You’ve commissioned a network penetration test. A few weeks later, a report lands in your inbox — often running to dozens of pages, filled with technical terminology, CVSS scores, proof-of-concept screenshots, and a list of findings that ranges from critical vulnerabilities to minor configuration observations.
For many IT managers and business leaders, this is where the process stalls. The test has been done, the findings are on paper, but turning that document into a clear, prioritised remediation plan feels like a significant challenge — particularly when internal resource is limited, findings span multiple systems, and some of the technical detail requires specialist knowledge to interpret.
This article walks you through how to read a pen test report effectively, what the different sections mean, how to prioritise what gets fixed first, and how to use the report as the basis for a practical remediation programme rather than a document that sits in a folder.
What a Network Pen Test Report Typically Contains
Before getting into how to read a report, it helps to understand what a well-structured one should include. If you’re new to penetration testing or want a grounding in what the process involves, our article on network penetration testing explained covers the fundamentals clearly.
Most professional pen test reports are structured around a few core sections:
Executive summary — a high-level overview of the engagement, what was tested, the overall security posture observed, and the key findings. This section is written for a non-technical audience and should give senior stakeholders a clear picture of where things stand without requiring them to read the full technical detail.
Scope and methodology — what was included in the test, what was excluded, the timeframe, and the approach used. This section matters because it tells you the boundaries of the findings. A report that tested your external perimeter won’t tell you anything about your internal network, and vice versa.
Findings — the core of the report. Each finding should describe the vulnerability or weakness identified, how it was discovered, what an attacker could do with it, and how to fix it. Findings are typically rated by severity.
Risk ratings — most reports use a severity scale, either the tester’s own framework or a standardised one such as CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System). Ratings typically run from Critical or High through Medium and Low to Informational.
Remediation recommendations — specific guidance on how to address each finding, usually at the technical level.
Appendices — supporting technical detail, proof-of-concept evidence, and raw output from testing tools. This section is primarily for the engineers who will be doing the remediation work.
Understanding Risk Ratings — and Why They’re Not the Whole Story
Risk ratings in pen test reports are useful starting points, but they shouldn’t be followed mechanically without context. A finding rated Critical in a generic framework may have limited practical impact in your specific environment, and a finding rated Medium may be more serious than it appears if it relates to a system that’s central to your business.
The CVSS score, for example, rates vulnerability severity based on factors like attack complexity, required privileges, and potential impact — but it doesn’t account for your specific environment. A vulnerability with a high CVSS score that exists on a system with no sensitive data and no external exposure may be less urgent than a Medium-rated finding on your primary client-facing application.
When reading findings, consider three things alongside the rating:
- Exploitability in your environment — how easy is it for an attacker to actually use this vulnerability, given your specific setup?
- Business impact if exploited — what would actually happen? Data loss, downtime, reputational damage, regulatory breach?
- Exposure — is the vulnerable system internet-facing, on an internal network, or only accessible to specific users?
This contextualisation is what turns a list of technical findings into a risk-based remediation plan. Our post on pen testing vs vulnerability scanning is useful background here — understanding the difference between the two helps you appreciate what your pen test report is actually telling you and what it isn’t.
How to Prioritise Remediation
With findings read and context applied, the next step is building a prioritised remediation plan. Here’s a practical approach:
Tier 1: Fix immediately
These are findings that represent an active, exploitable risk with significant potential impact — typically Critical and High-rated findings that an attacker could use to gain access to your environment, move laterally, escalate privileges, or exfiltrate data.
Don’t wait for a scheduled maintenance window for these. If a tester has demonstrated they can access your systems through an unauthenticated vulnerability or a misconfigured service, that path is available to any attacker who finds it. Immediate remediation — or at minimum, immediate temporary mitigation — is the right response.
Tier 2: Fix within 30 days
Medium-rated findings that carry meaningful risk but aren’t immediately exploitable in isolation. These often require a chain of conditions to be exploited successfully, or they affect systems with limited exposure. They still need addressing, but you have a brief window to plan the remediation properly rather than rushing it.
Tier 3: Fix as part of scheduled maintenance
Low-rated findings and informational observations — weak cipher configurations, outdated but not immediately exploitable components, configuration best practice deviations. These are still worth addressing, but they can be incorporated into your normal maintenance cycle rather than treated as urgent.
