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BFSI / Financial Services

The Great Breach - Full-Scope Red Team Assessment of a Financial Institution

One of India's largest broking and capital-markets firms asked Payatu for evidence, not a checklist audit. The team reached Domain Administrator, breached both offices, and exfiltrated data unseen.

Red Team Assessment

At a glance

INDUSTRY

BFSI / Financial Services

CLIENT PROFILE

One of India's largest broking and capital-markets firms

SERVICES

Red Team Assessment

ENGAGEMENT

Fully black-box · two targets

key Numbers

7 / 7

Red Team Objectives Achieved

23

Findings identified

6

Critical Findings

Key Takeaways

Client – one of India's leading broking and capital markets institutions, serving millions of investors through a large digital and enterprise ecosystem.

Problem – needed to validate whether its people, processes, and technology could withstand a determined real-world attacker rather than a conventional security assessment.

What Payatu did – conducted a full-scope, black-box red team assessment across physical security, cloud, enterprise infrastructure, identity, and employee attack surfaces.

the challenge

Why the client called us in

Security reports showed compliance, but they didn't answer the most important question: Could a determined attacker compromise the organisation? The client engaged Payatu to validate its resilience through a realistic, end-to-end red team assessment spanning people, processes, physical security, and enterprise infrastructure.

Emulate advanced real-world attack scenarios
Measure detection and response effectiveness
Deliver evidence-based improvements to cyber resilience

scope of engagement

What was in scope

External reconnaissance and attack surface assessment
Internal network and Active Directory security assessment
Cloud infrastructure and enterprise identity testing
Physical intrusion and office security validation
Real-world phishing and social engineering campaigns

Our Approach

How Payatu ran the engagement

01

Discovery

Conducted open-source intelligence (OSINT) and external reconnaissance to map the client's attack surface, identify exposed assets, and profile potential attack vectors.

02

Initial Access

Simulated real-world intrusion techniques through phishing, external exploitation, and physical intrusion attempts to establish an initial foothold within the organization.

Key findings

What we found

CRITICAL

Active Directory compromise

Misconfigurations and privilege escalation paths resulted in complete domain compromise.

CRITICAL

Credential theft

User credentials and authentication tokens enabled sustained access and lateral movement.

the outcome

Results and Impact

Payatu provided the client with clear, evidence-based insight into its ability to withstand sophisticated cyber attacks. The engagement identified the highest-risk attack paths, validated security monitoring capabilities, and delivered a prioritised roadmap to improve resilience across people, processes, and technology.

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