7 Common Pitfalls of Penetration Testing Reports

Do you have a drawer stuffed with pens, chapsticks, and other items you don’t know where to put but can’t part with? In a sense, the “junk drawer” seems practical; yet impractical because you can’t find anything!

The same could be said for penetration testing reports. It’s possible to uncover all kinds of vulnerabilities with helpful recommendations for patching and hardening, but those insights can easily be overlooked if they are not effectively compiled.

Throughout this blog, we’ll review common challenges that security teams and businesses face with poorly constructed pentest reports and how you can maximize your pentest reporting efficiency.

Avoid These 7 Penetration Testing Report Pitfalls

Nearly 40% of ethical hackers said they can break into almost any environment and 60% added that they need just 5 hours or less to break into a corporate environment once they uncover a weakness according to a recent survey by the SANS Institute. Yikes!

But if you’re here, you already know the benefits of pentesting and are trying to figure out how best to report on your findings (without creating a chaotic, unreadable mess.) That’s where we come in. With nearly a decade of experience helping folks like you create the perfect pentest report in half the time, we’ve uncovered need-to-know pitfalls.  Keep reading for seven missteps with pentest reporting and, if avoided, you’ll improve the business’s remediation efforts, decision-making, and overall security posture. 

An easily missed pitfall of a pentest report is not properly defining the scope. The reports should outline what areas are in and outside of the scope, and note if there are any environmental constraints. Otherwise, the organization may assume its entire infrastructure was poked and prodded for weaknesses, and major vulnerabilities could be left undetected. 

You can easily avoid this mistake by clearly outlining the penetration test’s scope and limitations. The best way you can do this is to create a statement of work (SOW) before the start of the project and once it kicks off, include a cover page, table of contents, and executive summary at the beginning of the penetration test report so that everyone is on the same page.

To learn more about building pentest report templates, check out our blueprint for success.

If a penetration test report is created without prioritizing the business impact, it can be difficult to determine which risks to address first. Having unclear vulnerability severity ratings can cause security teams to leave high-risk vulnerabilities exposed while fixing lower-priority ones because of the list’s order.

To clear up any confusion, you should rank findings by severity, exploitability, and business effect with labels such as “Critical,” “High,” “Medium,” and “Low.” You can also leverage a standard pentest report template or risk assessment frameworks such as lCVSS or OWASP Risk Rating Methodology.

Rushing a pentest to deliver it by a certain due date or helping with a compliance report often results in an incomplete analysis, which could lead to major security gaps. Not only can threats be overlooked, but they often result in ineffective remediation and increased security risks.

However, you don’t have to make a tradeoff between speed and quality. You can save time and still deliver a high-quality security evaluation by setting realistic timelines, using standardized templates, and implementing pentest reporting automation.

Penetration testing reporting tools can be handy, but over-reliance on automated tools that generate generic, unedited reports isn’t as helpful as it should be. Without context around the business, resources, and infrastructure, you may be missing powerful details that could result in an incomplete security audit.

To fix this issue, you could manually review and edit the automated pentest findings to mend to that specific business’s use case or find a pentest reporting tool that already does this. 

Need some help finding the right tool? Here are the Top 10 Things to Look for When Picking a Pentest Management and Reporting Automation Tool.

You can leverage vulnerability scanner tools (and you should), but without pentests in the mix, chances are, not all vulnerabilities will be uncovered. Pentests should be a set part of your cybersecurity plan — conducted on a continuous basis. (In other words, conducting a pentest once or twice a year is not going to cut it.)  

According to IBM’s research, it takes security teams an average of 258 days to identify and contain a data breach. But if you were running a continuous pentesting model, security teams should be able to detect and contain a breach much faster.

But what does continuous pentesting really mean and how often should you run a pentest? Check out our blog, Pentesting Frequency: 5 Key Questions to Get You on the Right Schedule, to find the answers you’ve been looking for. 

Your penetration report is going to be looked at by multiple parties. Hopefully, right?! After all, you put the time and effort into creating this report. However, reports are often packed with technical terms and acronyms that non-techies and C-suite folks aren’t familiar with. This can lead to poor alignment with teams and their business objectives as they don’t truly understand the significance and impact of the pentest findings. 

With your audience having a wide array of technical knowledge, you should always spell out abbreviations and include an executive summary with visual graphs or dashboards. You may also want to add a glossary to explain any lesser-known security terms. 

A penetration test summary of findings is another area that many stakeholders will be interested in. Be sure to include the findings’ name and severity rankings with information on how they can read more about the detailed findings.

Last but certainly not least, pentesting reports are not as effective if they don’t provide remediation actions. If the report findings pinpoint all the vulnerabilities and black holes in their infrastructure, this can leave the organization feeling overwhelmed and unsure where to focus their efforts. 

Pentest reports should include a remediation plan with actionable steps along with long-term strategies for strengthening your security posture. As discussed, each finding and recommendation should have a rating such as “Critical”, “High”, or “Medium” to help indicate which actions should be taken first to avoid a potential breach. 

Recommendations for Improving Penetration Testing Reports

Throughout this blog, we’ve given you our best do’s and don’ts when it comes to preparing your penetration testing reports. But there are a few more tips you’ll want to keep in mind as you continue to pentest: 

• Standardization: Implement frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK or OWASP, so everyone will be on the same page. 
• Automation: Utilize automation tools to streamline your data collection, risk assessments, and overall business reporting.
• Training: Focus on continued education for the whole business, from the security team to the C-Suite, for a better understanding of business impact.
• Feedback Loops: Gather feedback from stakeholders to refine your reporting outputs.
• Invest in Tools: Find the right tools to help you with your pentesting today and tomorrow like a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) tool. 

So you’ve delivered your report, now what?

It’s like the Never Ending Story, you get to start all over again with pentesting and continuous validation. But don’t worry, we’ve got all the information you need to fast-track this process. 

Effective Pentest Reporting With PlexTrac

Remember, you don’t have to go it alone. We can help! PlexTrac is a penetration test reporting and vulnerability data management platform that makes team collaboration, risk prioritization, and remediation tracking easy.

Get better reports, deeper assessments, and more insights today. Request a PlexTrac demo to learn more.