Tier 4: Accept or monitor
Some findings may represent risks that are accepted as a business decision — where the cost or disruption of remediation outweighs the risk, and compensating controls are in place. These should be formally documented as accepted risks, reviewed periodically, and not simply forgotten. Acceptance without documentation is just avoidance.
For guidance on what a well-structured remediation approach to common network-level issues looks like in practice, our article on common network vulnerabilities and fixes covers many of the findings that appear most frequently in pen test reports for UK businesses.
Working Through the Report Section by Section
Start with the executive summary — even if you’re technical
The executive summary gives you a calibrated overview before you dive into individual findings. It also tells you how the tester characterises the overall security posture, which is a useful frame for understanding whether the findings, taken together, represent a systemic issue or a collection of isolated gaps.
If the executive summary describes significant weaknesses in your perimeter controls, that’s a different situation to one that describes a generally strong posture with a handful of specific findings. The overall picture matters as much as the individual items.
Read each finding in full before rating it
It’s tempting to skim to the severity rating and move on, but the detail matters. The description of how a finding was discovered tells you whether it requires active exploitation or passive discovery. The proof-of-concept section tells you whether a tester actually demonstrated the impact or is rating it theoretically. The remediation guidance tells you how complex the fix is likely to be.
A Critical finding with a one-line fix that involves updating a package is a very different remediation effort from a Critical finding that requires architectural changes to your network segmentation.
Flag findings that need specialist input
Some findings will be straightforward for your IT team to address. Others will require specialist expertise — whether that’s network engineering, application security, or cloud platform configuration. Identify these early and plan accordingly, rather than discovering mid-remediation that the fix is outside your team’s current capability.
If your business runs primarily on Microsoft 365, findings that relate to your cloud environment should be reviewed by your microsoft 365 support services london provider — cloud-specific vulnerabilities often require configuration changes within the platform itself rather than at the network level, and getting this wrong can introduce new issues.
Review appendices with your technical team
The appendices contain the raw evidence and technical detail that your engineers will need to replicate and verify findings before remediating them. Make sure the right people have access to this section and understand what they’re looking at.
Common Findings and What They Usually Mean
A few categories of findings appear in the majority of network pen test reports for UK businesses. Understanding what they represent helps you interpret them more quickly:
Unpatched software and outdated components — almost always appear in some form. The remediation is conceptually simple (update or replace), but the complexity varies considerably depending on how embedded the affected component is. Consistent patch management reduces how frequently these appear.
Default or weak credentials — devices, applications, and services with default manufacturer credentials or weak passwords. Often high severity because they’re straightforward to exploit. Remediation is usually quick.
Insufficient network segmentation — systems that shouldn’t be able to communicate with each other can do so. This matters because it enables lateral movement once an attacker has a foothold. Remediation may require architectural changes.
Exposed internal services — services that should only be accessible internally are reachable from the internet. Firewall rule reviews are usually the starting point.
Missing or weak encryption — outdated TLS configurations, unencrypted services, or insecure protocols still in use. Usually fixable through configuration changes but worth understanding the scope first.
For businesses with staff in multiple countries, findings related to remote access infrastructure — VPN configurations, remote desktop services, authentication mechanisms — are particularly worth prioritising. These are the entry points most commonly targeted in attacks against businesses with distributed workforces. Working with a provider offering global it support company capabilities means you have the resource to address these findings across all your locations consistently, not just at your UK headquarters.
Turning Findings Into a Remediation Plan
Once you’ve read and contextualised the report, the output should be a documented remediation plan that includes:
- Each finding, with its contextualised priority and assigned owner
- The specific action required — update, reconfigure, redesign, or accept
- A target completion date for each item
- Dependencies between findings (some fixes are prerequisites for others)
- A review date to check progress and re-test where appropriate
This plan should be reviewed regularly — not filed and revisited only when the next pen test is due. Progress should be tracked and reported, particularly for Tier 1 and Tier 2 findings.
For businesses with European operations, it’s worth considering whether findings affect systems or data that fall under specific regional obligations. If a vulnerable system holds personal data relating to EU citizens, the remediation priority may be higher than the technical severity alone suggests, and your european support services provider should be involved in reviewing findings that affect those environments.
After Remediation: Retesting and Ongoing Assurance
Remediating findings from a pen test report isn’t the end of the process — it’s the end of the first cycle. Once remediation is complete, retesting the specific findings that were addressed confirms they’ve been properly fixed and haven’t introduced new issues. Most professional pen test engagements include a retest as standard, or offer it as an add-on.
