Physical Security Testing
Physical security testing or physical Red Teaming is a service designed to evaluate and, more importantly – enhance the physical protection of your premises, assets, and the security awareness of the personnel. By extensive information gathering through OSINT (Open-Source INTelligence) and target observation, we craft specific scenarios tailored to your organization, that correspond to real threats in the daily activities of your premises.
We check not only physical access control systems security, such as access badges, surveillance systems, and alarms but also assess the resilience of your physical barriers, such as fences, gates, doors, and windows. We also perform a series of social engineering activities targeting ways to access your organization and verify your procedures.
Why is physical security testing so important?
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, an e-commerce or other – sensitive data exists in each case. Sensitive data that, if stolen by competition or threat actor, could seriously threaten the security of an organization and its clients.
The potential impact of an attacker successfully gaining access to critical areas, like communication equipment 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 disruption of a production environment. It could also be an initial foothold to more advanced, technical attacks, such as privilege escalation in the internal network.
During our tests, we help to safeguard your organization against these potential threats. By simulating various scenarios, we ascertain the efficacy of your security measures in preventing unauthorized access, theft, vandalism, or other physical breaches.
Due to our unique combination of skills, our team can provide a comprehensive service, including traceless intrusion into your facilities and deep infiltration of your internal network, delivering a complete simulation of highly skilled adversary attack.
What are the possible targets? 
Any organization with physical infrastructure such as offices, factories, warehouses or other can be a target of a potential attack – and therefore the target of our tests. Our team demonstrated high skill, knowledge about access control systems, IT technologies and determination in multiple assignments.
We are also comfortable with targeting third-degree risk level facilities (according to PN-EN 60839-11-1:2014-01), including manufacturing plants, administrative and financial institutions handling confidential information of high value. We are willing to demonstrate our skills against highly sensitive fourth-degree facilities (military, medical research and critical production areas).
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What does a physical security test look like? 
Physical security testing is tailored to the specific requirements of your organization. We do not rely on schematic operations, we prepare separate attack scenarios for each case and adapt them during the assignment, adjusting to new information and changing circumstances. The team conducting the tests behaves like genuine attackers, acting discreetly and under the radar. 
Red Teaming in practice: Physical Security Testing tutorial
Red teaming represents a unique approach to assessing an organization’s security posture. Learn how to hack access control systems and RFID readers and break into organizations with style.
While preparing the proposal, we perform comprehensive threat modeling to determine the most effective scope of the tests that we will cover during the assessment, passive analysis of facilities’ physical perimeter and search of resources available on the Internet. The quote for our service contains a list of scenarios, tailored specifically for your organization, already providing you with valuable insights into the attacker’s mind.
Sample attack scenarios that may be executed within your organization: 
- Attempting to clone employees’ or other personnel’s (cleaning service, guards, technicians) access cards to gain unauthorized entry to the office and high-security areas (e.g., server rooms). 
- 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 unrestricted physical access to the office premises via social engineering and then planting a network device to enable external access. 
- Bypassing physical access control systems.
- Bypassing fingerprint scanners or other biometric readers. 
- Executing social engineering attacks targeting building staff to gain unauthorized access to the office premises. 
- Employing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) 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 trigger a motion sensor inside the office to open doors from outside). 
And we do not stop at that. Depending on the agreed scope, we can escalate further and take advantage of already acquired access to perform network environment testing, Active Directory exploitation, Wi-Fi and IoT tests and others. If you are interested in learning about our full services check Red Teaming section.
Benefits of physical security tests: 
Physical testing allows us to verify the organizational security posture as well as employees’ and security response team’s 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 by physical lock bypassing or unauthorized access to sensitive documents stored in poorly secured office cabinets.
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. Every organization is different – if necessary, we’ll get in touch with you to determine the specifics of your needs and the broader context of security testing.
