Penetration Testing in Wisconsin
Penetration testing in Wisconsin covers an unusually wide spread of targets for one state: the electronic health record software written in Verona and the health systems that run it, the insurers and mutuals headquartered in Milwaukee, Madison, Stevens Point and Sheboygan, industrial automation and power equipment built along the I-94 corridor from Milwaukee to Waukesha, the paper, packaging and specialty-vehicle plants of the Fox Valley, cheese and meat processors from Green Bay to Plymouth, the shipyards of Marinette and the University of Wisconsin campuses. Northwestern Mutual, Fiserv, Rockwell Automation, Harley-Davidson, American Family Insurance, Epic, GE HealthCare's Waukesha operations, Oshkosh Corporation and Schreiber Foods are part of the landscape that shapes what buyers here ask for. HackersHub delivers manual penetration tests, red team operations and phishing simulations to Wisconsin organisations, run by OSCP-certified testers with OSWE and CREST specialists for deeper work.
Premium, human-led penetration testing at around 40% below comparable U.S. providers.
What attackers look for in Wisconsin
Wisconsin's economy is built on data that is valuable precisely because it is shared. Health systems across the state exchange records through interoperability interfaces, patient portals and third-party apps; the software vendors around Madison connect into hundreds of customer environments; insurers and mutual companies move policyholder, claims and medical underwriting data between agents, adjusters and reinsurers. Each of those connections is a trust relationship, and in our experience trust relationships, not exotic exploits, are where most serious findings come from. Manufacturing adds a second layer. Wisconsin has one of the highest shares of manufacturing employment in the country, and many plants still run controllers and HMIs designed for isolated networks that are now reachable through engineering laptops, remote-support tools and vendor VPNs. Food and dairy processors carry the same exposure with less margin for downtime, because a stopped line in a cheese plant or a packaging operation can mean spoiled product as well as lost output. Defence work concentrated in Oshkosh, Marinette and the Milwaukee supplier base brings CMMC 2.0 requirements, which the Department of Defense began phasing into contracts in November 2025. On the legal side, Wis. Stat. 134.98 requires entities that hold personal information about Wisconsin residents to notify them within a reasonable time, not exceeding 45 days, after learning of unauthorised acquisition, and licensed insurers fall under the state's insurance data security law created by 2021 Wisconsin Act 73. A pen testing engagement here typically turns up flat networks between office and plant, service accounts shared across hospital or carrier subsidiaries, agent and broker portals that expose more records than the logged-in user should see, and integration APIs that accept tokens issued for a different tenant.
Need a penetration test in Wisconsin?
Written scope, named OSCP-certified testers, report within a week of the last testing day.
Sectors we test across Wisconsin
Most Wisconsin requests come from health, insurance and manufacturing, but finance, food production, defence, education and the public sector each bring their own scoping questions.
Health systems & EHR and health-IT software (Madison, Verona, Milwaukee)
Hospital systems, academic medicine, clinics and the software companies that build records, revenue-cycle, imaging and patient-engagement products. Testing covers patient portals, FHIR and HL7 interfaces, single sign-on into clinical applications and the tenant isolation that a multi-customer health platform depends on. Findings map to the HIPAA Security Rule technical evaluation at 45 CFR 164.308(a)(8) and to the security questionnaires hospital customers send their vendors.
Industrial automation, power equipment & manufacturing OT (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Fox Valley)
Automation and controls makers, engine, generator and marine manufacturers, paper and packaging mills and contract manufacturers. We test the boundary between corporate IT and the plant: engineering workstations, historians, remote-access gateways and vendor support paths, plus product security for connected equipment that ships to customers. Reports reference IEC 62443 and NIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3.
Insurance & mutual companies (Milwaukee, Madison, Stevens Point, Sheboygan)
Life, property and casualty and specialty carriers, mutual insurers, credit-union service providers and the agencies around them. Web, mobile and API testing of agent, broker and policyholder portals, identity and privileged-access reviews, and phishing simulation aimed at claims and payment staff, with evidence organised for the risk assessment and testing obligations of the Wisconsin insurance data security law.
Banking, fintech & payments (Milwaukee, Brookfield, Green Bay)
Regional banks, credit unions, wealth managers and payment-processing and core-banking technology providers. Application and API testing of online banking and merchant platforms, segmentation testing of cardholder data environments and red team exercises against wire and treasury workflows. Evidence aligns with the GLBA and FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314), FFIEC guidance and PCI DSS v4.0.1 Requirement 11.4.
Dairy, cheese & food processing (Green Bay, Plymouth, Sheboygan, statewide)
Cheese makers, dairy cooperatives, meat and specialty-food processors and cold-chain logistics. Plants combine refrigeration and process controls with ERP, warehouse and supplier systems, often across many rural sites with thin local IT. We focus on the paths ransomware uses to reach production and on how well backups and recovery hold up, scheduling active work around production runs.
