tests: 

Physical testing allows us to verify the organizational security posture as well as employees’ awareness and preparedness – which should not be limited to identifying malicious links in emails, but also cover their ability to handle direct contact with an attacker utilizing social engineering tactics. These tests can prepare employees for real threats and protect them from social engineering attacks. 
   
After the test, you will: 

  • Know how your organization reacts to realistic attack scenarios and threats.Get to see the effectiveness and response speed of the blue team (the organization’s defensive team) during simulated attacks. 
  • Be prepared for scenarios involving potential insider threats where a malicious employee could inflict harm upon the organization. 
  • Identify and assess threats that may not have been previously considered, such as unauthorized access to the server room using improvised tools like a hanger or unauthorized access to sensitive documents stored in poorly secured office cabinets.
A photo of tools that allowed us to access a server room during one of the tests.

DORA compliance

Physical Security Testing can contribute to the compliance with DORA principles. It aligns with DORA’s broad view of security, which includes physical aspects. 

Quote for your project 

Book a call or fill out our contact form to get a quote for physical security testing. To assess the size of your company’s physical infrastructure and the effort required to cover all attack vectors according to your expectations, we will guide you through our physical security test questionnaire during the scoping meeting.