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Physical Penetration Testing: Lessons Learned + 10 Tips to Fortify Your Workplace
Most organizations think of penetration testing in terms of cybersecurity. But the truth is, many vulnerabilities come from the physical world, often easier to exploit than digital systems. Over the years, Guidepost Solutions has conducted physical penetration tests for data centers, sports and entertainment venues, schools, multitenant office buildings and global corporations. Evaluating an organization’s physical controls can reveal critical security gaps contributing to potential breaches. This indispensable insight acquired through the simulation of real-world attacks is meant to challenge all aspects of a security program, not just the technology or physical security piece. To gain an accurate view of the organization’s defenses, it is necessary to test the human and procedural aspects of the physical security program to validate its effectiveness and highlight what is working well and not working well.
Your organization may have hidden vulnerabilities that leave you more susceptible to physical compromises. Through our experience, we have identified these common vulnerabilities:
Blind Spots
Whether it’s due to insufficient surveillance coverage, systems being offline, or physical obstruction, blind spots are commonly overlooked and increases an adversary’s window of opportunity. This circumvents the intent of security controls, leaving a facility at an inherent risk of experiencing security breach, theft, or damage to physical assets.
Social Engineering Vulnerabilities
Human-centric vulnerabilities, such as human error, significantly increase the risk of employees falling victim to tactics frequently used by threat actors and could lead to mistakes having significant consequences. Developing clear policies, conducting regular training, and simulating real-world attacks not only exposes evolving threat vectors but can also identify vulnerabilities before they become exploited.
Relaxed Security Culture
Many organizations still believe that it “cannot happen here” or they are unlikely targets for internal and external threats. This not only leads to complacency but fails to foster a shared mindset of security responsibility. This lack of awareness can also result in low priority given to security measures increasing the likelihood of incidents. This requires leaders at all levels to treat security as a core organizational function that is embedded into the mindset across all levels.
Policy and Security Practice Gaps
The gaps between the organization’s documented policies and poorly enforced security practices often lead to operational failures. Policies that do not align with the operational practices, not only increase the organization’s risk exposure also create ineffective policies. When policies are not executed as intended, it creates significant deficiencies and the erosion of trust.
Physical Hardware/Technical Bypassing
Physical hardware, vulnerable to manipulation, enable threat actors to bypass traditional security controls. Over the years, our team has found that this common vulnerability has enabled our team to gain unauthorized access and bypass traditional security measures.
10 Key Tips to Strengthen Your Organization’s Physical Security Defenses
Here are 10 actionable steps organizations can take to fortify their physical security posture and reduce the risk of compromise, through lessons learned from real-world penetration tests.
- Inspect exterior doors often to identify doors that are vulnerable to manipulation.
- Frequently engage in active awareness and training to ensure staff become more proactive vs reactive.
- Leverage lessons learned as learning opportunities to educate and improve awareness.
- Ensure there are diverse reporting avenues available to report security concerns and build a culture of trust and safety.
- Identify human error vulnerabilities to reinforce security best practices and minimize complacency.
- Ensure technology systems and advanced encryption standards are deployed to provide a robust layer of protection.
- Employ effective access control processes to mitigate against unauthorized access.
- Streamline the automation of systems to enhance situational awareness.
- Validate security practices against operational reality.
- Conduct a security survey to uncover hidden vulnerabilities.
Strengthening your organization’s physical security requires more than just robust technology—it demands a vigilant culture, clear policies, and ongoing training to address both human and procedural vulnerabilities. While these steps are critical, implementing an unbiased assessment of the organization’s security controls can be overlooked due to familiarity. That’s why partnering with a third-party security consultant, such as Guidepost Solutions, can be invaluable. Leveraging years of hands-on experience, industry best practices, and hard-earned lessons from real-world penetration tests, our team can help you identify overlooked vulnerabilities, validate your defenses, and build a truly resilient security program.
Angela Osborne CPP, PSP, PCI
Vice President, Risk + Emergency Management Solutions
Angela J. Osborne, PCI, PSP, CPP specializes in emergency management planning, security risk assessments, and physical security assessments. She has worked with clients in diverse sectors, including education, government, healthcare, legal, energy, manufacturing, and commercial real estate.
Connie Brandon CPP, CPD
Senior Consultant
Connie Brandon brings more than 20 years of business experience in roles such as: private ownership, human resources, payroll management, and physical security. Ms. Brandon’s physical security responsibilities have included physical security operations and management, operational risk assessment and surveys, guard force management and training; emergency management; investigations; staff and budget management; policy and procedure development; project management, compliance audits, and contract negotiation. Brandon’s market sector experience includes government, construction, healthcare, utilities, data centers, residential, global logistics, and corporate.
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