Uncover hidden entry points before threat actors do. CREST-certified ethical hackers probe web apps, cloud APIs, active directory domains, and physical industrial perimeters with rigorous black-box testing.
Why Automated Scans Fail to Protect Canadian Businesses
Many mid-market Canadian enterprises rely on quarterly automated vulnerability scanners to satisfy compliance checkmarks. Meanwhile, cyber insurance underwriters are denying claims and ransomware actors easily bypass signature-based defenses.
Comprehensive Penetration Testing & Security Audits
Engineered to uncover hidden attack vectors across your cloud tenants, corporate networks, physical distribution facilities, and employee identity systems.
Simulating sophisticated external cybercriminal syndicates, QueryTel attacks your public-facing perimeter from the Internet. We audit external IP blocks, edge firewalls, VPN gateways, remote desktop portals, exposed web applications, and customer APIs. We test for authentication bypasses, zero-day vulnerabilities, misconfigured cloud storage, and leaked administrative panels.
Assuming an attacker has breached a standard workstation or an insider is operating maliciously, we execute internal lateral movement simulations. We deploy BloodHound to graph hidden attack paths to Domain Admins, execute Kerberoasting against service accounts, exploit LLMNR/NBT-NS broadcast poisoning, and evaluate Tier 0 administrative segregation.
Over 80% of corporate breaches originate from stolen credentials purchased on dark web criminal marketplaces. QueryTel continuously scans illicit forums, Russian-language broker markets, private Telegram channels, and code repositories (GitHub/GitLab) for your corporate email addresses, plain-text passwords, session cookies, and leaked API secret tokens.
Is your organization capable of surviving a sophisticated ransomware attack without paying millions in extortion? We conduct controlled breach simulations and executive tabletop exercises. We simulate ransomware detonation in isolated sandboxes to test whether your EDR detects the encryption behavior, whether backups remain truly immutable, and how fast your incident response team isolates compromised subnets.
Canadian insurers (such as Lloyd's, Chubb, Travelers, and Intact) now require stringent cybersecurity proofs before underwriting cyber liability policies. QueryTel performs pre-insurance audits that map directly to insurer questionnaires. We identify failing control gaps—such as missing MFA on internal administrative consoles, flat network topologies, or unverified backups—and provide prioritized engineering fixes to secure lower premiums.
We don't deliver indecipherable terminal dumps. You receive two tailored deliverables: an Executive Board Briefing that communicates cyber risk, financial exposure, and regulatory compliance status in clear business language for the CFO and Board; and a Technical Remediation Playbook for your systems engineers, containing proof-of-concept exploit steps, configuration diffs, and exact remediation commands.
The QueryTel 4-Stage Penetration Testing Methodology
Aligned with the Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTES) and NIST SP 800-115 guidelines, ensuring thoroughness, business safety, and actionable results.
We establish strict Rules of Engagement (ROE), define out-of-scope production assets, and conduct passive OSINT reconnaissance across public domains, DNS records, and dark web leak repositories.
Certified testers execute controlled manual attacks targeting external APIs, firewalls, and internal networks, safely validating whether suspected vulnerabilities can be leveraged for unauthorized access.
We map internal lateral movement potential, audit Active Directory / Entra ID trust relationships, simulate data exfiltration risks, and measure how quickly QueryTel SOC or your internal team alerts on the activity.
We present the Board-level findings, walk engineering through the remediation runbook, issue the cyber insurance attestation letter, and conduct a complimentary re-test within 30 days to certify remediation.
Headquartered at Exchange Tower, 130 King Street West, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5X 1E3, QueryTel conducts both remote and on-site penetration tests for commercial enterprises, industrial distribution parks, and corporate offices across Canada.
Our offensive security teams travel on-site to execute internal physical rogue device implants, Wi-Fi cracking, and OT plant floor testing across the Greater Toronto Area, Waterloo tech corridor, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver.
Penetration Testing & Security Audits: FAQ
Essential answers for Chief Financial Officers, CISOs, and IT Directors preparing for audits and renewals.
An automated vulnerability scan is a basic software tool that pings known IP addresses and matches open ports against public CVE databases, frequently generating hundreds of noisy false positives without assessing real-world exploitability. A QueryTel penetration test is executed by certified ethical hackers (OSCP, CEH, CREST). We chain multiple subtle misconfigurations together—such as leveraging an unauthenticated internal service to harvest hashed credentials, cracking them, escalating privileges in Active Directory via BloodHound path analysis, and compromising Domain Admin rights. We deliver verified proof of exploitability and prioritized business remediation, not generic 200-page automated PDF dumps.
Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) serve as the central nervous system for corporate identity, authentication, and access control. Ransomware operators do not individually compromise workstations; their goal is to obtain Domain Controller or Global Administrator control. Once elevated, attackers abuse built-in management tools (like Group Policy Objects or Intune scripts) to simultaneously deploy encryptors across hundreds of servers and disable endpoint defenses in seconds. QueryTel audits your directory structure to eliminate Kerberoasting paths, remove shadow administrators, enforce Tier 0 separation, and secure Conditional Access policies.
Canadian cyber insurance underwriters have dramatically tightened qualifications due to surging ransomware payouts. Insurers now mandate annual third-party penetration tests, proof of phishing-resistant MFA on all ingress points, isolated immutable backups, and validated Active Directory tiering. Submitting an application without third-party audit attestation often results in outright rejection or exorbitant deductibles ($100,000+). QueryTel provides the exact technical attestation, executive remediation report, and letter of attestation underwriters demand to approve coverage and negotiate lower annual premiums.
No. QueryTel conducts testing under strict Rules of Engagement (ROE) tailored to your operational environment. Prior to launching any test, our team meets with your stakeholders to define out-of-scope assets, sensitive operational technology (OT) subnets, production schedules, and emergency stop protocols. We utilize surgical exploitation methods designed to demonstrate theoretical impact and compromise proof without triggering denial-of-service conditions or destabilizing live databases.
You receive two comprehensive deliverables: (1) An Executive Summary presentation created specifically for your Board of Directors, CFO, and legal counsel, quantifying your cyber risk posture, business impact, and cyber insurance readiness in non-technical terms; and (2) A Technical Remediation Manual for your internal IT engineering team, complete with step-by-step reproduction steps, proof-of-concept exploit artifacts, exact code/configuration snippets to remediate the vulnerabilities, and a free 30-day re-test validation certificate.
Schedule a confidential scoping consultation with QueryTel's senior penetration testing architects. We will define your testing scope, execute a surgical assessment of your defenses, and provide the certified attestation letter needed for your cyber insurance renewal.
Corporate HQ: Exchange Tower, 130 King Street West, Suite 1900, Toronto, ON M5X 1E3 · Serving all Canadian Provinces
