Frequently asked questions about CyberOrbit

Reports, audits and pricing

Will the report actually pass an audit?

Yes, that's the design point. Every finding carries CVSS 3.1, CWE class, OWASP category, and cross-references to ISO 27001 (A.8.29), SOC 2 (CC7.1), PCI-DSS (11.3) and GDPR (Art. 32). Reports are reviewed and signed by a certified security professional, with chain-of-custody evidence (timestamps, hashes, raw HTTP captures) attached. The same artifact answers ISO, SOC 2, and PCI auditor questions without re-formatting.

How long does an assessment actually take?

Day 0 to 1 you scope (we generate the SOW and rules of engagement). Day 1 to 3 the assessment runs: reconnaissance, validation, exploitation chains. Once the assessment completes, a certified security professional reviews and signs the report, typically within 2–5 business days. You get a signed PDF, not a 'preliminary draft'.

Is the re-test included or is it a separate quote?

Included. Once you remediate, we re-test, evidence the fix, and reissue a signed letter, bundled with the original engagement, no second SOW. You hand the auditor the original report plus the re-test addendum and close the finding. Most firms quote the re-test at 50% to 60% of the original engagement; we treat it as part of the work.

What's actually in the evidence bundle?

Per finding: the raw HTTP request and response captured during the test, timestamp, the exact reproduction steps, a SHA-256 proof hash, and (where relevant) screenshots and traffic captures. Auditors who ask 'how do I know the test was actually performed?' get a definitive answer instead of a sentence in a PDF.

Where does the human tester fit in?

A team of AI agents runs the testing, mapping the attack surface, probing, and chaining exploits at a depth and consistency that's hard for a single tester to reach. A certified security professional then reviews the findings, validates the exploitation chains, and signs the report your auditor receives. That human attestation is what auditors accept.

What about Australian compliance: Essential 8, CPS 234, IRAP?

We're a Sydney team and most of our customers are Australian, across financial services, healthcare, and government-adjacent SaaS. The signed report cross-references ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA and GDPR. Our free External Security Check maps what it finds to the Essential Eight and CIS controls it touches. We do not currently map APRA CPS 234, and we don't run IRAP assessments. We'd rather tell you that now than have you find out at audit time.

How does pricing compare to a traditional pentest firm?

Pricing is on request. Our On-Demand pentest returns the signed report typically within 2–5 business days once the assessment completes, with a re-test included and no second SOW. Traditional engagements are quoted per scope and vary widely by firm, so the comparison that matters is against your own last invoice and your own last lead time rather than an industry average. Bring both to a scoping call and compare our quote against them.

What happens to my data?

Scan traffic is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3). Findings and evidence are encrypted at rest. Credentials for authenticated scans are encrypted, used once, and never written to our database (the scanning worker decrypts them in memory for that run only), unless you opt into the encrypted vault, which seals them for reuse and decrypts them only inside the scanning worker. Either way they never land in logs or evidence. Reports are deleted on request; retention is configurable. Trust Centre has the full breakdown: sub-processors, residency, incident response, the lot.

External Security Check

Is this a full ISO 27001 or SOC 2 assessment?

No. It maps your external surface to the specific controls each finding touches. Most controls, endpoint, identity and backup controls, cannot be seen from outside at all, so the check is explicit about that boundary rather than pretending to grade them.

Do I need a work email to run the check?

No. You get the external-surface grade and your top findings from just the domain, once you confirm you are authorised to assess it. A work email on the same domain is only needed to unlock the full report, which is a light-touch authorisation check; free mailbox providers are not accepted.

Is it free?

Yes, the check is free with no account required. For the evidence your auditor accepts, reproduction steps and a proof-hash chain of custody signed by a certified security professional, request a full CyberOrbit assessment.

Security and data

Do you require written authorization before running scans?

Yes, and it is enforced server-side, not just a checkbox on screen. Before a scan can be created, the user must confirm they are authorised to test the target. On creation we record an authorisation attestation against the assessment: the exact wording shown, the acting user, their IP and user agent, a timestamp, and a SHA-256 hash of the rendered text so any later tampering is detectable. A scan cannot start without that attestation on record. It is a hash-sealed evidence record rather than a digital signature.

What happens if someone scans a target they don't own?

CyberOrbit blocks all private and internal IP ranges at the infrastructure level: scans cannot be directed at your own internal network or cloud metadata endpoints. For external targets, the platform relies on the authorisation confirmation above. Any misuse violates our Terms of Service and we will terminate the account. We log the target URL, timestamp, and acting user ID for every assessment started.

How is scan data handled and protected?

All traffic between your browser, our API, and our scan workers uses TLS 1.3. Findings, evidence, and all customer data are encrypted at rest with AES-256. Database backups run on a Daily, Weekly, and Monthly schedule; each backup is encrypted with a separate key. Scan workers operate in isolated job processes: your findings never share memory with another customer's assessment.

