Altius IT delivers recurring red team assessments for exchanges, manufacturing companies, critical infrastructure operators, and financial institutions across Chicago and the greater Chicagoland area. Our adversary simulations test your defenses across IT systems, OT environments, people, and processes using real-world attack techniques mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
Chicago is home to the world's largest derivatives exchanges, a massive manufacturing base, and critical infrastructure systems that serve the entire Midwest. This combination of financial, industrial, and infrastructure assets makes the city a high-priority target for nation-state actors, ransomware operators, and sophisticated cybercrime groups. A standard penetration test identifies technical vulnerabilities, but a red team assessment simulates how a motivated adversary would chain together cyber attacks, social engineering, physical intrusion, and OT exploitation to compromise your most critical operations.
We simulate attacks targeting Chicago's exchange and trading infrastructure, including attempts to access matching engines, market data distribution systems, clearing and settlement platforms, and the network segments that isolate trading systems from corporate IT. Our red team tests whether an adversary could gain physical or logical access to trading floor systems at CME Group, Cboe, or the proprietary trading firms that cluster around the Loop.
Chicago's manufacturing sector relies on operational technology (OT) systems including SCADA, PLCs, HMIs, and industrial control systems that are increasingly connected to corporate IT networks. Our red team simulates attacks that pivot from IT environments into OT networks, testing whether an adversary could manipulate production processes, disable safety systems, or cause physical damage to manufacturing equipment through cyber means.
Chicago's utilities, transportation systems, and logistics operations represent critical infrastructure targets. Our red team simulates attacks against these environments using techniques documented in real-world campaigns against energy grids, water treatment facilities, and transportation control systems. We test the resilience of air-gapped networks, the effectiveness of network segmentation between IT and OT, and the incident response capabilities of infrastructure operators.
We conduct targeted social engineering attacks against your employees, including spear phishing campaigns, pretexting calls impersonating regulators or utility providers, and physical social engineering at corporate offices, manufacturing facilities, and data centers. Chicago's diverse business environment creates varied social engineering attack surfaces that our campaigns are designed to test across different employee populations.
Our assessments include physical intrusion attempts at corporate offices, manufacturing plants, data centers, and exchange facilities across Chicagoland. We test perimeter security, access card systems, security guard response, loading dock procedures, and whether an attacker can physically reach server rooms, control rooms, or manufacturing floor networks to plant rogue devices or directly access critical systems.
Every attack path and technique used during the assessment is mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, including ICS-specific techniques from the ATT&CK for ICS matrix for OT environments. This gives your security team a structured view of which adversary techniques succeeded, which were detected, and which were blocked.
Each red team cycle produces a comprehensive report with findings rated by risk severity, detailed attack narratives, evidence documentation, and specific remediation steps. For organizations with both IT and OT environments, we provide separate risk assessments for each domain along with recommendations for improving the security boundaries between them. We include cumulative trend reporting across cycles so leadership can track improvement. Learn more about our full red team assessment methodology.
Chicago organizations need red team operators who understand the convergence of financial trading systems, manufacturing OT environments, and critical infrastructure that defines the city's threat landscape. Altius IT has served organizations for over 30 years with independent, conflict-free security assessments.
No vendor ties. Recommendations aligned solely with your risk tolerance and business goals.
Led by experts with a Ph.D. in Computer Science, CISA certification, and industry leadership experience.
Thorough 360-degree review covering your technology, people, and processes.
Every engagement includes follow-up support to ensure vulnerabilities are properly remediated.
Chicago sits at the intersection of financial markets, heavy manufacturing, and critical infrastructure, creating a threat landscape where adversaries target everything from derivatives trading systems to factory floor PLCs. A red team assessment from Altius IT simulates these real-world threats so your organization can validate its defenses before an actual adversary tests them. Our approach combines penetration testing, social engineering, physical security testing, and OT attack simulation into a unified adversary program.
Chicago is the global center of derivatives and options trading, home to CME Group, Cboe Global Markets, and hundreds of proprietary trading firms. Our red team simulates the sophisticated attacks that target trading infrastructure, from network-level attacks against matching engines to social engineering campaigns targeting traders and operations staff. We test whether your security controls can withstand the same caliber of attacks that have targeted exchanges and financial institutions worldwide.
Chicagoland's manufacturing sector faces growing threats as OT systems become more connected to corporate networks and the internet. Our red team tests the boundaries between IT and OT environments, simulates attacks against industrial control systems, and validates whether your safety instrumented systems would prevent physical damage during a cyber attack. These assessments complement your cybersecurity audit by validating controls under real adversarial pressure.
In addition to downtown Chicago, Altius IT delivers red team assessments throughout the Chicagoland area including Naperville, Schaumburg, Evanston, Oak Brook, Downers Grove, Aurora, Elgin, and Joliet. Our engagements are conducted both remotely and on-site, with physical security and OT testing available for manufacturing and critical infrastructure organizations across northern Illinois. Learn more about our team and methodology.