Mastering Metasploit

Generating manual reports

Let's now discuss how to create a penetration test report and see what is to be included, where it should be included, what should be added and what should be removed, how to format the report, the usage of graphs, and so on. The report of a penetration test is read by many people, such as manager, administrator, and top executives. So, its necessary for things to be organized well enough so that message that needs to be conveyed to the people by the report is correct and is understood by the target audience.

The format of the report

A good penetration testing report can be broken down in the following format:

• Page design
• Document control
  • Cover page
  • Document properties
• List of report content
  • Table of content
  • List of illustrations ...