Penetration Testing in Berkeley, CA
Human-led penetration testing for Berkeley businesses and the systems they run on. Fixed price, audit-ready reports mapped to SOC 2, and a free remediation retest.
What a penetration test is really for
CyberFortify runs manual web, API, network and cloud penetration tests for Berkeley organizations, with findings mapped to SOC 2 and the other frameworks California businesses answer to.
Security tooling tells you what is theoretically exposed. A penetration test tells you what a capable attacker would actually do with it. Organizations in Berkeley across Alameda County operate within California’s economy of technology and SaaS, life sciences and media and entertainment, 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.
What makes a Berkeley engagement worth the money is not the automated scan at the start. It is the tester who takes a low-severity information disclosure, pairs it with an over-privileged account, and demonstrates the path that ends somewhere it should never reach. That is the difference between a report you file and a report you act on.
For Berkeley 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 Berkeley organizations
California’s economy is not one thing, and neither is its risk. These are the sectors we most often test for Berkeley organizations, and what an attacker goes after in each.
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.
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.
Media and entertainment
Media, film and entertainment organizations protect something unusual: pre-release content whose value evaporates the moment it leaks. The perimeter is a chain of vendors — post-production, VFX, review platforms — each holding a copy, and the loss from a single leaked screener is commercial and permanent.
We test review and screener platforms and their storage for authorization and share-link weaknesses, the cloud holding assets, and the vendor-access paths that let an outside partner reach content they should not, using decoy assets rather than real material.
Penetration testing services for Berkeley
You rarely need all of these at once — we scope to the systems where a breach would hurt and start there.
Web Application Penetration Testing
Every user role exercised for the authorization and logic flaws scanners miss.
OT & ICS Penetration Testing
IEC 62443-aligned assessment of the plant floor and its SCADA systems.
Cloud Penetration Testing
The metadata-service, role-assumption and public-bucket mistakes attackers hunt for.
Mobile Application Penetration Testing
iOS and Android against OWASP MASVS, client and backend both.
API Penetration Testing
Authorization and data-exposure testing for REST and GraphQL interfaces.
Network Penetration Testing
Perimeter exposure and internal domain compromise paths, mapped end to end.
Evidence for the frameworks California businesses answer to
Given California’s technology, life sciences, entertainment, agriculture and aerospace, these are the frameworks a Berkeley engagement most often produces evidence for. One test, evidence for all of them.
SOC 2
The testing behind CC7 that turns a claimed control into a demonstrated one.
HIPAA
The technical half of a Security Rule risk analysis for regulated health data.
PCI DSS 4.0
Requirement 11.4 internal and external testing, plus segmentation validation.
Organizations handling personal data in California also fall under CCPA/CPRA and the CPPA cybersecurity audit regulations. 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 Berkeley 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 SOC 2 and the standards California 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 Berkeley 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 Berkeley engineer can fix them and an auditor can accept them. Fixed price, same-day critical escalation, retest included.
Penetration testing in Berkeley, answered
Is testing done on-site in Berkeley or remotely?
Usually not. Web, API, cloud, mobile and external network testing is delivered remotely from our US-based team, which is how most Berkeley engagements run. Internal network, wireless and physical assessments are the cases where we come on-site, and travel is quoted up front.
What should a Berkeley company budget for a test?
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.
Will the report satisfy our auditor?
Yes. Every finding carries reproduction steps, CVSS v3.1 scoring and a control mapping, so an assessor can trace a requirement to the test that exercised it. For California organizations that most often means SOC 2, and we scope to the evidence your assessor expects.
What do you focus on for Technology organizations?
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. In a Berkeley engagement that usually starts with cross-tenant data access and works outward from there.
Does California law require security testing?
CCPA/CPRA and the CPPA cybersecurity audit regulations sets a reasonable-security expectation rather than mandating a test explicitly. In practice a recent penetration test is how California organizations evidence that the expectation was actually met.
Can you sign our vendor security questionnaire?
Yes. We complete SIG, CAIQ and custom questionnaires and can join the vendor review call. For Berkeley companies selling into larger enterprises, a current test plus a completed questionnaire is usually what unblocks the deal.
How soon can a Berkeley engagement start?
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 Berkeley
We work across California. See nearby cities or the full state overview.
Test your Berkeley systems before someone else does.
A 30-minute scoping call gets you a fixed price and a start date, usually within the hour.