What a Good Penetration Test Report Should Deliver

Anyone who has ever paid for a penetration test knows the anticipation. You wait weeks to receive a comprehensive PDF filled with screenshots and urgent red text. Then, you dedicate months to transforming this information into actionable tickets, clarifying priorities, advocating for essential changes, and ultimately, the report becomes just another artefact filed away for audits.

It doesn't have to be this way.

A good report doesn't just say what's wrong. It should help you understand the risk in business terms, show your engineers exactly how to resolve issues, and provide leadership with proof that the fixes have been implemented. If a pentest ends with a PDF and a handshake, the value stops at awareness. The right report carries you all the way to measurable improvement.

Below is a practical guide to what a good engagement looks like and how to use the outputs to move from findings to verified remediation.

What you should expect

The first thing you should see is an honest, plain-language explanation of risk. Suppose the findings could affect operations, financial loss, compliance, or customer trust. In that case, you should understand that you do not need to decode acronyms. A practical summary enables you to brief senior stakeholders without needing to translate anything yourself. It should also give you a sense of urgency and direction, not a wall of detail.

You should come away knowing:

What matters. Why it matters. What happens next.

Engineers need the exact trail to reproduce and fix the issue.

Once the summary has set the context, the report should smoothly transition into the technical findings. This section is vital, as the clarity and precision of the information directly enhance the value of the assessment. Each finding should be framed as a concise narrative: explaining how the vulnerability was discovered, what the testers were able to do with it, and the possible real-world implications if an attacker were to exploit it.

Including clear reproduction steps is essential. If your team can replicate the issue, they will be better equipped to address it effectively. Be sure to provide payloads, screenshots, request/response data, and well-defined acceptance criteria that clarify what "fixed" really means. The aim is to support your engineers by providing them with all the necessary information upfront, so they can focus on resolving the issues without needing to guess or experiment.

Additionally, risk ratings should go beyond mere abstract numbers. A comprehensive report enriches the understanding of business context, including data sensitivity, exposure timelines, and the effectiveness of existing controls in mitigating impacts. This added nuance will significantly aid prioritisation, making it more strategic than simply categorising risks as "High / Medium / Low."

Let the report flow into your workflows, not force you into copy-paste hell.

One of the most overlooked aspects of a comprehensive pentest report is its format. Suppose a report forces you to manually copy findings into Jira, ServiceNow, or your asset system. In that case, you're wasting hours before remediation even starts.

Expect machine-readable output, including structured fields such as asset ID, system owner, business service, and control mapping. With that, you drop the findings straight into your existing tooling and immediately track progress. Leadership sees burn-down, not backlog.

The findings should be mapped to recognised standards.

Infrastructure weaknesses should inspire you to strengthen your hardening baselines and secure configuration patterns. By referencing compliance requirements such as ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus, and NCSC guidance, you are empowering audit and risk teams to engage with the report confidently and independently.

This approach eliminates the need for debates around "Is this really an issue?" and fosters purpose during change advisory and governance meetings.

Two quick examples illustrate the difference:

SQL Injection

You should identify which query is affected, how the testers exploited it, provide coded examples of parameterised queries, and include tests to confirm the fix. Ideally, you also see monitoring recommendations to catch similar attempts.

Excessive cloud permissions

Rather than a vague "permissions too broad", expect to see specific policy changes, which identities need adjustment, and which logging rules should be implemented to detect privilege misuse.

Testing and remediation shouldn't be a separate world.

Some vendors stop at pointing out issues. Then the business scrambles to translate findings into action. That creates delays, confusion, and sometimes the risk stays open for months.

You should expect your penetration testing provider to remain involved during the remediation phase. When the same team that broke something helps fix it, there's no loss of context. While remediation is underway, defensive improvements can begin immediately, including tightening IAM, patching vulnerable components, tuning EDR or WAF rules, and removing stale access. Real detection engineering occurs in parallel: each attacker technique becomes a detection test mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

Instead of a one-directional "here's your report", you get a feedback loop: attack reveals → defence improves → evidence captured.

Governance keeps you from losing momentum.

Every finding should have a clear owner, a defined timeline, and specific sign-off criteria. Suppose someone wants to accept risk instead of fixing it. In that case, that decision should be documented with justification, compensating controls, and a review date. Silent risk acceptance allows vulnerabilities to persist until the next audit.

A good report becomes your single source of truth. One place to track findings, fixes, evidence, and retest outcomes.

A pentest isn't "finished" until the fixes are verified.

Retesting should be part of the engagement, not an optional extra. The vendor should verify fixes using the acceptance criteria set in the report. Engineers provide pull requests, screenshots, configuration exports, or detection test logs. Audit and leadership teams can reuse the same artefacts, eliminating the need for rewriting and scrambling for evidence.

Clear metrics help decision-makers see progress:

• How long did critical issues take to fix?
• How many fixes passed on the first retest?
• How much did detection coverage improve?

High-risk assets change. New releases introduce new attack surfaces. Security posture isn't static. Expect your partner to guide you toward a rhythm, incorporating periodic testing, targeted scenarios, and ongoing control monitoring.

If you're choosing a partner

Before you sign up for a pentest, take the opportunity to speak with the Pentesting team. This conversation will reveal more than any sales presentation and will help you understand their commitment to producing meaningful outcomes.

At Conosco, we combine offensive and defensive expertise into a single cohesive team, operating under CREST standards in the UK. We don't simply hand over a report; we stand by you to address the issues and demonstrate real progress. Boards seek evidence, and engineers thrive on clarity—together, we deliver both.

If you're ready to partner with a team that views a report as the start of meaningful action, rather than the end of a project, use the form below to book a call.

Speak to our CREST-certified Penetration Testing Team