A penetration test (pentest) is a software, infrastructure, and/or network attack on your organization by a skilled attack team that probes for security weaknesses and seeks to exploit them to reach your assets. Pentests should be performed in addition to vulnerability assessments. A vulnerability assessment identifies and logs vulnerabilities, ranks them, and recommends needed mitigation. A pentest not only identifies vulnerabilities, it uses those vulnerabilities to simulate attacks that a skilled and determined attacker could carry out on your organization once inside your network.