Penetration Testing in New York, NY
New York concentrates more regulated financial infrastructure than any other city: the exchanges and clearing houses of Lower Manhattan, the asset managers and insurers of Midtown and Hudson Yards, the fintech and digital-asset licensees supervised by the Department of Financial Services, and the hospital systems, media groups and law firms that hold the data those institutions depend on. HackersHub runs offensive security engagements scoped to the regime these organisations answer to: the annual penetration test that 23 NYCRR 500.5 requires, the four-business-day materiality clock the SEC imposes on public companies, FINRA and Regulation S-P expectations for broker-dealers, the SHIELD Act for every business holding New York resident data, and HIPAA for covered entities.
The New York threat landscape
The adversary profile in New York follows the money and the data that moves it. Financially motivated groups target treasury, trading and payment workflows with business email compromise, session-token theft against single-sign-on portals, and ransomware timed to settlement cycles; state-aligned actors pursue deal data, litigation files and client lists held by law firms and advisers, where a single compromised mailbox exposes dozens of client matters at once. The Department of Financial Services has responded with the most prescriptive cybersecurity rule of any US state regulator: since the November 2023 amendment to 23 NYCRR Part 500, covered entities must run penetration testing from inside and outside the information system boundary at least annually, maintain documented vulnerability management, report cybersecurity incidents within 72 hours and extortion payments within 24 hours, and have a senior officer certify compliance each April. Class A companies carry additional obligations around independent audits, privileged access management and endpoint detection. Engagements in New York routinely surface the gaps that enforcement actions keep citing: multi-factor authentication exceptions for legacy remote access, privileged accounts outside the vault, third-party and fund-administrator access that was never reviewed, flat networks between trading and corporate segments, and internet-exposed appliances carrying known exploited vulnerabilities months after the vendor advisory.
Need a penetration test in New York?
Written scope, named OSCP-certified testers, report within a week of the last testing day.
Industries we routinely engage in New York
Repeatable threat patterns by sector, drawn from engagement data rather than vendor marketing.
Banking, broker-dealers & asset management
Banks, trust companies, broker-dealers, hedge funds and asset managers across Lower Manhattan, Midtown and the Jersey City back-office corridor. External, internal and cloud penetration tests scoped to the 23 NYCRR 500.5 annual requirement and the Class A obligations where applicable, with findings mapped to the FFIEC IT Examination Handbook, FINRA Rule 3110 supervisory expectations and the amended Regulation S-P incident-response program. Trading-floor and market-data segments are tested with explicit change windows.
Insurance & reinsurance
Life, property and casualty, health and reinsurance carriers licensed by the Department of Financial Services, together with their third-party administrators and claims platforms. Identity-led methodology against policy-administration and claims systems, privileged-access review, and reporting written to the 23 NYCRR Part 500 control language that DFS examiners use in the field.
Fintech, payments & digital-asset licensees
Money transmitters, lenders, payment platforms and BitLicense holders supervised under 23 NYCRR Part 200. Manual web-application and API pentests, cloud-configuration and key-management assessments, and wallet and custody architecture review. Evidence mapped to Part 500, PCI DSS v4.0.1 Requirement 11.4 where card data is in scope, and SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria for enterprise customers.
Healthcare systems & life sciences
Hospital networks and academic medical centres across the five boroughs and Long Island, plus the health-tech vendors that serve them. HIPAA Security Rule evaluation evidence (45 CFR 164.308(a)(8)), clinical-network and medical-device segmentation review, and breach-readiness assessments mapped to the SHIELD Act's 30-day resident-notification deadline.
Media, advertising technology & publishing
Broadcasters, streaming platforms, publishers and the adtech exchanges that monetise them. Attack-surface and API testing against bidding and identity-resolution infrastructure, cloud and content-delivery configuration review, and red team operations scoped against credential-theft and defacement tradecraft. SOC 2 and PCI DSS evidence where subscriptions are processed.
Law firms & professional services
Global and Am Law 100 firms headquartered in Manhattan and the advisers, accountants and consultancies around them. Phishing and social-engineering simulation against partner and finance populations, Microsoft 365 and document-management-system assessments, privileged-access review, and reporting structured for client security questionnaires and outside-counsel guidelines.
Compliance frameworks we report against
Engagements for New York-based organisations regularly feed into state, federal and self-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. Our guide to NYDFS penetration testing at /insights/nydfs-penetration-testing/ covers the Part 500 requirements in detail.
- NYDFS 23 NYCRR Part 500 (as amended November 2023), including 500.5 annual penetration testing from inside and outside the information system boundary, 500.7 access privileges, 500.12 multi-factor authentication and 500.17 incident notification within 72 hours
- NYDFS Class A company obligations under Part 500: independent audits, privileged access management and endpoint detection and response
- NYDFS 23 NYCRR Part 200 (BitLicense), section 200.16 cybersecurity program for virtual-currency licensees
- SEC cybersecurity disclosure rules (2023): Form 8-K Item 1.05 within four business days of a materiality determination and Regulation S-K Item 106 annual governance disclosure
- SEC Regulation S-P (amended May 2024): incident response program and customer notification within 30 days
- FINRA Rule 3110 supervision and Rule 4370 business continuity, plus FINRA cybersecurity examination priorities
- New York SHIELD Act, General Business Law 899-aa and 899-bb: reasonable safeguards and breach notification to affected residents within 30 days, with notice to the Attorney General, Department of State, State Police and NYDFS
- FFIEC IT Examination Handbook and GLBA Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314)
- HIPAA Security Rule 45 CFR 164.308(a)(8) technical evaluation
- PCI DSS v4.0.1 Requirement 11.4 penetration testing
- SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria CC7.1 / CC7.4
- NIST SP 800-115 technical security testing and NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 CA-8
Services delivered for New York engagements
Same global service catalogue, scoped to the New York regulatory and operational context.
See also:Penetration Testing in BostonPenetration Testing in AtlantaPenetration Testing in DallasPenetration Testing in DenverPenetration Testing in RaleighPenetration Testing in North CarolinaPenetration Testing in AustinPenetration Testing in Texas
Why New York institutions choose HackersHub
HackersHub is an Amsterdam-headquartered practitioner firm with no US office, and we model New York engagements honestly around that. External, web-application, API and cloud testing is delivered remotely from the Netherlands; internal network, Active Directory, wireless and physical assessments are delivered on site in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island or the New Jersey back-office corridor by travelling testers. Scoping calls, status updates and report walkthroughs are scheduled on US Eastern business hours, and the six-hour offset means remote testing windows can run before the New York trading day opens when that is what the change-control board needs. Every engagement is led 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 23 NYCRR Part 500, SEC, FINRA, SHIELD Act, HIPAA and PCI DSS v4.0.1 evidence categories. Senior-level scoping calls happen within one business day.
Frequently asked questions: New York
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