Pentest People Win 2 Digital City Festival Awards

‘Lockdown innovation enabled continued service and business growth’

On 15^th April we were delighted to attend the Digital City Awards online ceremony where we scooped two wins, the Cyber Security Project of the Year and the major award category, The Digital City Innovation of the Year Award. This award recognises the novel product or service which has revolutionised the way things are done and made a real difference in its intended field.

Both awards were won on the strength of our rapid development of the Pentest People SecureGateway, which allowed us to continue testing clients’ systems at the start of lockdown, despite being unable to visit their premises.

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Winning the Digital City Awards is an important recognition of the innovation and expertise that underpins our penetration testing and consultancy services.

Penetration tests are normally a combination of internal and external stress-testing, whereby consultants mimic the actions of an attacker working from outside the Company Firewall and behind the company firewall. We then advise clients on how to close any vulnerabilities discovered during the internal and external tests. When stay-at-home orders were announced, many organisations risked falling behind on their normal data security compliance schedules, such as PCI DSS, which demands a bi-annual penetration test.

When the pandemic forced many of our clients to close their offices this could have prevented our consultants’ on-site tests and impacted clients’ security. Many of our clients set up their staff to work from home, which created fresh risks to their internal and external security, just at the time when we were unable to visit their premises to check that vulnerabilities had been addressed.  Fortunately, by the nature of our work, we are born problem solvers. We simply saw this as an interesting nut to crack.

Using our combined knowledge of networking systems and penetration techniques, members of our senior team quickly devised a way to continue testing clients’ internal systems, even though our consultants couldn’t physically visit their premises. Working through the night for several nights, our team designed, developed and tested an innovative new service. SecureGateway can be delivered as an appliance or a downloadable VMWare image that establishes a secure connection, allowing consultants to carry on testing and advising clients on internal security vulnerabilities that need to be fixed.

The benefits to clients were immediate, testing could continue uninterrupted, despite having staff working from home; compliance schedules were back on track; and their employees and our own could work as safely as possible during the pandemic. Owing to ease, efficiency and convenience of SecureGateway, the majority of clients have told us that they would like to carry on using it beyond the pandemic.

The SecureGateway innovation, combined with our consultants’ dedication and expertise, helped our clients through the crisis and also attracted new business, which enabled us to substantially grow our team during the past twelve months. We are delighted to have won the Digital City Awards 2021 and look forward to building on this success in the years ahead.

If you would like to learn more about SecureGateway, Penetration Testing As a Service (PTaaS™) and Pentest People’s services, please fill out the contact form below.