Government & Public Sector Penetration Testing

A breach of a government service is not only a data-protection failure, it is a loss of public trust that is hard to win back. We model the attacker who wants to steal identity data at scale, the one who wants to alter records (a permit, a payment, a status), and the one who simply wants to take a public service offline. The test proves what each can actually achieve.

Much public infrastructure runs on software that is a decade or more old. We test these carefully, because an aggressive scan can knock an unsupported system over. The finding is usually not a single bug but an architecture that assumed the system would never be exposed the way it now is.

We enumerate the external attack surface with nmap and content discovery via ffuf, identify every exposed service and portal, and fingerprint the technology stack. Public bodies frequently have forgotten subdomains and old microsites still live, and these are common entry points.

With Burp Suite we test authentication, session management and authorization across citizen services. Broken access control and IDOR are the recurring critical findings: can one citizen read another’s record, or reach an official’s function? We chase SSRF, injection and privilege escalation, and where safe we demonstrate a full chain to prove impact.

On internal engagements we test segmentation and Active Directory, tracing how a single phished account escalates to domain control. For data-sharing integrations we test the APIs between agencies, since a weak link there exposes data far beyond the system you commissioned.

You get an executive summary written for senior officials and an accountable-officer audience, and a technical report engineers can act on. Every finding has a CVSS score, the impact in service and citizen-trust terms, reproduction steps and a prioritized remediation path.

Citizen portals that let one person view or edit another’s record by manipulating an identifier are the most damaging finding we report, because they scale to the whole user base.

Legacy applications running end-of-life frameworks give attackers reliable, publicly documented exploits. When these sit on a flat internal network, one compromise spreads quickly.

Missing MFA on administrative access, weak password resets and poor session invalidation open the door to account takeover of officials with wide privileges.

Data-sharing endpoints built for convenience often lack proper authorization, returning more data than intended or trusting the calling system too much. We test them against OWASP ASVS.

Where you operate essential or important services, NIS2 demands strong risk management and incident readiness. We document findings and evidence to support NIS2 supervision and reporting.

Citizen data is personal data under GDPR. We flag any exposure that would trigger breach-notification duties and frame remediation around data-protection risk.

Many public contracts now require independent penetration testing before go-live. The attestation letter and report are written to satisfy that condition and to sit cleanly in an assurance file.

Organised crime targets public bodies for bulk identity data and for the use a ransomware outage gives them over an essential service. The typical route is a phished official, then lateral movement across an under-segmented network. We test that route end to end.

Public infrastructure attracts patient, well-resourced attackers who exploit legacy systems and quiet footholds. Our reconnaissance deliberately hunts the forgotten servers and old integrations these actors favour, because that is where they establish persistence.

Taking a citizen service offline is a goal in itself for some attackers. We assess exposure to disruption and, more importantly, how quickly an intruder could move from the public edge to the systems that keep the service running.

Many bodies buy through frameworks with specific testing clauses. We provide the documentation, scope definition and attestation an assurance file needs, and we are used to the approvals and change control that public delivery involves.

Every engagement runs under NDA with agreed handling of findings and data. We keep evidence to the minimum required to prove a finding, and we destroy test artefacts on completion under a documented process.

Large programmes rarely test everything at once. We help sequence the work so the highest-risk citizen services are covered first, then extend the same methodology across the wider estate on a schedule that fits your budget cycle.

Each finding is written so your team, or your supplier, can reproduce and fix it, and so the fix can be evidenced in an assurance file. We answer technical questions during remediation and recommend a concrete approach where the right fix is not obvious.

When remediation is done we retest the reported issues at no additional cost and confirm closure. That gives you defensible evidence, for an auditor or an accountable officer, that the risks were identified and resolved.

Services change with every release and policy shift, so a single test ages quickly. Many public bodies adopt an annual or per-major-change cadence, often driven by NIS2 expectations, to keep assurance current rather than stale.

Public delivery usually involves several vendors, from hosting to application development. We coordinate scope and rules of engagement with them so testing is safe and nobody is surprised, and we route each finding to the party responsible for fixing it. That keeps remediation moving instead of stalling in a debate over ownership.