Pentest Reports That Every Stakeholder Will Actually Read — PDF, DOCX, HTML, JSON

The Pentestas reporting model ships four formats from every scan, each tuned to a specific audience. A single run of ai penetration testing produces all four. Nobody has to re-format the report to get the version their stakeholder needs.

Every completed scan produces a rendered HTML report automatically, served from the scan detail page and linkable via https://app.pentestas.com/reports/<scan_id>.html.

Audience: engineers, incident response, everyone who wants fast in-browser access.

What's in it:

• Live scan detail page with filterable finding list (sort by severity, filter by verified, etc.).
• Attack chain mindmap — the single most-viewed artefact in the typical scan.
• Per-finding drill-downs with proof-of-exploit request/response, CVSS vector, CWEOWASP mapping, validation steps, Exploit-DB matches, AI narrative.
• Embedded evidence — HTTP traces, screenshots, body excerpts.

Why HTML wins for engineers: copy-paste-able. When your engineer fixes a SQLi, they don't need to re-type the payload from a PDF — they copy it from the HTML report into their test harness. Friction-free.

Generated on Export report → PDF. ~30 seconds to render a typical scan's PDF.

Audience: CEO, CISO, board, audit committee, anyone who reads things on airplanes.

What's in it:

• Cover page with report metadata, tenant branding, signature block (Enterprise).
• Executive summary — findings-count-by-severity, top 3 attack chains with combined impact, overall risk rating.
• Per-chain page with stage-by-stage explanationremediation priority.
• Per-severity finding list (CRITICAL first) with proof-of-exploit excerpts.
• Appendix with stack fingerprint, scope boundaries, glossary of vulnerability classes.

Why PDF still matters: sharing with third parties (regulators, customers doing vendor due-diligence, board packets) is massively easier with a paginated format. A SOC 2 auditor doesn't click through a dashboard; they annotate PDFs. Enterprise customers can custom-brand the PDF (logo, primary colour, cover page text, footer confidentiality notice) so external-facing reports look like first-party deliverables.

Generated on Export report → DOCX.

Audience: consultancies delivering Pentestas scans as part of paid engagements; compliance teams that edit reports before distribution.

What's in it: the same content as the PDF, but fully editable. Section headings, tables, and paragraphs land in Word structure. Consultancies typically:

• Open the DOCX.
• Replace the Pentestas logo with their own.
• Add a "Methodology" section describing their engagement approach.
• Edit executive-summary wording to fit the client's vocabulary.
• Export to a custom-branded PDF for the client.

Why DOCX matters for consultancies: billable hours are spent on the parts that add value (custom context, client-specific recommendations), not on re-typing finding details. Pro+ tier includes branded DOCX templates for this exact workflow.

Fetched from GET /api/scans/{scan_id}/report?format=json. Instant (no render time).

Audience: SIEM / Jira / ServiceNow / GitHub Security tab integrations; your own dashboards; long-term diff tracking.

What's in it: full finding + chain + metadata schema, machine-readable, stable across releases.

Schema sketch:

{
  "scan": { "id", "target_url", "status", "started_at", "completed_at", ... },
  "findings": [
    { "id", "vuln_type", "severity", "title", "cvss_score", "cvss_vector",
      "endpoint", "evidence", "payload_used", "cwe_id", "owasp_category",
      "validation_steps", "exploit_candidates", "ai_narrative", "ai_impact",
      "verified", "source_code_location", ... }
  ],
  "chains": [
    { "id", "title", "severity", "combined_impact", "stages": [...] }
  ],
  "metadata": { "stack_fingerprint", "scope_boundaries", "scan_duration" }
}

Why JSON matters: computable. Diff two scans to compute "new findings vs. fixed findings"; feed into your SIEM for cross-scan trend reporting; generate Jira tickets via a webhook; light up GitHub Security tab via SARIF export (format=sarif).

SARIF (Static Analysis Results Interchange Format) is the JSON schema GitHub's Security tab expects. Pentestas exports directly:

GET /api/scans/{scan_id}/report?format=sarif

Upload to GitHub via actions/upload-sarif@v3 in CI and every finding lights up in the repo's Security tab with file-level annotation (when source-code-aware mode ran).

