Also known as: pentest · pen test · ethical hacking
Penetration testing is an authorised, time-boxed assessment in which security professionals attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in a defined target to demonstrate real-world impact and provide remediation guidance.
The distinguishing feature versus automated scanning is exploitation and chaining. A scanner reports that a flaw may exist; a penetration test demonstrates that three individually low-severity issues combine into full account takeover.
Quality varies enormously across the market. A report that is essentially reformatted scanner output provides little value, whereas a genuine assessment produces findings with clear reproduction steps, demonstrated impact, and prioritised remediation.
Red Team
A red team is a group that simulates realistic adversary behaviour against an organisation to test not just its technical defences but its ability to detect and respond to an intrusion in progress.
Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability management is the ongoing process of identifying, prioritising, remediating, and verifying fixes for security weaknesses across an organisation's systems and software.
Bug Bounty
A bug bounty is a programme in which an organisation offers monetary rewards to external security researchers who responsibly report vulnerabilities in its systems.
Exploit
An exploit is code or a technique that takes advantage of a specific vulnerability to cause unintended behaviour, such as executing attacker-supplied code, bypassing authentication, or crashing a service.