Defence vehicles, shipbuilding & their suppliers (Oshkosh, Marinette, Milwaukee)
Tactical vehicle and naval shipbuilding programmes and the machining, electronics and engineering firms that supply them. Testing checks whether controlled unclassified information stays inside its enclave, with findings written against NIST SP 800-171 and DFARS 252.204-7012 to support CMMC 2.0 Level 2 readiness.
Universities & research (Madison, Milwaukee, statewide campuses)
The Universities of Wisconsin campuses, private universities such as Marquette, medical schools and research institutes. Open networks, research computing and thousands of short-lived accounts make identity the main battleground, so testing traces how far a compromised student, researcher or contractor account can reach.
State agencies, counties & municipalities (Madison and statewide)
State agencies around the Capitol, counties, cities, school districts and the vendors that host their systems. External and internal testing, Active Directory reviews and ransomware-readiness exercises that show how quickly an intruder would reach payroll, tax, court or student records and whether backups would survive.
Wisconsin and US frameworks we report against
Wisconsin reports usually go to more than one reader: an examiner at the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance or the Department of Financial Institutions, a hospital customer's vendor-risk team, a cyber insurer or a defence prime. We tag each finding to the frameworks that apply to your organisation and include the reproduction steps an auditor needs. Every report contains an executive summary, CVSS scores, an attack narrative and a prioritised remediation order, and findings rated medium or higher are retested within 90 days.
- Wisconsin insurance data security law, Wis. Stat. 601.95 to 601.956 (2021 Wisconsin Act 73), overseen by the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance
- Wis. Stat. 134.98: notice to affected residents within a reasonable time, not exceeding 45 days
- Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions oversight of state-chartered banks and credit unions
- HIPAA Security Rule 45 CFR 164.308(a)(8) technical evaluation
- GLBA and FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314) and FFIEC IT Examination Handbook
- CMMC 2.0 Level 2 (NIST SP 800-171) and DFARS 252.204-7012 for defence suppliers
- IEC 62443 and NIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3 for manufacturing and food-processing OT
- FDA premarket cybersecurity expectations (FD&C Act section 524B) for medical-device makers
- PCI DSS v4.0.1 Requirement 11.4 penetration testing
- SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria CC7.1 / CC7.4
- NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 and NIST SP 800-115 technical security testing
Penetration testing services across Wisconsin
Application, API and cloud testing for health and financial platforms, plus plant, identity and red team engagements for the organisations that run them.
See also:Penetration Testing in ChicagoPenetration Testing in IllinoisPenetration Testing in MinneapolisPenetration Testing in MichiganPenetration Testing in IndianapolisPenetration Testing in OhioPenetration Testing in St. LouisPenetration Testing in United States
How a penetration test in Wisconsin works
- 01
Scoping call
Targets, goals and required evidence, then a written proposal.
- 02
Rules of engagement
Windows, exclusions and stop procedures signed off first.
- 03
Manual testing
Certified testers chain findings by hand, like an attacker.
- 04
Report and debrief
Executive summary, CVSS-scored findings, remediation walkthrough.
For Wisconsin manufacturers, dairy processors and hospital systems, scoping also schedules any on-site days in Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay or the Fox Valley around production and clinical hours.
What drives the scope of a test
| Factor | What we look at |
|---|---|
| Attack surface | Networks, applications, APIs and cloud tenants in scope. |
| Depth | Unauthenticated, or across user roles. |
| Evidence | Which framework or customer the report serves. |
| Plants and clinical systems | Operational technology on production lines, EHR-connected clinical systems and the insurer or vendor evidence required. |
Why Wisconsin organisations choose HackersHub
Wisconsin buyers tend to value plain dealing, so the facts first. HackersHub is a penetration testing firm founded in the Netherlands in 2015 and based in Amsterdam; it has no office, address or staff based in Wisconsin or elsewhere in the US. US engagements are run by the Amsterdam team alongside vetted US delivery partners, ahead of the firm's full US market entry scheduled for Q1 2027. Web applications, APIs, cloud tenants and external perimeters are tested remotely; internal networks, plants, hospitals, wireless and physical assessments in Milwaukee, Madison, Waukesha, Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh or Eau Claire are handled by testers who travel for the engagement. The OSCP is the minimum certification on the team, with OSWE- and CREST-certified testers assigned to complex application and infrastructure scopes; engagement lead Michael van Mameren (OSCP) runs the work to PTES, the OWASP WSTG and MASTG guides and NIST SP 800-115. Because the team works daily under GDPR and NIS2, European subsidiaries of Wisconsin companies, and Wisconsin plants of European groups, can receive one report that both sides recognise. Readouts are booked in the Central-time afternoon. Each pentest is scoped and quoted individually.
Because HackersHub delivers from Europe, an engagement typically comes in at around 40% below what comparable U.S. providers charge for the same scope, with the same manual depth, OSCP-certified testers and reporting. Every engagement is scoped and quoted individually.
Frequently asked questions: Wisconsin
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