Fintech

CFO/CEO — PDF. Annual report reading. Skims executive summary + risk rating. Branded with company logo, not Pentestas logo.

Auditor (PCI QSA) — PDF + JSON. PDF for the evidence packet; JSON for the assessor's own database that tracks findings across the twelve-month window.

AppSec team — HTML. Daily operations.

SIEM — JSON via webhook. Every scan completion fires a webhook into Splunk / Sentinel / Datadog; findings join the broader security event timeline.

Medtech + healthtech

Compliance officer — PDF. HIPAA-aligned evidence packet. Attestation of technical-safeguard testing.

HHS / OCR — PDF. If an investigation happens, the PDF is the cleanest external-facing artefact.

Engineering — HTML. Day-to-day triage.

Risk registry — JSON. Medtechs with a mature risk-registry tool (GRC Archer, LogicManager, etc.) ingest JSON on every scan.

Legaltech

Enterprise client — PDF. Under NDA, on request, as part of vendor due-diligence. Often annotated with Pro+ custom branding showing the legaltech platform's logo + confidentiality text.

Internal AppSec — HTML. Daily triage.

Automation — JSON. Ticket creation via Jira integration.

Banks + financial services

Regulator (DORA, NYDFS, OCC) — PDF. Mandatory. Retained for 7 years on Enterprise tier.

Internal risk committee — PDF + HTML. PDF for minutes; HTML for real-time review during the meeting.

Board packet — PDF excerpt. Only the executive summary + top attack chains go to the board; engineering-level detail stays at the manager level.

SIEM — JSON via webhook. Continuous ingestion.

Insurance

Reinsurer / broker — PDF. Attestation of security posture during annual renewal.

Internal cybersecurity committee — PDF. Quarterly review.

State regulator — PDF. On request (NYDFS 500, CCPA-related inquiries).

Automation — JSON. Policy-admin-system integrations, claims-system integrations.

Pro+ customers can fully white-label the rendered reports:

• **Logo*— PNG or SVG, ≤2 MB. Appears on the coverevery page header.
• **Primary colour*— hex. Applied to headings, severity pills, cover-page accent.
• **Cover page titlesubtitle*— override the defaults.
• **Footer*— on every page. Often: "Confidential — prepared by Acme Security"an engagement ID.
• **Contact block*— nameemailphone on the cover.
• **Signature*— Enterprise customers can include a signed attestation block.

Branding applies to new reports; historical reports retain their original branding (for audit-trail stability).

For consultancies: each scan can export with different branding than your default. The Export → Customize dialog lets you pick a client logo + cover text for a single export without changing your tenant's baseline branding.

Reports ship automatically on scan completion via:

• **Email*— rendered HTML inlinedPDF attached to a recipient list.
• **Slack*— rich message with severity breakdownlink to the scan.
• **Webhook*— full JSON payload to any HTTPS URL. See Webhooks.

Wire any combination in Settings → Notifications.

• **HTML*— stored for the scan's retention period (365 days Free, 3 years Pro, unlimited Enterprise).
• **PDF / DOCX*— regenerated on demand; no persistent storage unless you configure delivery.
• **JSON*— computed on demand from the live finding DB, always current.

Enterprise customers with multi-year retention obligations can export + archive PDFs to their own WORM storage (immutable backups) with a simple webhook.

PDF generators vary widely. Pentestas renders via a headless Chromium pipeline with a tuned stylesheet — every table renders cleanly, code blocks keep monospace alignment, page breaks avoid splitting findings mid-section. Your auditor won't see the "rendered from an earlier PDF generator" artefacts (text running off the page, broken ligatures, orphan headings) that plague most security-tool PDFs.

Run any Pentestas scan. The HTML is instant. Click Export report and pick PDF for the 30-second render. Pick DOCX for the editable deliverable. Pick JSON for the machine-readable dump. Feed JSON into your downstream automation.

• Report formats docs
• Custom report branding
• Scheduled report delivery
• Webhooks — event-driven delivery