Reporting

Performing the assessment is only half of the overall process; the final product is the production of a well-written, and informative, report. A report should be easy to understand and highlight all the risks found during the assessment phase and appeal to both management and technical staff

The report needs to have three major sections and be created in a manner that allows each section to be split off and printed and given to the appropriate teams, such as the developers or system managers.

The sections are: I. Executive Summary

The executive summary sums up the overall findings of the assessment and gives managers, or system owners, an idea of the overall risk faced. The language used should be more suited to people who are not technically aware and should include graphs or other charts which show the risk level. It is recommended that a summary be included, which details when the testing commenced and when it was completed.

Another section, which is often overlooked, is a paragraph on implications and actions. This allows the system owners to understand what is required to be done in order to ensure the system remains secure.

'''II. Technical Management Overview'''

The technical management overview section often appeals to technical managers who require more technical detail than found in the executive summary. This section should include details about the scope of the assessment, the targets included and any caveats, such as system availability etc. This section also needs to include an introduction on the risk rating used throughout the report and then finally a technical summary of the findings.

III Assessment Findings

The last section of the report is the section, which includes detailed technical detail about the vulnerabilities found, and the approaches needed to ensure they are resolved. This section is aimed at a technical level and should include all the necessary information for the technical teams to understand the issue and be able to solve it.

The findings section should include:

-	A reference number for easy reference with screenshots -	The host/application -	The risk rating and impact value -	A technical description of the issue -	A section on resolving the issue

Each finding should be clear and concise and give the reader of the report a full understanding of the issue at hand

IIII Toolbox

This section is used to describe the commercial and open-source tools that were used in conducting the assessment. When custom scripts/code are utilized during the assessment, it should be disclosed in this section or noted as attachment.

Some may argue that the tools used by other professionals when providing a service (Doctors, Mechanics, Lawyers etc.) Are not disclosed so why should we do this as a standard practice? I answer that question with this, the OWASP Testing Guide is FREE and OPEN-SOURCE and all of the sections of this guide provide a manual explanation of how to test. Some will automate the testing process to reach a result but, tools are only 40-60% of the work. We believe this guide is to provide details and best practices in not only in conducting testing but also as a information security professional, full-disclosure of how a result was reached as there are always false positives right ;)

APPENDIX A