How long do you retain findings and reports?

Findings and reports are retained for the life of your subscription. On account closure, data is deleted within 30 days. You can export your full report (PDF + JSON) at any time from the dashboard. If you need earlier deletion, contact us via the legal form on our Privacy page.

Do you support authenticated (credentialed) scanning, and how are credentials handled?

Yes. Authenticated scanning is live: you can give a scan a session cookie, a bearer token, a custom header, or HTTP Basic credentials so our scanners reach login-gated endpoints, not just the public surface. You control how the credential is handled. By default it is used for a single run: encrypted with AES-256-GCM the moment you submit it, decrypted only inside the scanning worker for that one scan, never written to our database, and discarded when the run ends. It is single-use and auto-expires. If you opt into the encrypted Credential Vault to reuse a credential across scans, it is sealed with envelope encryption: we store ciphertext only, and the key that can decrypt it lives solely in the scanning worker, never in our web service or database. It is write-only so it can never be read back after you save it, expires within 90 days, and is crypto-erased the moment you delete it. In every mode the credential is stripped from logs, audit trails, and finding evidence by a load-bearing redaction control, so it never appears in a report or a reproduction command.

Who can see my findings and reports?

Findings are scoped to your organisation. No other customer, no third party, and no CyberOrbit staff member can query your findings via the product. Our internal staff access policy requires a support ticket and explicit customer consent before any engineer can inspect customer data. MSP accounts have a separate visibility boundary: MSP admins see their clients' attributions, not raw findings.

Are scans isolated between customers?

Every assessment runs in its own isolated execution context with no shared mutable state, and finding data is strictly org-scoped at the database layer with RBAC enforced on every API endpoint, so one customer's run can never read or affect another's. Our HTTP-based scanners share a worker process (isolated logically, not a container each). Our AI-driven active and exploit execution goes further: it runs in a per-run ephemeral Firecracker microVM (via E2B) that is destroyed after the run, with a hard, fail-closed network egress lockdown. Extending per-run container isolation to the general scanner path is on our infrastructure roadmap.

Per-run container isolation for the general scanner path (active and exploit execution already runs in an ephemeral microVM)

Can I limit what gets scanned (define a scope)?

Yes. You can register the domains you are authorised to test as Authorised Targets and prove control of each with a DNS TXT record. Once a domain is verified, scheduled and continuous scans against it are hard-gated: our dispatcher checks the verified-target register before every run and refuses, fail-closed, if the target is not an active verified domain. Every scan is also blocked from private IP ranges, cloud metadata endpoints, and loopback addresses at creation. The register is domain (hostname) based today; we are extending the same hard enforcement to on-demand scans, and IP-range (CIDR) scopes are on the roadmap.

Verified-target register hard-gates scheduled scans today; on-demand enforcement and CIDR scopes are on our roadmap

Who are your sub-processors and where is my data held?

The full list is published in the Sub-processors section of this page and updated before any vendor change takes effect. Core customer data (findings, assessments) is hosted on managed PostgreSQL with one replica per region across US West, US East, EU West, and Southeast Asia. Scan worker infrastructure runs on Railway in the same four regions. Payment processing is handled by Stripe.

As an MSP, can I control which client environments are tested?

Yes. MSP admins have a dedicated dashboard showing all assessments attributed to each client. For any client you configure to require it, a pre-scan approval gate is enforced: an on-demand scan for that client is blocked and held as a pending request until an MSP admin approves it, and it cannot run until then. The gate is opt-in per client today, and we are extending it to scheduled runs.

How is my clients' data kept separate from other clients?

Every assessment, finding, and report is tagged with an organisation ID. All API endpoints enforce org-scoped RBAC: a user in Organisation A cannot read, modify, or delete data belonging to Organisation B under any circumstances. MSP admins can see attribution metadata for their own clients only.

Is CyberOrbit GDPR compliant?

Yes. CyberOrbit is GDPR compliant. We process personal data only as necessary to deliver the service, maintain a sub-processor list (published on this page), provide a Data Processing Agreement on request, and support data subject rights including access, rectification, and erasure. Our Privacy Policy details what data we collect, why, and how long we retain it. If you need a DPA before starting a trial, contact us via the Privacy page form.

What compliance frameworks does CyberOrbit itself comply with?

We are a pre-certification company. We do not currently hold SOC 2, ISO 27001, or equivalent certifications. We apply the same security practices we recommend to customers: encrypted data at rest and in transit, principle of least privilege, dependency scanning, and vulnerability remediation SLAs. SOC 2 Type I is on our near-term roadmap as we scale toward enterprise contracts.

SOC 2 Type I: near-term roadmap

Can you provide a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) or NDA?

Yes. We will execute a mutual NDA and a DPA before any trial or paid engagement that requires one. Contact us via the legal form on our Privacy page and we will turn them around within two business days.