Scoping Questionnaire for Black Box (External) Penetration Testing

Want to undertake external or black box pen test to assess the risk of external threats and attacks? Please complete the scoping questionnaire below or click here to download a PDF document, fill and return to us

1. What is the business requirement for this penetration test?

i). This is required by a regulatory audit or standard?
ii). Proactive internal decision to determine all weaknesses?
For example, is the driver for this to comply with an audit requirement, or are you seeking to proactively evaluate the security in your environment?

2. Will you also conduct a white box pen test or black box test or BOTH?

please note:
[White Box can be best described as a test where specific information has been provided in order to focus the effort. This tests the threat of internal attacks, say originating from people who have access to your network and know a lot about the services, ports, apps, etc running

Black Box can be best described as a test where no information is provided by the client and the approach is left entirely to the penetration tester (analyst) to determine a means for exploitation – this helps you understand the threat of external attacks]

3. How many IP addresses and/or applications are included as in‐scope for this testing? Please list them, including multiple sites, etc.

In case you need a white box pen test, provide the following:
1. IP address range (Internal & External).
2. Few of the staff’s email addresses & their names for assessing level of security awareness.

4. What are the objectives?

1. Map out vulnerabilities
2. Demonstrate that the vulnerabilities
3. Actual exploitation of vulnerability in a network, system, or application.
4. Obtain privileged access; exploit buffer overflows, SQL injection attacks, etc. This level of test would carry out the exploitation of a weakness and can impact system availability.
5. All of the above

5. What is the “target” of the Penetration test? Is it;

1. An Application
2. A Website
3. A Network
4. Application and Network
5. Wireless
6. Other, please explain
7. All of the above – please specify

6. Do you also want the following tests to be performed?
Social Engineering test – to gain sensitive information from one or more of your employees (to infer or solicit sensitive information) Please explain fully:

7. Will this testing be done on a production environment?
You need to understand that certain exploitation of vulnerabilities to determine and/or prove a weakness could crash your system or cause it to reboot. Summit Consulting is not liable for downtime caused by proving the system’s weakness to attack.

8. If production environments must not be affected, does a similar environment (development and/or test systems) exist that can be used to conduct the pen test?

9 . Are the business owners aware of this pen test?
Are key stakeholders (business owners) aware that the nature of a pen test is to attack the system as a hacker (or hostile actor) would in order to learn and prove the system’s weakness? In addition to identifying vulnerabilities, if found, we will attempt to exploit them and then show you the results.

10. At what time do you want these tests to be performed?

1. During business hours
2. After business hours
3. Weekend hours
4. During system maintenance window
5. Anytime, please explain fully

11. Who is the technical point of contact, assuming this is not a covert (black box) test of the incident response function?

12. Provide a dated written consent letter on company headed paper and stamped with the company seal/stamp authorizing for the penetration test to take place and showing duration of test

13. Additional information?


Spread the love