This security report template gives you a ready-made structure for writing up a security review: scope, findings with severity ratings, impact, recommendations, and an overall risk rating. Instead of starting from a blank page, make a copy and fill in what you found. Whether you’re documenting your own audit or reporting findings to a client, the structure below covers what most reports need.
What This Security Report Template Includes
This template is built around the kind of structured reporting outlined in resources like the OWASP Testing Guide, condensed into five practical sections you can fill in directly: header information, an executive summary, findings with severity ratings, an overall risk rating, and a conclusion with next steps.
This works whether you’re a freelancer sending a client their first security review, a student documenting a lab exercise, or someone auditing their own small business site before it goes live. The structure stays the same regardless of how technical the findings are.
📌 How to use this: Click the button above. Google will ask if you’d like to make a copy, click “Make a copy” and it opens directly in your own Google Drive. From there, edit freely, export as PDF, or share with a client.
📋 Header Information
Every report needs to establish scope before the findings do the talking. This section captures who reviewed what, when, and how far the review went, so anyone reading it later knows exactly what was and wasn’t covered.
📝 Executive Summary
Written for someone who will never read past the first paragraph, typically whoever is making the decision to fix things or not. Two or three sentences covering what was reviewed and the overall risk level found is usually enough.
🔍 Findings
The core of the report. Each finding gets its own severity rating, a plain description of the issue, what could actually happen if it’s exploited, and a specific recommendation. If you need help deciding severity, our breakdown of CVE vs CWE vs CAPEC explains how these classifications relate to real-world risk.
⚠️ Overall Risk Rating
A single rating that summarizes the whole review. This is the number a manager or client will remember even if they forget every individual finding, so it should reflect the most serious issue found, not an average.
🏁 Conclusion & Next Steps
Reports that end with a wall of findings and no clear priority tend to get shelved. A short closing section that states what should be fixed first is what actually gets acted on. If you’re structuring a broader review, our OWASP ASVS 5.0 table of contents is a useful reference for what a complete set of checks can look like.
A blank page is the biggest barrier to actually writing up what you found. This template exists to remove that barrier, not to dictate exactly how you write. Adjust the sections, add your own, or drop what doesn’t apply. The goal is a report someone can act on, not a form to fill in for its own sake.
Pair this with our Threat Model Template for the planning side, or explore our Secure Development guides for more on building security into a project from the start.