Pentest Report for a Tender: What Buyers Accept

What buyers actually want to see

Procurement teams and client security reviewers look for a handful of things, and a report that misses them stalls the deal:

• Independent and accredited. A report from a recognised third party — ideally CREST-accredited — not a self-assessment. C3.3-style questions ask specifically whether testing was internal or third-party.
• Recent. Usually within the last 12 months, and re-tested after any significant change. A stale report gets rejected.
• The right scope. It must cover the system the buyer cares about — the application or service you're bidding to provide — not a token sample.
• Clear risk ratings. Findings scored consistently (typically CVSS), an executive summary a non-technical buyer can read, and detail your engineers can action.
• Evidence of fixes. A remediation plan and, ideally, a re-test confirming Critical and High issues are closed. Buyers want to see you acted, not just that you tested.

What gets a report rejected

The usual reasons: it's an automated vulnerability scan dressed up as a pentest; it's internal/self-tested with no independent name on it; it's out of date; it tests the wrong scope; or it lists findings with no evidence they were fixed. Any one of these can send you back to the start of a procurement round.

Tender-ready by design

We write reports to survive buyer scrutiny: CREST-accredited, scoped to what you're bidding to deliver, findings rated with CVSS, a board-readable summary, a remediation plan, and re-test evidence for the serious issues. You hand it over and procurement moves on.

Common questions