7 October 2026, 11:49 AM
Cyber threats become more advanced every year, and businesses don’t have the luxury of waiting for a breach to happen. Enter penetration testing. Suppose you are asking yourself how to perform a penetration test. In that case, it’s the process of safely replicating an attack in the real world to find existing vulnerabilities before a malicious hacker can exploit them.
This proactive approach to cybersecurity will strengthen company defences, protect sensitive data, and ensure compliance with industry standards. With the rise of AI-driven threats coming in 2025, penetration testing is more important than ever. So, let’s simplify the process and start understanding how to do penetration testing.
How to Do Penetration Testing: Step-by-Step Process
Penetration testing has a distinct gathering process that is conducted safely for identifying vulnerabilities. The penetration testing process begins with planning and ends with remediating the vulnerabilities discovered. Newer trends include AI tools and continuous testing to respond to and adapt to threats.
Here’s the breakdown:
Step 1: Planning & Scoping
First, determine the appropriate scope for testing, ensuring you are clear on what (specific servers, applications, or networks), and make sure you have approval to test the scope. Essentially, you’re establishing ground rules, goals, and scope so no one crosses the lines.
Step 2: Reconnaissance & Scanning
Now that you have your scope, it can be a search for information within that scope. You will want to use both passive reconnaissance, such as searching for domain information, and active scanning – directly probing the network with tools such as Nmap to map the network and identify the open ports.
Step 3: Gaining Access (Exploitation)
You can now use scan results to perform simulated attacks. Tools like Metasploit or Burp Suite can be very effective at breaching the system to clearly show the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) an attacker could use.
Step 4: Privilege Escalation & Lateral Movement (Post-Exploitation)
Once inside, explore the possibilities for privilege escalation – obtaining administrative access, as well as lateral movement to get access to other systems and resources. At this point, it is valuable to look for attack paths a criminal actor may take after making initial access.
Step 5: Analysis & Reporting
Provide recommendations, document the findings, including what you’re finding and how it was obtained. The findings should be easy to read and straightforward, with recommended actions to fix. NOTE: Your legal team and company executives will want to know what exists and how severe the issues and resolutions are. Request a free pen testing quote now!
Step 6: Remediation & Retesting
After providing findings, your team can remediate vulnerabilities discovered in the previous phase or exploit all vulnerabilities as intended. You will want to test your areas again post-remediation to ensure respective areas are secure. Rinse and repeat as needed.
Source: https://qualysec.com/how-to-do-penetration-testing/
This proactive approach to cybersecurity will strengthen company defences, protect sensitive data, and ensure compliance with industry standards. With the rise of AI-driven threats coming in 2025, penetration testing is more important than ever. So, let’s simplify the process and start understanding how to do penetration testing.
How to Do Penetration Testing: Step-by-Step Process
Penetration testing has a distinct gathering process that is conducted safely for identifying vulnerabilities. The penetration testing process begins with planning and ends with remediating the vulnerabilities discovered. Newer trends include AI tools and continuous testing to respond to and adapt to threats.
Here’s the breakdown:
Step 1: Planning & Scoping
First, determine the appropriate scope for testing, ensuring you are clear on what (specific servers, applications, or networks), and make sure you have approval to test the scope. Essentially, you’re establishing ground rules, goals, and scope so no one crosses the lines.
Step 2: Reconnaissance & Scanning
Now that you have your scope, it can be a search for information within that scope. You will want to use both passive reconnaissance, such as searching for domain information, and active scanning – directly probing the network with tools such as Nmap to map the network and identify the open ports.
Step 3: Gaining Access (Exploitation)
You can now use scan results to perform simulated attacks. Tools like Metasploit or Burp Suite can be very effective at breaching the system to clearly show the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) an attacker could use.
Step 4: Privilege Escalation & Lateral Movement (Post-Exploitation)
Once inside, explore the possibilities for privilege escalation – obtaining administrative access, as well as lateral movement to get access to other systems and resources. At this point, it is valuable to look for attack paths a criminal actor may take after making initial access.
Step 5: Analysis & Reporting
Provide recommendations, document the findings, including what you’re finding and how it was obtained. The findings should be easy to read and straightforward, with recommended actions to fix. NOTE: Your legal team and company executives will want to know what exists and how severe the issues and resolutions are. Request a free pen testing quote now!
Step 6: Remediation & Retesting
After providing findings, your team can remediate vulnerabilities discovered in the previous phase or exploit all vulnerabilities as intended. You will want to test your areas again post-remediation to ensure respective areas are secure. Rinse and repeat as needed.
Source: https://qualysec.com/how-to-do-penetration-testing/