Not all organisations are breached the same way.
While attack techniques evolve, penetration testing results show clear industry patterns driven by technology choices, regulatory pressure, and operational complexity.
This guide highlights the most common penetration testing findings by industry, based on real-world attack simulation trends.
Healthcare Penetration Testing Findings
Healthcare environments remain highly targeted due to sensitive patient data and legacy systems.
Common findings include:
- Weak identity and access controls
- Legacy applications with known vulnerabilities
- Flat networks enabling lateral movement
- Exposed patient data storage systems
Attackers often exploit one small weakness to move quickly across clinical and administrative systems.
E-Commerce Vulnerability Trends
E-commerce platforms prioritise speed and availability often at the cost of security depth.
Frequent penetration testing findings include:
- Broken authentication and session management
- Insecure APIs and integrations
- Payment workflow logic flaws
- Misconfigured cloud storage and CDNs
These weaknesses can lead directly to fraud, data theft, and revenue loss.
SaaS & Cloud Exposure Patterns
SaaS and cloud-first organisations face a different risk profile one driven by identity and configuration errors.
Common findings include:
- Over-privileged accounts and role sprawl
- Misconfigured cloud services
- Weak tenant isolation
- Exposed management interfaces
In many cases, no malware is needed attackers exploit trust relationships and misconfigurations.
Why Industry Context Matters
Generic vulnerability lists don’t reflect how attackers actually operate.
Industry-specific penetration testing:
- Prioritises the most likely attack paths
- Reduces noise from low-impact findings
- Aligns remediation with real business risk
This context is what turns testing into actionable security improvement.
From Findings to Real Risk Reduction
Across industries, the most damaging breaches rarely rely on zero-days.
They exploit:
- Misconfigurations
- Identity weaknesses
- Poor segmentation
- Assumed trust
Penetration testing exposes how these issues combine into high-impact attack paths.
How Hacker Simulations Delivers Industry-Focused Penetration Testing
Hacker Simulations performs penetration testing tailored to industry-specific threats and architectures.
We help organisations:
- Identify their most likely breach scenarios
- Focus on exploitable, high-impact weaknesses
- Reduce alert fatigue
- Strengthen security beyond compliance
We don’t train teams.
We simulate attackers.
Final Takeaway
Penetration testing findings vary by industry but attackers always follow the easiest path.
Understanding how your industry is typically breached helps you fix the right problems first.
Test your real attack paths before attackers do.
