Good vs. Bad Pentest Reports: What a Real Security Assessment Looks Like
A while back, I found myself sitting in a prospective client’s office, admiring his bookshelf.
You can learn a lot about someone from the books they keep. Security references, a few classics on leadership, even a copy of The Mythical Man-Month — not bad.
And then I spotted it: a massive white binder labeled Penetration Test.
Curious, I asked. After all, I had been told they hadn’t done one yet.
Turns out they had paid for one. Paid handsomely, in fact. But what they received… well, that was another story.
We cracked open the binder right there on his desk. I didn’t even need to flip past the first few pages to recognize what I was looking at.
A Nessus scanner dump.
Hundreds of pages of raw, automated scan output — printed and dropped into a binder.
The only thing handcrafted about the whole thing was the cover page — featuring a big, confident logo and a title that called this mess a “penetration test.”
No manual validation. No prioritization. No meaningful remediation guidance. Just printer toner and wishful thinking.
It was everything wrong with the security industry in three inches of recycled paper.
How Bad Reports Happen
If you’ve ever wondered how security budgets evaporate without making anything safer, here’s your answer.
The story got better (or worse, depending on your threshold for professional disappointment).
The client, a bit wiser now, started collecting quotes from other Atlanta penetration testing services.
One outfit bragged they could “get domain admin in a few hours” and would spend the rest of the week writing the report.
Impressive? Maybe. Helpful? Not even close.
They didn’t want a stunt. They wanted to build resilience — and that requires more than just one exploit chain and a wave on the way out the door.
What a Real Penetration Test Should Deliver
They ended up hiring Asteros (smart choice).
What they got wasn’t just technical fireworks — though yes, we found critical and high-severity issues.
They got comprehensive coverage. Not just a “we popped domain admin” victory lap.
We didn’t stop at the first big win. We mapped out everything we could find:
- Small configuration mistakes that attackers could chain together
- Insecure legacy systems that needed proper isolation
- Missed patches that had quietly aged into critical risks
Each finding came with full reproduction steps, real-world risk ratings in context, and specific, relevant remediation guidance tailored to their environment.
Not boilerplate. Not jargon. Not a shrug-and-good-luck.
The report didn’t just check a compliance box.
It gave the technical team clarity.
It gave leadership risk visibility.
And it gave them a roadmap to genuinely improve security — not just hide behind a clean scanner report.
The Real Difference Between Good and Bad Pentest Reports
Bad penetration test reports are easy to spot — once you know what you’re looking for:
- Scanner dumps disguised as “findings.”
- CVSS scores thrown around without any real-world context.
- Exploit one chain, declare victory, head for the bar.
- Remediation advice that boils down to “try not to suck.”
Good reports do something different:
- They validate findings manually.
- They show impact in a way your leadership, auditors, and engineers can understand.
- They connect dots between risks instead of treating each vulnerability like an isolated accident.
- They help you fix the problem, not just admire it.
Bottom Line:
A penetration test isn’t supposed to be a fireworks show. It’s supposed to be a diagnosis — honest, thorough, and with a plan to get better.
Because you can’t fix what you don’t understand. And you can’t understand what’s buried under hundreds of pages of scanner fluff.
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