Penetration Testing is also known by the terms – Pen Testing, Security Testing, Ethical Hacking and White Hat Hacking. While all of these terms are many times used in exchange of each other, they are slightly different from each other. But for the time, let’s consider them same owing to their mostly common contents.
Definition of Penetration Testing (In my words):
Penetration testing is the process which tests the systems or websites or applications and tries to find the flaws concerning security issues and reporting the same along with possible solutions to get them corrected.
As per Wikipedia, A penetration test, or the short form pen-test, is an attack on a computer system with the intention of finding security weaknesses, potentially gaining access to it, its functionality and data.
The process involves identifying the target systems and the goal, then reviewing the information available and undertaking available means to attain the goal. A penetration test target may be a white box (where all background and system information is provided) or black box (where only basic or no information is provided except the company name). A penetration test will advise if a system is vulnerable to attack, if the defences were sufficient and which defences (if any) were defeated in the penetration test.