Services

Threat-Led Penetration Testing

See attacks before attackers do. Meet regulator expectations.

Modern adversaries are intelligence-led — so should your testing. MCL Cyber’s Threat-Led Penetration Testing (TLPT) simulates real threat actors against your people, processes and systems to show not just what’s vulnerable, but what an actual attack would achieve and how your organisation would respond.

Why Threat-Led Testing?

Traditional pentests often follow checklists. TLPT is different: we design tests from current threat intelligence and focus on realistic attack paths, persistence, lateral movement and data exfiltration. That makes findings highly actionable and directly relevant to business risk and resilience.

what you need to know

Regulatory & Compliance Context

Regulators across Europe are increasing expectations around realistic, intelligence-driven testing:

  • The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) introduces formal standards for Threat-Led Penetration Testing (TLPT) for financial entities and requires regular advanced testing of critical ICT systems. TLPT is intended to prove that resilience measures actually work in practice.
  • The NIS2 Directive and associated ENISA guidance make clear that effective risk management must include vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, and red/blue/purple team exercises to evaluate the effectiveness of security measures. Entities in scope are expected to demonstrate these assessments as evidence of proportionate security measures.
  • National competent authorities and sector regulators are already embedding these expectations into supervisory guidance — meaning TLPT is rapidly moving from “best practice” to regulatory requirement for many organisations (especially financial services, critical infrastructure, and digital service providers).

Bottom line: TLPT is no longer optional for many in-scope organisations. Demonstrable, intelligence-driven testing (and documented remediation) will be a key part of compliance evidence.

Deliverables You’ll Receive

Executive briefing showing business impact and regulatory relevance.

Full technical report with exploited attack chains, CVE references, and proof-of-concepts (where safe).

Detection & response gap analysis (how your SOC performed).

Prioritised remediation plan and optional follow-up retest or purple team workshop.

Free Mini Cyber Resilience Audit — Real Insights, Zero Fluff

We’ll review your current security posture, highlight critical gaps, and give you practical next steps — not a sales pitch.