Network Penetration Testing for Financial Services companies in Hartford (CT)
Network Penetration Testing for Financial Services in Hartford, CT
Financial institutions in Hartford and across Connecticut are attractive targets for cybercriminals. Banks, credit unions, asset managers, and insurance carriers hold large volumes of sensitive customer data, wire transfer capabilities, trading platforms, and payment systems—exactly what attackers want to exploit.
Common attack methods include phishing, malware, credential theft, ransomware, and web application attacks such as SQL injection. These techniques are used to gain unauthorized access to account data, ACH and wire systems, loan origination platforms, and other critical financial systems. In 2021, the median reported cost of a data breach reached $4.24M—and that figure does not reflect many unreported incidents. For a regional bank or insurer, a serious breach can quickly become a business and reputational crisis.
For this reason, regular, independent network penetration testing is no longer optional for financial services organizations operating in Connecticut. It is now an expected control under multiple regulatory and industry frameworks, including GLBA, NYDFS Part 500 (for Hartford firms with New York operations), FFIEC guidance, PCI DSS, and general IT security best practices. Ongoing testing helps ensure your existing defenses are working as intended and that security gaps are identified before an attacker finds them.
What Is Network Penetration Testing for Financial Institutions?
Network penetration testing (often called a pentest) is a controlled, ethical hacking exercise where security professionals simulate real-world cyberattacks on your environment. For financial services in Hartford, this typically includes:
External network testing – Attempting to compromise internet-facing systems such as online banking portals, customer portals, remote access services, and APIs.
Internal network testing – Simulating an attacker or malicious insider already inside the environment, targeting core banking systems, insurance platforms, trading systems, file shares, and Active Directory.
Configuration and security control review – Evaluating firewalls, VPNs, segmentation between guest, corporate, and payment networks, and controls around high-value systems (SWIFT, ACH, payment gateways, and policy admin systems).
The outcome is a clear, prioritized view of your actual risk exposure—how far an attacker could go, what data they could access, and how to remediate the issues. For boards, CROs, CISOs, and compliance teams, these results support risk management, IT security assessment, and regulatory reporting.
Hartford & Connecticut Financial Services Penetration Testing Experience
OCD Tech provides network penetration testing services to financial services companies in Hartford and throughout Connecticut. Our clients include regional and community banks, credit unions, investment and asset management firms, insurance companies, and financial technology (FinTech) providers that support them.
Our team combines hands-on penetration testing, red team operations, and IT risk advisory experience. We understand the specific technology stack common to financial institutions in the Hartford area—core banking platforms, insurance policy administration systems, loan origination platforms, treasury management systems, trading tools, and payment processing environments.
The result is a practical, business-focused penetration test that not only identifies vulnerabilities but also explains:
How an attacker could realistically abuse the weakness in a financial context (fraud, unauthorized transfers, data exfiltration, lateral movement toward crown-jewel systems).
Which remediation actions will most effectively reduce risk within your environment and regulatory obligations.
Our Network Penetration Testing Methodology
OCD Tech follows a structured, repeatable penetration testing methodology aligned with industry standards and financial sector expectations. While tailored to each organization, our typical approach includes:
Passive Reconnaissance – Quietly collecting information about your organization and network from public sources, without touching your systems, to understand your external footprint.
Active Reconnaissance – Safely scanning and probing your infrastructure to identify live hosts, open ports, services, and potential entry points.
Social Engineering (where in scope) – Testing employee awareness through controlled phishing or pretexting attempts, focusing on high‑risk roles such as finance, wire operations, traders, and senior executives.
Exploitation – Attempting to exploit identified vulnerabilities to gain access, using techniques comparable to real attackers but within agreed rules of engagement.
Post-Exploitation – Assessing what an attacker could do after gaining a foothold, including data access, internal reconnaissance, and movement toward high-value financial systems.
Privilege Escalation – Attempting to obtain higher permissions (for example, domain admin or elevated access in core banking or insurance systems).
Lateral Movement – Testing segmentation and internal controls by moving between systems and networks, such as from a user workstation toward payment platforms or customer databases.
Maintaining Access – Demonstrating how an attacker could persist within the environment over time, while remaining within safe, pre-agreed boundaries.
Covering Tracks – Evaluating how easily activity could be hidden from monitoring and logging tools, helping you strengthen detection and response capabilities (blue team operations).
Reporting & Executive Debrief – Delivering clear, non-technical and technical reporting, including a prioritized remediation plan, mapping to regulatory and internal policy requirements, and a walkthrough with your leadership and security teams.
This approach allows your organization to test not just technology, but also people, processes, and incident response capabilities, offering value to both your security team and your risk, audit, and compliance functions.
National Reach with Local Hartford Focus
While we work extensively with financial institutions in Hartford and across Connecticut, OCD Tech also delivers network penetration testing services nationwide, including:
This broader exposure ensures our team regularly encounters a wide range of attacker techniques and defensive controls, which we bring back to our work with Connecticut financial institutions.
Contact Our Hartford Network Penetration Testing Consultants
OCD Tech provides network penetration testing, IT security assessments, and cybersecurity consulting to financial services organizations in Hartford and across Connecticut. Whether you need to satisfy regulatory expectations, support an internal audit, or validate your defenses against modern threat actors, we can help.
If you are interested in learning how we can assist your organization with a network penetration test tailored to financial services, please complete the form below. A member of our team will contact you to discuss scope, timing, and objectives in more detail.
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)