How to Actually Read a Penetration Test Report

A penetration test report can be overwhelming — pages of findings, technical jargon, and severity ratings that don't always match business urgency.

Start with the executive summary and the risk matrix, not the technical findings list. This tells you the overall posture and which 2-3 issues actually matter most for your business context — a critical finding on a rarely-used internal tool may matter less than a medium finding on your customer-facing login page.

CVSS scores are a starting point, not gospel — a 'high' severity finding that requires physical network access is a different risk than a 'high' finding exploitable from the public internet. Ask your testing partner to help prioritize based on actual exploitability in your environment.

Finally, treat the retest as non-negotiable. A finding that's 'fixed' but never verified is just an assumption.