Phases of a security test

​A security test can be broken down into four phases:

These phases are: initial access, privilege escalation, lateral movement, establishing persistent access.

Initial access means using a found vulnerability to gain access to this company network 

Privilege escalation means elevating initial privileges.

Pivoting or lateral movement means obtaining access to other systems using the initial system.

Establishing persistence. It is usually done using some sort of backdoor that makes access to a vulnerable system easy.