Beyond the immediate retest, the question of how often to run penetration testing is worth considering. Our article on how often you should run network penetration testing covers the factors that influence this — including the pace of change in your environment, your regulatory requirements, and the nature of your most significant risk exposures.
It’s also worth understanding the difference between internal and external testing. External tests focus on what an attacker can reach from the internet. Internal tests assume a foothold has already been gained and assess how far an attacker could move from there. Most mature testing programmes include both. Our post on internal vs external network penetration testing explains the distinction and helps you think about which type is most appropriate for your current situation.
How Pen Testing Connects to Your Wider Security Posture
A penetration test is one input into your overall security posture — it tells you where the gaps are at a point in time. Addressing those gaps is more effective when the rest of your security framework is also functioning well.
Endpoint security, for example, reduces the impact of vulnerabilities that an attacker might exploit after gaining initial network access. Our post on endpoint hardening steps that reduce real-world attacks covers the device-level measures that complement what a network pen test addresses.
Dark web monitoring connects in a different way — if credentials for your systems have been exposed in a breach, an attacker may not need to exploit a network vulnerability at all. They can simply log in. Working with a dark web monitoring company london service alongside your pen testing programme means you’re monitoring for credential-based risk at the same time as addressing technical vulnerabilities.
If your testing reveals weaknesses in how your staff handle suspicious emails or social engineering attempts, complementary controls from an anti phishing company new york or UK-based provider can address the human-side vulnerabilities that technical testing often surfaces.
For businesses considering Cyber Essentials certification, understanding how pen test findings map to the scheme’s requirements is useful — our article on why your business should become Cyber Essentials accredited provides a clear overview of what the certification covers and how it relates to broader security assurance activities.
And if any remediation involves moving or restructuring systems, platforms, or cloud environments, coordinating that work with your platform migration services provider ensures that the changes don’t inadvertently introduce new vulnerabilities or disrupt the continuity of your security controls during the transition.
For businesses working with a multinational it support company london provider to manage IT across multiple locations, it’s worth confirming that pen testing scope covers all your significant environments — not just the UK network — and that remediation is coordinated consistently across locations rather than handled piecemeal by individual offices.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should it take to remediate findings from a pen test?
It depends on the number and complexity of findings. Tier 1 findings should be addressed immediately — within days where possible. The full remediation cycle for a typical report, including Tier 2 and Tier 3 findings, usually runs between one and three months for a well-resourced team. Stretching beyond that risks leaving significant vulnerabilities unaddressed for too long.
What if we can’t fix a finding immediately?
Temporary mitigations — restricting access, adding compensating controls, increasing monitoring around the affected system — can reduce risk while a permanent fix is planned. Document what’s in place and why, and set a firm date for the full remediation. Don’t leave findings in an undefined state.
Should we share the pen test report with our IT provider?
Yes, absolutely. Your IT provider needs visibility into the findings to help remediate them and to understand the current state of your environment. If there are findings that reflect on the quality of their own management of your systems, that’s a conversation worth having — it shouldn’t be a reason to withhold the report.
What’s the difference between a vulnerability scan and a pen test report?
A vulnerability scan identifies potential weaknesses by checking systems against known vulnerability databases. A pen test goes further — a tester actively attempts to exploit vulnerabilities to demonstrate real-world impact. This means pen test findings are validated rather than theoretical, which makes prioritisation more reliable.
How do we handle findings that require vendor action rather than our own remediation?
Some findings relate to vulnerabilities in third-party software or hardware that require a vendor patch. If a patch isn’t yet available, document the finding, implement any available mitigations, and monitor for a fix. Where the vendor is unresponsive or a patch is unlikely, consider whether the affected system can be replaced or isolated.
Do pen test findings need to be reported to the ICO?
The findings themselves don’t need to be reported. However, if the test reveals that a vulnerability has already been exploited and personal data has been compromised as a result, that may constitute a reportable breach under UK GDPR. Your DPO should review findings with this question in mind.
Ready to Make the Most of Your Next Pen Test?
Penetration testing is only valuable if the findings are acted on. If your last pen test report is gathering dust — or if you’ve never had one and want to understand where your network vulnerabilities are — we’re happy to have a straightforward conversation about next steps.
Northern Star works with businesses across the UK and internationally to run structured penetration testing programmes and turn findings into practical, prioritised remediation plans that actually get implemented.
Get in touch with our team today and let’s talk about how to make your security testing work harder for your business.
