VAPT

Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing Consultancy

Finds the exploitable weaknesses in your systems before someone else does.

  • Weaknesses Found First
  • Client Assurance Reports
  • Patch Effort Prioritised
  • Periodic Testing Duty
Practice area
Cyber Security
Industries
4
Delivery
Onsite, remote, hybrid

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Tell us who is asking for the certification and by when.

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Why expert advice is worth having

Organisations rarely fail VAPT because the standard is hard. They fail because the evidence does not match what the auditor asks for.

1

Scope decides the price

Getting the VAPT scope wrong is expensive in both directions. Too wide and you pay for audit days you never needed. Too narrow and the certificate does not cover what your customer asked about.

2

Experience across sectors

Having implemented VAPT in very different operating environments, we can tell you quickly which of your worries are real and which are inherited from someone else's situation.

3

Your team already has a day job

Running VAPT in house means taking your most capable people off revenue work for months. For most organisations that hidden cost is larger than the fee for doing it properly.

4

It has to survive after we leave

A VAPT system that only works while a consultant is on site fails its first surveillance audit. We build it so your own people can run it, and train them to do so.

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What VAPT is worth to you

Certification is a commercial decision before it is a technical one. This is where the return usually shows up.

Weaknesses Found First

Testing shows which systems an attacker would genuinely get into, before somebody with worse intentions runs the same checks.

Client Assurance Reports

Customers and partners increasingly ask for a recent test report before connecting systems or handing over any of their data.

Patch Effort Prioritised

Exploitability ratings tell your technology team which twenty fixes matter this month out of the two thousand issues a scanner flagged.

Periodic Testing Duty

Financial, health and data protection regimes expect regular technical testing, and a self assessment questionnaire does not satisfy them.

Industries where VAPT applies

Open a sector to see every standard it is usually asked for.

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See the documentation

Look at how it is structured before you commit

We would rather show you than tell you. Book a demo and we will walk through a working VAPT structure: how the manual is laid out, how procedures reference each other, how evidence is captured day to day, and how the whole thing is presented on audit day so nothing gets hunted for.

VAPT in detail

Finding the holes before someone else does

Vulnerability assessment and penetration testing are related but different activities. The assessment is broad and largely automated: enumerate hosts, services, applications and configurations, and identify known weaknesses. The penetration test is narrow and manual: take those weaknesses, chain them together, and prove what an attacker could actually reach. One tells you what is exposed. The other tells you what that exposure is worth. Buying only the first and calling it a test is a common and expensive shortcut.

It is requested by enterprise customers before onboarding a vendor, by regulators and schemes including PCI DSS and supervisory guidance in banking and insurance, by insurers pricing cyber cover, and by boards after an incident somewhere in their industry. Scopes commonly cover the external perimeter, internal network, web and mobile applications, APIs, cloud configuration and, where the client is willing, people and physical access. Younger companies usually arrive because a customer contract now demands an annual test.

Scanning, then attacking, with rules agreed in writing

Work begins with scope and rules of engagement in writing: targets, exclusions, test windows, data handling, escalation contacts and what happens if something breaks. That document protects both sides. Reconnaissance and discovery follow, then authenticated and unauthenticated scanning to build a picture of the attack surface. Findings from tooling are verified by hand, because unvalidated scanner output wastes your engineers' time and destroys confidence in the exercise. We take the noise out before you ever see it.

Then the manual phase. Testers work through injection, authentication and session handling, access control and privilege escalation, business logic abuse, misconfiguration and exposed services, and where it is in scope, lateral movement from an assumed breach position. Exploitation is used to prove impact, not to cause damage: we demonstrate reach and stop there. Evidence is captured as we go, with request and response detail so your developers can reproduce each issue without a follow up call.

The report, the retest and the fixes that stick

You receive an executive summary written for people who do not read HTTP requests, and a technical report with every finding rated by severity and exploitability, with reproduction steps, evidence and specific remediation guidance rather than a link to a generic advisory. Findings sharing a root cause are grouped, since fixing one pattern beats fixing twenty symptoms. A retest after remediation confirms closure and produces a clean summary you can hand to customers.

What tends to change is prioritisation. Development teams that once saw a long undifferentiated list now see three issues that put data at risk and forty that do not, and they fix the three. Repeat findings across cycles point at a process problem, usually in code review or build hardening, which is a more useful conversation than any individual bug. Testing then becomes a check on known ground rather than a fresh discovery every year.

The route to your VAPT certificate

  1. 1Gap analysis
  2. 2Documentation
  3. 3Training
  4. 4Implementation
  5. 5Internal audits
  6. 6Closure of gaps
  7. 7Management review
  8. 8Certification audit
  9. 9Surveillance audits

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VAPT questions we are asked most

What does VAPT actually require from us?

You will need a defined scope, documentation that reflects actual practice rather than intent, evidence the system has been operating for a reasonable period, trained staff, and at least one internal audit and management review on file.

What is a realistic timeline for VAPT?

Most VAPT projects run three months or so. The single biggest variable is not the standard, it is how fast your team can be freed up for training and internal audit alongside their normal work.

Do you issue the VAPT certificate yourselves?

No, and no consultant should. The certificate comes from an independent accredited certification body after their own audit. We prepare you to pass it and we are there on the day to close findings. That separation is exactly what makes the certificate worth holding.

What does VAPT consultancy cost?

It depends on your headcount, how many sites are in scope and how much of a system already exists, so we quote after a short conversation rather than publishing a figure that would be wrong for most readers. Scope, timeline and fees come to you in writing first.

Which industries need VAPT?

We map VAPT to 4 sectors and it sits in our cyber security practice. Organisations usually arrive because a specific buyer, regulator or tender committee has asked. Tell us who is asking and we will confirm whether this is the standard that satisfies them.

Do you have to visit our premises?

Remote delivery covers most of a VAPT project comfortably. We recommend onsite presence for the initial assessment and for the certification audit, where being in the room genuinely changes the outcome.

Quick question about VAPT? Message us and get an answer today.

Insights, news and know-how

Guidance from our consultants, with anything about this standard first in each column.

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News

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Knowledge base

How things are actually done.

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Ready to start on VAPT?

Book a short session and we will tell you what is involved, how long it takes and what it costs.