Penetration Testing in Austin, TX
Austin is the Texas state capital and the centre of "Silicon Hills": the Dell Technologies campus in Round Rock, Oracle's corporate headquarters, Tesla's Gigafactory Texas, Samsung Austin Semiconductor and its Taylor fab, the AMD, Apple and NXP campuses, and the University of Texas at Austin. HackersHub runs offensive security engagements scoped to the threat model these organisations actually face: semiconductor and hardware IP theft by state-aligned actors, SaaS supply-chain compromise, cloud identity abuse, and the TX-RAMP, TAC 202 and SOC 2 evidence regime that Texas agencies and enterprise buyers now expect.
The Austin threat landscape
Organisations in Austin sit at the intersection of three threat models that rarely overlap elsewhere. First, the semiconductor and hardware cluster (Samsung, AMD, NXP, Apple silicon teams, the fab supply chain) is a standing collection target for state-aligned actors pursuing process IP, EDA tooling and design data, typically through long-dwell access rather than ransomware. Second, the SaaS and scale-up ecosystem that grew up around Oracle, Dell and the UT Austin talent pipeline carries the classic cloud-native attack surface: OAuth consent abuse against engineering tooling, leaked CI/CD and cloud credentials, over-privileged service accounts, and tenant-isolation flaws in multi-tenant platforms. Third, as the state capital, Austin hosts the Texas state agencies and the vendors that sell into them, a target set with a documented history of coordinated ransomware campaigns against Texas public bodies, most visibly the August 2019 attack on 23 local government entities. Engagements in Austin routinely uncover identity drift between corporate IdPs and cloud tenants, unaudited vendor access into state-agency systems, internet-exposed engineering and lab infrastructure, and edge appliances past vendor support but still in production.
Need a penetration test in Austin?
Written scope, named OSCP-certified testers, report within a week of the last testing day.
Industries we routinely engage in Austin
Repeatable threat patterns by sector, drawn from real engagement data rather than vendor marketing.
Semiconductor, hardware & advanced manufacturing
Fab operators, chip designers, hardware OEMs and their tier-one suppliers across Austin, Round Rock and Taylor. Engagements cover IT/OT segmentation review, engineering-network and lab-environment assessments, supplier-access risk, and red team operations scoped against state-aligned IP-collection tradecraft. Reporting maps to NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 and CMMC 2.0 where defence-adjacent contracts apply.
Enterprise software, SaaS & cloud platforms
Platform companies and scale-ups across the Domain, downtown and East Austin. Manual web-application, API and cloud-configuration pentests scoped against the SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria, PCI DSS 4.0 where payments are in scope, and the TX-RAMP Level 1 / Level 2 requirements that apply when a cloud product is sold to a Texas state agency.
State government & public-sector vendors
Texas state agencies, higher-education institutions and the vendors that supply them. Engagements are scoped against the Texas Cybersecurity Framework and Texas Administrative Code Chapter 202 (TAC 202), with deliverables that support the biennial information security assessment Texas Government Code 2054.515 requires and the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) reporting that follows from it.
Healthcare, life sciences & research
Hospital systems, health-tech companies and UT Austin research-data custodians. HIPAA Security Rule evaluation evidence (45 CFR 164.308(a)(8)), identity-led methodology for clinical and research environments, and breach-readiness assessments mapped to the Texas breach-notification statute (Tex. Bus. & Com. Code 521.053).
Compliance frameworks we report against
Engagements for Austin-based organisations regularly feed into Texas state, federal and customer-driven regulatory reporting. Deliverables include a penetration testing statement, executive summary, technical report with proof-of-concept, and a remediation tracker, formatted to satisfy the evidence requirements of each framework below without additional documentation.
- TX-RAMP (Texas Risk and Authorization Management Program) Level 1 / Level 2, mandatory for cloud products sold to Texas state agencies since 2022
- Texas Administrative Code Chapter 202 (TAC 202) and the Texas Cybersecurity Framework (DIR)
- Texas Government Code 2054.515 biennial state-agency information security assessment
- Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA), effective 1 July 2024
- Tex. Bus. & Com. Code 521.053 breach notification: affected residents within 60 days, Attorney General within 30 days when 250 or more Texans are affected
- Texas SB 2610 (2025) cybersecurity safe harbor for businesses maintaining a written cybersecurity program
- SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria CC7.1 / CC7.4
- PCI DSS 4.0 Requirement 11.4 penetration testing
- HIPAA Security Rule 45 CFR 164.308(a)(8) technical evaluation
- CMMC 2.0 Level 2 (NIST SP 800-171) for defence-adjacent suppliers
- NIST SP 800-115 technical security testing and NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 CA-8
Services delivered for Austin engagements
Same global service catalogue, scoped to the Austin regulatory and operational context.
See also:Penetration Testing in Texas
Why Austin enterprises choose HackersHub
HackersHub is an Amsterdam-headquartered practitioner firm with no US office, and we model the engagement honestly around that. External, web-application, API and cloud testing is delivered remotely from the Netherlands; internal network, wireless and physical assessments are delivered on site in Austin by travelling testers. Scoping calls, status updates and report walkthroughs are scheduled on US Central business hours. Every engagement is run by named OSCP-, OSWE- or CREST-certified offensive security professionals, with Michael van Mameren (OSCP) acting as engagement lead, and reports are written directly against TX-RAMP, TAC 202, SOC 2, PCI DSS 4.0, HIPAA and CMMC 2.0 evidence categories. Senior-level scoping calls happen within one business day.
Frequently asked questions: Austin
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