What Should Be Included in an External Penetration Test Report?

An external penetration test report should do much more than provide a list of vulnerabilities. It should explain what was tested, what an attacker could realistically achieve, which weaknesses present the greatest risk and how the organisation should address them.

The report is one of the principal deliverables from a penetration test. Its quality therefore matters just as much as the technical testing itself.

More than a scanner export

Automated vulnerability scanners can quickly identify potentially outdated software, exposed services and common configuration weaknesses. However, their reports often contain false positives, duplicate results and issues presented without meaningful context.

A long report does not necessarily indicate a thorough penetration test.

A professional report should contain manually validated findings supported by appropriate evidence. It should explain the potential effect on the organisation and provide practical remediation advice that its technical team or IT provider can follow.

The report should be useful to both senior decision-makers and the people responsible for correcting the findings.

1. An executive summary

The executive summary should provide directors and senior management with a concise, non-technical overview of the assessment.

It should normally explain:

• The organisation’s overall external security position
• The most important risks identified
• The potential business consequences
• Any positive security observations
• The main remediation priorities

This section should be understandable without specialist cybersecurity knowledge. It should not simply repeat technical vulnerability descriptions or rely on acronyms that have not been explained.

A good executive summary helps management understand whether the organisation’s internet-facing systems present a significant risk and where resources should be directed.

Positive observations can also be valuable. If strong controls prevented particular attacks or the exposed infrastructure was smaller than expected, these points should be acknowledged alongside the weaknesses.

2. Scope and testing details

The report should clearly document what was included in the assessment. This will normally cover:

• Public IP addresses and network ranges tested
• Internet-facing systems and services
• Any exclusions agreed with the client
• Testing dates
• The testing approach
• Limitations encountered
• Whether the test was black-box or conducted with additional information

This information allows the reader to understand precisely what the conclusions apply to.

For example, an organisation may have several public IP ranges but exclude a system managed by a third party. Without a clearly documented scope, someone reading the report later might incorrectly assume that the excluded system was tested.

Any limitations should also be recorded. These could include unavailable services, access restrictions, third-party controls or systems that could not be tested safely.

3. A clear summary of findings

The report should include a summary table showing each finding, its severity and the affected systems. This gives the reader a quick overview and helps establish remediation priorities.

Severity ratings are useful, but they should not be considered in isolation. The genuine priority of a finding may also depend on:

• The business importance of the affected system
• Whether it is directly accessible from the internet
• How easily the weakness can be exploited
• Whether authentication is required
• The information or services potentially exposed
• Whether other findings increase its likelihood or impact

A technically severe vulnerability affecting an unused test system may require a different response from a medium-severity weakness affecting the organisation’s primary remote-access service.

4. Detailed technical findings

Each individual finding should contain enough information for the organisation to understand, reproduce and remediate the issue.

A technical finding should normally include:

• A clear title and severity rating
• The affected system, address or service
• A description of the weakness
• Evidence confirming that it exists
• The potential technical and business impact
• A realistic attack scenario
• Practical remediation guidance
• Relevant technical references

Evidence might include screenshots, affected URLs, commands, service responses or carefully selected extracts from testing output. It should support the tester’s conclusion without revealing unnecessary sensitive information.

Remediation advice should be specific. Simply advising the organisation to “patch the system” or “improve security” is rarely enough. The report should identify the affected component and explain the action required wherever possible.

5. Validated vulnerabilities and attack paths

A professional report should make clear whether findings were manually verified. It should also explain whether separate weaknesses could be combined into a more serious attack path.

Individually, an information disclosure issue and a minor configuration weakness may appear to present limited risk. Together, they might reveal the type and version of a remote-access service, identify valid usernames and make a targeted attack considerably easier.

Understanding these relationships is one of the main distinctions between a penetration test and an automated vulnerability scan.

The tester should avoid exaggerating what could be achieved, but should clearly describe any realistic route through which an external attacker could gain access, obtain sensitive information or disrupt services.

6. A prioritised remediation plan

A useful report should help the organisation decide what to fix first rather than leaving it with an unstructured list of problems.

Recommendations can be grouped into:

• Immediate actions: Urgent weaknesses that could be readily exploited or expose important systems
• Short-term improvements: Issues that should be addressed through planned remediation
• Longer-term enhancements: Broader measures that would improve resilience and reduce future exposure

Advice should be proportionate, achievable and relevant to the organisation’s environment. Where several findings have a shared cause, the report should identify whether one wider improvement could address them together.

7. Retesting and closure

The report or accompanying documentation should explain whether retesting is included and how corrected findings will be recorded.

During a retest, each issue should be reviewed and assigned an updated status, such as:

• Resolved
• Partially resolved
• Still present
• Unable to retest

A revised report or formal retest statement can then provide evidence that the identified weaknesses have been addressed. This may be useful when responding to customers, insurers, auditors or tender requirements.

Warning signs in a poor-quality report

Concerns should be raised by reports containing:

• Pages of unverified scanner output
• Generic remediation copied from a vulnerability database
• No clearly defined scope or methodology
• Missing evidence
• No explanation of business impact
• Severity ratings without justification
• No management summary
• No opportunity to discuss the results

A report should make the results easier to understand and act upon, not simply transfer raw technical output to the client.

Turning test results into practical improvements

A good external penetration test report supports both technical remediation and informed business decisions. It should explain what was tested, provide credible evidence, prioritise the most important risks and give the organisation a clear route towards improving its security.

Plainsight Security provides clear, manually validated penetration test reports with practical remediation guidance and an accessible management summary. Contact us to discuss the external systems you need testing and the assurance your organisation requires.