Complete Guide to Cybersecurity Reports with Examples

Virgil

Virgil

Feb 02, 2025
Depiction of a cybersecurity report

How nice would your cybersecurity program drive predictable outcomes and preempt threats that matter most to the business, pinpoint areas that need attention, align stakeholders, win customer trust, and inform organization-wide security strategy? Well, that is precisely what cybersecurity reports help you establish. 

Cybersecurity reports are more than hygiene documents—they are fundamental pieces of information that inform security decisions at every step, the glue that binds stakeholder aspirations and evidence that wins auditor and customer trust.  

Every business needs cybersecurity reports to streamline its security operations. In this blog, we will discuss what a cybersecurity report contains, its key findings, and all the other aspects that make a comprehensive cybersecurity report. 

So, let’s dive in…

TL;DR

A cybersecurity report provides a snapshot of security posture, covering threats, control effectiveness, residual risks, vendor risks, and incidents to pinpoint vulnerabilities and necessary actions.
It includes key sections like executive summaries, security risk assessments, audit readiness reports, vendor risk evaluations, penetration testing results, and incident response summaries.
Modern cybersecurity reports leverage automation and real-time monitoring to track compliance, visualize security gaps, and streamline remediation efforts.

What does a cybersecurity report cover?

A cybersecurity report is a snapshot of an organization’s security posture. The report covers an in-depth assessment of identified threats, effectiveness of control performance, residual risks, an overview of vendor risks, and incidents that occurred. Typically, it helps organizations measure residual risk and pinpoint areas of cyber risk that need further remedial actions. On top of it, some cybersecurity reports may adopt a forward-looking approach by analyzing the threat and security landscape and assessing readiness for future threats and security challenges. 

It can be further detailed into sections: 

  • Executive summary 
  • Threat assessment and summary of risk profile
  • Incident reports 
  • Vendor risk assessments 
  • Audit and compliance posture reports 

Let’s discuss this one by one:

1) Executive summary of the cybersecurity report 

Consider this report a high-level assessment of the entire posture. It’s usually helpful when you want to present progress toward KPIs and key factors impacting your organization’s resilience to the board succinctly. 

It will cover a summary of key findings, security challenges, actions taken, and a recommended action plan to improve security posture. 

To understand it better, let’s look at this cybersecurity executive summary example and template:

SectionDescriptionExample
Key findingsThis section summarizes critical findings of the cybersecurity incidents, quantifying vulnerabilities and control performance.
Our organization prevented X amount of cyber threats and incidents from turning into a breach; Y% of them were phishing attacksKey technical controls like MFA cover 80% of our digital assets, up from 70% last year. Our preparedness for the upcoming ISO 27001 audit is 90%, up from 70% in the last quarter. 
Current challengesThis section of a cybersecurity report’s executive summary summarizes the critical threats that need to be tackled in the coming quarters. 20% of our systems operate on legacy hardware, raising 15 necessary vulnerabilities. Only X amount of assets are protected with access controls, jeopardizing assets worth Y$ Updates in compliance regulations such as CCPA require policy changes to be implemented in X months. Expanded use of the cloud requires action to patch misconfiguration to maintain compliance with NIST and ISO 27001
Actions takenThis quantifies the actions the security team has taken to bolster the resilience and compliance posture of the company.“We mitigated X vulnerability, reducing our impact from $X to $Y.””We’ve cut recovery time from X hrs to Y, saving us $X in costs and potential lost revenue.”Implemented X policies and controls to bolster compliance with GDPR. 
RecommendationPropose specific actions or changes to enhance the organization’s cybersecurity posture.Implement comprehensive endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems across all devices to meet and exceed the endpoint protection controls required by NIST SP 800-53.Upgrade encryption protocols for data at rest and in transit, ensuring compliance with GDPR’s privacy by design and default principles.Conduct regular internal and third-party audits to ensure continuous compliance with evolving standards like HIPAA for healthcare data and PCI DSS for payment security.

2) Security risk assessment report sample

These reports visualize the organization’s and digital assets’ current risk level, detailing where the critical vulnerabilities are leaving sensitive information and networks exposed, which threats are adequately mitigated, and which attack vectors are most likely to impact business. They usually include recommendations for mitigating risks.

Here’s a sample of the cybersecurity threat summary:

Cybersecurity risk report example.

This risk report encapsulates the entire security posture of your organization, highlighting the total number of cyber threats relevant to your business and where they rank in terms of residual risks post-mitigation actions.  In Sprinto, security teams like yours can get an overview of all your risks and control performance on a single window like this:

However, a risk report also contains a granular picture of a significant group of risks or individual vulnerabilities. The report clearly visualizes the category of risks, the assigned risk owner responsible for mitigating it, and the potential impact and likelihood of occurrence for your business. It also reveals the residual risk potential after implementing controls. 

Example of a high-level cyber-risk report

However, if your organization has a real-time control monitoring tool, these reports would also visualize the status of checks and controls and how they fare against different cybersecurity compliance standards. 

Here’s how risk assessments against particular compliance standards look like:

Example of a risk mapping for cybersecurity report.

Lastly, a security risk monitoring report also records the real-time status of controls. This visualizes which controls are working as expected and which need attention to launch remediation workflows. 

Your control monitoring report looks like this:

Contro performance report.

3) Cybersecurity audit readiness report example

These assess the adequacy of an organization’s cybersecurity policies and controls towards the requirement of a particular cybersecurity standard. These reports highlight areas of noncompliance and inform your compliance programs to fix deficiencies in policies, mitigation controls, or quality of evidence. 

For instance, the compliance health report can provide an overview of real-time accounts of controls mapped to a particular security framework. In this example of a cybersecurity audit report, the report displays the number of controls that are implemented as per SOC 2 criteria, how their health has fared as the month progressed, which controls performed adequately to build a clear audit