Connected products, whether IoT, IIoT, embedded, mobile, or other such devices, serve to either strengthen or undermine an organization’s security posture and reputation.
As device ecosystems grow in complexity, manufacturers must secure embedded hardware, firmware, over-the-air (OTA) update mechanisms, companion mobile applications, cloud services and APIs, and RF interfaces. Each layer introduces distinct attack surfaces that adversaries actively target.
The method to accomplish this task is to test devices at all layers to ensure they meet all necessary security and compliance requirements, such as those in the EU Cyber Resilience Act, the FDA Premarket Submission Requirements (Form 510k), and similar requirements. Additionally, it is critical to be prepared for any desired certifications, such as the IEC/ISA 62443 family, ioXt, OCP SAFE. In fact, such evidence of due diligence is increasingly demanded by buyers and regulators who follow security-by-design principles.
LevelBlue can assist in your organization’s endeavors to supply this information through its full-stack product security testing - designed to uncover risks across your entire product stack, from the silicon at the core to the software and networks they inhabit.
Why Product Security Testing Is Essential
Without a holistic assessment, vulnerabilities in one layer, such as a misconfigured cloud role or a weak hardware debug port, can compromise the entire system.
The C-Suite and product VPs increasingly view product security as a non-negotiable requirement for market access and brand trust. Despite this priority, several systemic challenges frequently emerge in strategic discussions:
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Technical Resource Gaps: Most organizations struggle to maintain the specialized internal expertise needed for deep-dive technical reviews at all layers. This includes critical tasks like secure boot validation and firmware testing, which are difficult to scale across an entire product portfolio.
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The Lifecycle Vulnerability Gap: IoT and embedded devices often remain in the field for years and have far longer expected lives than IT assets. Yet, they are significantly less likely to receive regular security patches. This makes proactive, pre-deployment testing a vital necessity rather than an optional safeguard, as well as configuration and network segmentation testing critical post-deployment.
What Are the Benefits of Product Testing?
By taking the proactive step of testing products before launch or use, an organization can:
- Identify real-world risks before attackers do.
- Validate the "chain of trust" from bootloader to application.
- Prevent lateral movement within a network if one device is compromised.
- Ensure regulatory and security compliance, particularly for sensitive equipment like medical devices or IoT sensor networks.
How LevelBlue Performs Product Security Testing
Our approach is structured, efficient, and tailored to the specific risks of your product. We follow a four-stage process to ensure no stone is left unturned:
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Engagement Kickoff: The process begins by meeting with your team to define the scope and identify key attack surfaces that are of concern. By aligning our objectives with your product's specific risks early on, we ensure the testing is focused on real-world threats.
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Threat Modeling: We perform an abbreviated threat modeling exercise based on your product’s architecture. This allows us to prioritize the most exploitable and high-impact risks by simulating how an actual attacker might chain vulnerabilities together.
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Security Testing & Exploitation: This is the hands-on phase. Our experts execute active exploitation across hardware, firmware, networks, and applications. We don't just find bugs; we provide proof-of-concept attacks to demonstrate the severity of each issue, such as how a physical debug interface could lead to unauthorized root access or data theft.
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Reporting & Risk Prioritization: Finally, we deliver a comprehensive report that prioritizes findings based on exploitability and impact. We provide actionable strategic recommendations so your engineering team can deploy remediations and harden the product effectively.
A Quick Look at the Test Process’s Inner Workings
LevelBlue’s testing covers every layer of the product lifecycle:
- Hardware: We analyze schematics and PCBs for undocumented debug ports, search for any deviations from the bill of materials (BOM), test side-channel and fault injection attacks, and validate cryptographic implementations.
- Firmware: Our team performs reverse engineering, deep configuration review, service enumeration, validates flashing/provisioning mechanisms, and reviews secure update mechanisms to prevent a variety of attacks, such as rollback attacks. We can also directly compare the output of these efforts to software bill of materials (SBOM) lists to ensure parity.
- Application & API: We conduct static code reviews and dynamic testing, focusing on authentication logic, data storage and handling, and preventing unauthorized endpoint exposure.
- Network: We evaluate architecture and segmentation, and perform internal network security testing to identify pathways for lateral movement.
- Cloud: For products integrated with AWS, GCP, or Azure, we identify misconfigured IAM roles, exposed storage, and hidden paths that configuration reviews alone might miss.
Why LevelBlue Is the Best Choice
LevelBlue stands out as a product testing partner because we offer multiple tiers of security testing, ranging from basic validation to deep-dive penetration testing. Our flexible engagement models allow you to tailor the assessment to your specific needs, ensuring you get actionable insights rather than just a checklist of vulnerabilities. By collaborating directly with your engineering and development teams and integrating our deep security expertise into your product cycle, we help you secure your product architecture efficiently, allowing you to innovate with confidence.
Ready to harden your product against modern threats? Contact us to learn more about how our Full Stack Product Security Testing can protect your business and your customers.
