Penetration Testing in Boston, MA
Human-led penetration testing for Boston businesses and the systems they run on. Fixed price, audit-ready reports mapped to HIPAA, and a free remediation retest.
Why a scan is not a penetration test
CyberFortify runs manual web, API, network and cloud penetration tests for Boston organizations, with findings mapped to HIPAA and the other frameworks Massachusetts businesses answer to.
The question that matters is not whether you have weaknesses. It is which of them a motivated attacker could string together, and how far. Organizations in Boston across Suffolk County operate within Massachusetts’s economy of life sciences and biotech, technology and healthcare, and the systems that run that work — customer-facing applications, the APIs beneath them and the networks they sit on — are exactly what CyberFortify is engaged to test.
Most Boston organizations already run vulnerability scans and still get breached, because the two do different jobs. A scan flags a missing patch; it does not notice that a forgotten staging server shares credentials with production. Chaining those is the work, and it is done by hand.
For Boston organizations that means a fixed-price engagement with a named tester, critical findings escalated the day we confirm them, and a free retest once your fixes ship.
The threats facing Boston organizations
Risk in Massachusetts looks different by industry. For the sectors that anchor Boston, this is what attackers target and what our testing is built to find.
Life sciences and pharma
Biotech, pharmaceutical and medical-device organizations run on intellectual property — research data, trial results, formulations and device firmware — that is valuable to competitors and nation-state actors alike. Regulated environments add data-integrity obligations under 21 CFR Part 11, where an unauthorized change to a record is as serious as its theft.
We test the applications and cloud environments holding research and trial data, the identity boundaries between research and corporate networks, and, where relevant, the device-to-backend paths that carry regulated data, with data integrity assessed alongside confidentiality.
Technology and SaaS
Software and SaaS companies carry a specific risk: a single flaw is multiplied across every customer on the platform. Multi-tenant isolation, API authorization and the cloud infrastructure underneath are the crown jewels, and a SOC 2 report is now the price of entry for selling to any serious buyer.
We test tenant isolation and object-level authorization across accounts, the API surface your product and integrations expose, and the AWS, Azure or Google Cloud configuration that a single leaked key could turn into a full-tenant compromise.
Healthcare and providers
Provider groups, clinics and digital-health companies hold protected health information across patient portals, scheduling systems, EHR integrations and a widening fleet of connected devices. A single broken authorization check can expose one patient’s record or an entire panel, and the HIPAA Security Rule treats that exposure as a reportable event with real financial and reputational cost.
We test patient portals and their APIs for broken object-level authorization, insecure direct object references and session weaknesses, examine the integrations that move records between systems, and assess whether a compromised clinical workstation can reach data it should never touch.
Penetration testing services for Boston
Pick the services that match your exposure; most Boston clients run two or three together in one engagement.
Web Application Penetration Testing
Broken access control, cross-tenant authorization and business logic, tested by hand.
API Penetration Testing
Testing the endpoints your web app, mobile app and partners actually depend on.
Network Penetration Testing
Credential paths, lateral movement and the privilege escalation that follows a foothold.
Cloud Penetration Testing
Configuration and identity review across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
Mobile Application Penetration Testing
Local storage, certificate pinning and the API behind the app.
OT & ICS Penetration Testing
IEC 62443-aligned assessment of the plant floor and its SCADA systems.
Evidence for the frameworks Massachusetts businesses answer to
Because Massachusetts’s economy runs on life sciences, higher education, healthcare, technology and finance, Boston organizations are most often held to these frameworks — a single engagement produces evidence for each.
HIPAA
Testing the portals, APIs and systems that hold protected health information.
SOC 2
What enterprise buyers actually check before they sign.
ISO 27001
Annex A 8.29 verification for organizations certifying to the 2022 revision.
Organizations handling personal data in Massachusetts also fall under 201 CMR 17.00, the Massachusetts data security regulation. It does not name penetration testing, but it expects reasonable security to be verified rather than assumed — and after an incident, a recent test is the evidence that it was.
How a Boston engagement runs
The same sequence every time, so the result is defensible.
Testing aligns to PTES and NIST SP 800-115, application work follows OWASP, and exploitation maps to MITRE ATT&CK. Automated tooling enumerates the surface; a named tester confirms every finding by hand.
Findings your team can fix and your auditor accepts
Every finding is reproducible, scored in context, and tied to the control it defeats.
The example alongside is illustrative — not from a client engagement — to show how each issue is documented and mapped to HIPAA and the standards Massachusetts organizations answer to.
| Ref | Finding | Severity | CVSS |
|---|---|---|---|
| F-01 | IDOR exposes cross-tenant records | Critical | 9.1 |
| F-02 | Over-privileged service account | High | 8.2 |
| F-03 | Session persists after reset | Medium | 5.4 |
| F-04 | Verbose error disclosure | Low | 3.1 |
What sets a Boston engagement with us apart
A scan-and-report vendor
Automated output rebadged as a test. Severities the tool assigned, findings you cannot reproduce, no real attempt at authorization logic or privilege escalation — and a report your assessor hands back. The retest is a new invoice.
CyberFortify
A named tester who works the target by hand, chains findings to prove real impact, and writes them so a Boston engineer can fix them and an auditor can accept them. Fixed price, same-day critical escalation, retest included.
Penetration testing in Boston, answered
Do you need to be on-site in Boston?
Most of it is remote. Application, API, cloud and external testing does not require us in the building, and that covers the majority of Massachusetts engagements. Where scope is internal network, wireless or physical, we arrange to be on-site and cost the travel transparently.
How is pricing set for a Boston engagement?
Price follows scope, not location. The variables are the number of applications, cloud accounts, live hosts and user roles in scope. After a 30-minute scoping call we return a fixed price, usually within the hour, and it does not change once work begins.
Can we hand the report straight to our assessor?
That is what the report is built for. Findings come with reproduction, CVSS scores and an explicit mapping to the control they defeat — commonly HIPAA for Massachusetts organizations — so your auditor can accept them without translation.
What do you focus on for Life sciences organizations?
We test the applications and cloud environments holding research and trial data, the identity boundaries between research and corporate networks, and, where relevant, the device-to-backend paths that carry regulated data, with data integrity assessed alongside confidentiality. In a Boston engagement that usually starts with research and ip exfiltration paths and works outward from there.
How does Massachusetts privacy law relate to testing?
Massachusetts does not name penetration testing outright, but 201 CMR 17.00, the Massachusetts data security regulation expects organizations to maintain and verify reasonable security for personal data. After an incident, assuming it was secure is not a defense — a recent test is the evidence it was checked.
Can you sign our vendor security questionnaire?
Yes. We complete SIG, CAIQ and custom questionnaires and can join the vendor review call. For Boston companies selling into larger enterprises, a current test plus a completed questionnaire is usually what unblocks the deal.
What is the lead time for testing in Boston?
Lead time is usually one to two weeks once scope is set, less if an audit or customer deadline is pressing. The scoping call is where we lock the price and the date.
Penetration testing near Boston
We work across Massachusetts. See nearby cities or the full state overview.
Test your Boston systems before someone else does.
A 30-minute scoping call gets you a fixed price and a start date, usually within the hour.