Just received a 60-page security report and not sure where to start? Grab a coffee. We’ll walk you through what matters and what to ask next.
Who it’s for
Managers and leaders receiving a security report
You’ll learn
- · What each section means
- · How to prioritize fixes
- · What to ask your provider
Reading time
7 min read
Key takeaways
- A good report is a prioritized plan.
- Every finding needs evidence and a clear fix.
- Ask about validation, retest and walkthrough.
Executive summary
In one page, leadership should understand the overall risk, the most important issues and what is being done about them.
Findings
Each finding should include a severity score (such as CVSS), a plain description, the business impact, evidence that it was confirmed, and clear remediation steps your team can follow.
What to ask your provider
Ask whether findings were manually validated, whether a retest is included, and whether you will get a walkthrough with your developers. Those three answers say a lot about the quality of the work.
Understanding severity
Critical and high findings usually need fixing first because they can lead to serious harm with little effort. Medium findings often matter when combined with others. Low and informational items are good hygiene to schedule into normal work.
Turning the report into a plan
Create a ticket for each finding, assign an owner and a due date based on severity, and track progress weekly. When the high-priority items are done, book the retest.
Jargon buster
- CVSS
- A 0–10 score that shows how severe a security issue is.
- Remediation
- The fix for a security issue.
- Executive summary
- A one-page overview of the results for leadership.
What you should do
- Read the executive summary with leadership
- Assign each finding to an owner and due date
- Fix critical and high issues first
- Keep the report for audits and customer reviews
What our team does
- Write a one-page executive summary
- Include CVSS score, evidence and steps for each finding
- Walk your developers through the report
- Retest and issue an updated status
- Explain severity in business terms
- Provide a remediation matrix you can import
- Update the report after the retest
Every CRIS report comes with a walkthrough call — because a report nobody reads fixes nothing.
— The CRIS InfoTech security team