Penetration Testing for HITRUST
HITRUST certification requires evidence that your security controls hold up under real-world conditions. A penetration test is how you produce that evidence.
HITRUST is one of the more demanding certification frameworks in healthcare technology, and that’s the point. Organizations pursuing it are signaling something specific to their customers and partners: that security has been independently validated against a rigorous standard, not just documented in a policy. The penetration testing requirement exists because HITRUST wants to see that your controls have been tested against active attempts to bypass them, not just assessed on paper.
Control 10.m of the HITRUST CSF expects regular penetration testing that evaluates your systems against external and internal threats. The auditor wants to see formal testing, documented methodology, validated findings, and evidence that issues were addressed. A vulnerability scan doesn’t satisfy that requirement. Neither does a scanner dump formatted to look like a pentest report.
What the Test Covers
HITRUST engagements at Asteros follow the same methodology and deliver the same depth as any engagement. External testing maps what’s exposed to the internet and looks for paths that lead to sensitive data or internal systems. Internal testing assumes a foothold already exists and traces how far an attacker could move and what they could reach. Web application testing uses the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard to evaluate authentication, access controls, session management, API security, and the handling of PHI and PII at the application layer.
Scope depends on your environment and what your certification covers. External and internal network testing, web application testing, or both. Everything is defined upfront with a flat-fee agreement and no surprises.
What the Report Provides
The report your HITRUST auditor reviews needs to document methodology, show validated findings with proof of concept, include a defined severity rating system, and demonstrate that identified issues were remediated and retested. That’s the standard deliverable here, not an upgrade.
Your engineering team gets step-by-step findings with remediation guidance written for your actual stack. Your auditor gets the methodology documentation and control mapping they need to satisfy the penetration testing requirement without follow-up questions. A sanitized executive summary is available for customer sharing if enterprise prospects or partners ask for evidence of your testing program without needing the full technical report.
After remediation, a free retest validates the fixes and produces closure evidence that maps directly to what HITRUST expects from a mature vulnerability management process.
Healthcare SaaS and the Dual Compliance Problem
Most healthcare SaaS companies pursuing HITRUST are also managing HIPAA requirements and often SOC 2 alongside it. The overlap is real and an Asteros engagement is structured to support multiple frameworks from the same body of work. You don’t need separate tests for each framework. The report is built to satisfy HITRUST auditors, HIPAA risk evaluation requirements, and SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria simultaneously, which matters when you’re managing multiple compliance timelines and don’t want to run three separate engagements.
Schedule a Consultation
If you’re preparing for HITRUST certification, heading into a renewal, or trying to understand what your testing program needs to look like to satisfy your auditor, the scoping call is where we work that out.
Or if you’re still evaluating vendors, our free guide covers what a rigorous pentest report looks like and what to ask before you commit.