What should you ask for in a penetration test report?
Ask for two useful views: an understandable account of scope and important findings, and enough technical detail for your engineers to act. Agree how limitations, remediation guidance and later retest results will be represented before the engagement begins.
Use a sample report to test the buying promise
NIST SP 800-115 describes reporting identified vulnerabilities, risk ratings and mitigation guidance. Use that foundational framing to ask for a redacted sample deliverable, then assess whether it works for your readers. The following worksheet is our suggested buying checklist.
On a small screen, scroll the table sideways to see every column.
| Reader | What to ask the sample to show |
|---|---|
| Engineering | Affected component, supporting evidence, clear finding description and useful remediation direction |
| Business owner | Scope, dates, important impacts and decisions that need attention |
| Customer reviewer | What was assessed and what the document actually concludes |
| Future maintainer | Stable finding IDs and a way to reconcile retest results |
Source: NIST SP 800-115: Technical Guide to Information Security Testing and Assessment (2008)
Example: two audiences, one engagement
A fictional SaaS company needs its engineering lead to plan fixes and its sales team to answer a customer’s security review. A detailed technical report may be appropriate for the first audience, while a shareable summary may be useful for the second.
Request both outputs if needed, with permitted recipients and handling agreed. Do not assume that a badge, certificate or summary contains enough information to make a remediation decision.
Ask how severity becomes a work queue
Have the provider explain how it communicates urgent findings during the engagement and how it describes business context in the final output. Your team should be able to identify the owner and next action for each finding.
Do not turn a count of findings into a provider league table. Different scopes, environments and reporting approaches can produce different totals. Evaluate whether the report answers the agreed question and supports useful action.
Keep the report and retest story together
Before the test starts, ask what happens to the deliverable after fixes are checked: a new version, an appendix or a separate confirmation. Choose a process that preserves the original finding and clearly records the later outcome.
Ask the receiving customer what evidence they expect before promising that a specific document will satisfy them. This page is a report-buying guide and makes no claim that a report automatically satisfies SOC 2 or another assurance requirement.