Penetration Testing in Raleigh, NC
Raleigh is the capital of North Carolina and the eastern anchor of the Research Triangle, the Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill corridor built around NC State, Duke and UNC. Within a short drive sit the Red Hat headquarters, the SAS Institute campus in Cary, the Cisco and IQVIA campuses in Research Triangle Park, and the pharma and biotech manufacturing base of Biogen and GSK. Add the state's executive agencies and the UNC Health, Duke Health and WakeMed systems, and the result is a concentration of research IP, regulated health data and public-sector systems that attracts a threat model closer to Boston or Washington than to a mid-size Southern capital. HackersHub runs offensive security engagements scoped to that threat model: manual penetration tests, red team operations and phishing simulations delivered by named OSCP, OSWE and CREST-certified testers.
The Raleigh and Research Triangle threat landscape
Organisations in the Triangle sit at the intersection of three threat models that rarely overlap elsewhere. First, intellectual-property theft: pharma, biotech and university research programmes are standing targets for state-aligned actors running long-dwell collection against clinical-trial data, process chemistry and grant-funded research, with access typically gained through phished researcher credentials, exposed collaboration portals and over-trusted partner VPNs. Second, ransomware against public bodies and health systems: since 2021 North Carolina has prohibited state and local government entities from paying ransoms, which removes the negotiation lever and leaves restoration and prevention as the only options, so an untested backup path or a flat network between county offices becomes a multi-week outage rather than a payment. Third, software supply-chain compromise: the Triangle's open-source, DevOps and enterprise-software density means CI/CD pipelines, package registries, OAuth-connected developer tooling and Kubernetes clusters are the entry point rather than the perimeter. Engagements in Raleigh routinely uncover flat segmentation between corporate IT and lab or manufacturing networks, over-privileged service accounts spanning Active Directory and Entra ID, research portals with weak tenant isolation, legacy VPN and edge appliances still in production, and long-lived secrets committed to internal repositories.
Need a penetration test in Raleigh?
Written scope, named OSCP-certified testers, report within a week of the last testing day.
Industries we routinely engage in Raleigh and the Triangle
Repeatable threat patterns by sector, drawn from engagement data rather than vendor marketing.
State government and public sector
North Carolina executive agencies, the UNC System, counties and municipalities in Wake and the surrounding Triangle, and the vendors that serve them. Engagements are scoped against the NC Department of Information Technology (NC DIT) statewide security standards and NIST SP 800-53, with reporting structured for the 2021 ransom-payment prohibition and the incident-reporting duties that came with it.
Pharma, biotech and life sciences
Biogen and GSK sites in Research Triangle Park, contract research organisations such as IQVIA, and the cell and gene therapy manufacturing cluster around the Triangle. Threat model leads with IP theft and lab or manufacturing disruption; engagements cover IT/OT segmentation in validated GxP environments, research-portal and partner-access review, and red team operations against state-actor collection patterns.
Software, open source and enterprise technology
Red Hat in Raleigh, SAS Institute in Cary, Cisco in Research Triangle Park, and the SaaS scale-ups around them. Source-assisted web application and API pentests, cloud configuration review across AWS, Azure and GCP, CI/CD and software supply-chain assessment, and SOC 2 Type II evidence delivered on audit timelines.
Health systems and academic medicine
UNC Health, Duke Health, WakeMed and the physician groups and research hospitals attached to them. HIPAA Security Rule evaluations under 45 CFR 164.308(a)(8), EHR access-path and identity assessments, medical-device segmentation review, and BEC-resilience phishing simulation against revenue-cycle and payroll staff.
Compliance frameworks we report against
Engagements for Raleigh-based organisations regularly feed into federal, state and sector 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.
- NC DIT Statewide Information Security Manual: state agencies, UNC System and local government
- N.C. Gen. Stat. 143-800 (2021): ransom-payment prohibition and incident reporting for state and local government entities
- N.C. Gen. Stat. 75-65: Identity Theft Protection Act breach notification
- HIPAA Security Rule, 45 CFR 164.308(a)(8) technical evaluation, including the annual-pentest requirement in the HHS update proposed in January 2025
- CMMC 2.0 Level 2 (NIST SP 800-171) for defense suppliers, in DoD contracts since November 2025
- SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria CC4.1 and CC7.1
- PCI DSS v4.0.1 Requirement 11.4, fully enforced since 31 March 2025
- NIST SP 800-115 methodology and NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 control CA-8
Services delivered for Raleigh engagements
Same global service catalogue, scoped to the Triangle's regulatory and operational context.
Why Raleigh enterprises choose HackersHub
HackersHub is headquartered in Amsterdam and has no office in North Carolina. We say that up front, because the delivery model matters more than a local address. External, web application, API and cloud testing runs remotely from our Amsterdam lab. Internal network testing runs through a client-provisioned jump host or a shipped test appliance, or on site when the scope calls for it. Physical intrusion, assumed-breach and full red team operations include tester travel to the Triangle. Scoping calls, status updates and report walkthroughs are scheduled in US Eastern business hours. Every engagement is led by a named tester; engagement lead Michael van Mameren (OSCP) scopes each Triangle engagement personally, and the team holds OSCP, OSWE and CREST certifications. Reports map directly to NC DIT, NIST SP 800-53, HIPAA, SOC 2 and CMMC 2.0 evidence categories, and a senior-level scoping call happens within one business day.
Frequently asked questions: Raleigh
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