Cybersecurity report creation is crucial for holding stakeholders knowledgeable of your danger administration progress, particularly inside Third-Occasion Threat Administration, which focuses on a danger area with probably the most vital potential of inflicting a knowledge breach.
What’s a cybersecurity report?
A cybersecurity report is a doc that overviews vital details about your group’s safety posture. These studies are supplied to stakeholders and board members to tell them of the group’s state of cybersecurity and degree of resilience to exterior safety incidents and rising cyber threats.
A typical cybersecurity report features a detailed but concise breakdown of all components contributing to a corporation’s general cybersecurity posture.
These might embrace:
Abstract of vendor cybersecurity efficiency, particularly for high-risk distributors with entry to delicate knowledge.Third-party dangers impacting regulatory compliance.An outline of vital safety dangers found in vendor danger assessments and their related danger therapy plans.The group’s cybersecurity efficiency towards business benchmarks.An inventory of vulnerabilities and cybersecurity dangers that improve the group’s potential for struggling a knowledge breach or cybersecurity incidentSummary of incident response efforts.Safety management deficiencies that create resilience gaps, new malware, ransomware, and cyber assault tacticsCommon forms of cybersecurity studies
Some frequent cybersecurity report examples embrace:
Board abstract report: A high-level abstract of the vital components contributing to the group’s safety posture and the way its cybersecurity technique is monitoring towards its metrics.Vendor danger evaluation report: A abstract of the first cybersecurity threats found in a vendor’s danger evaluation, forming a foundation for the seller’s danger administration plan.Firm assault floor report: A report of all the first assault vectors throughout info know-how gadgets in a corporation’s digital footprint.Penetration testing report: An outline of the findings of a simulated cyber assault, figuring out weaknesses in safety measures doubtlessly facilitating unauthorized entry, ransomware assaults, and phishing assaults.Incident studies: An in depth account of knowledge safety incidents, together with the character of the assault, impacted methods, and effectiveness of deployed incident response plans.Compliance and regulatory studies: An illustration of the corporate’s adherence to inner safety insurance policies and cybersecurity requirements rules, reminiscent of NIST CSF, HIPAA, and PCI DSS (compliance studies are additionally useful for regulation enforcement businesses investigating potential compliance violations after a serious safety incident, such because the CrowdStrike occasion).
Associated: How CISOs ought to deal with future CrowdStrike-type breaches.
These examples of cybersecurity reporting kinds may very well be stand-alone studies or elements of a single cybersecurity program report.Why are cybersecurity studies essential?
With rising oversight expectations throughout stakeholders, regulators, and senior administration, cybersecurity studies are a useful support to safety groups, streamlining communication of safety program efficiency.
Your safety crew ought to combine a cybersecurity reporting coverage for 4 major causes:
1. Cybersecurity studies simplify danger administration reporting to the board
Cybersecurity studies are the first approach the board retains knowledgeable of the group’s evolving cyber danger publicity. With current main disruptions within the service supplier menace panorama, senior administration now acknowledges third-party danger as a basic enterprise danger and expects safety groups to prioritize Third-Occasion Threat Administration insights in cyber studies.
2. Cybersecurity studies streamline regulatory compliance monitoring
The language the board understands with probably the most readability is the language of {dollars} and cents. Regardless that safety dangers might end in vital harm prices ought to they grow to be exploited by cybercriminals, the extra vital potential for monetary affect stems from compliance violations.
Cybersecurity studies assist stakeholders monitor the important thing dangers impacting the group’s compliance with business rules. An excellent cyber reporting template can even contemplate the affect of third-party dangers since this danger class has a major affect on compliance with strict rules, reminiscent of PCI DSS, Common Information Safety Regulation (GDPR), Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and, Well being Insurance coverage Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Third-party danger administration and regulatory compliance studies assist senior administration monitor the return of TPRM answer investments.3. Cybersecurity studies assist strategic decision-making
With common publicity to cyber studies, the board could make clever enterprise choices that contemplate the group’s present state of cyber danger publicity, making certain the corporate constantly evolves towards better cyber resilience.
Vendor danger abstract cybersecurity studies are particularly beneficial for supporting safe operational scaling choices. With the idea of a third-party danger therapy plan produced by a danger evaluation report, the board can examine the inherent danger publicity of potential third-party companies towards the strategic advantages of onboarding them, thereby securing the seller onboarding course of.
4-step information: The right way to write a cybersecurity report
To jot down an efficient cybersecurity report, you may have to cater these studies to your audience (stakeholders, board members, and senior administration). Creating detailed studies turns into more and more easy as you perceive the next basic truths about senior administration and board members.
Fact #1: Senior administration is not going to care about technical dangers. They are going to solely care in regards to the monetary prices related to the chance.Fact #2: Senior administration will solely be concerned about cybersecurity dangers which might be essential to them.Fact #3: Senior administration is not going to perceive cybersecurity technical jargon.
Contemplating these three basic truths, the next 4-step framework will enable you to create a cybersecurity report that your board will admire.
Step 1: Perceive the cyber dangers that matter to the board
Step one of the cyber report creation course of is to conduct analysis to be taught which cyber dangers your board and senior administration employees really care about. Interview all C-level employees and doc all of their major cyber danger issues. Ideally, all C-level and senior government employees ought to be interviewed to attain probably the most numerous profile of the group’s safety anxieties.
You should use the next questions as a template for such an interview:
What are your major cybersecurity issues?Are you frightened in regards to the group struggling a knowledge breach?Are you conscious of our present danger of struggling a knowledge breach?Do you’re feeling sufficiently knowledgeable about your efforts to handle your major cyber danger issues?Are there any safety incidents or cyber assault occasions talked about within the information that you’re involved about?Do you know it is attainable to endure a knowledge breach by way of a compromised third-party vendor?Are you involved in regards to the safety of our third-party distributors?Of all of the cyber danger issues you listed, how would you get them organized from most crucial to least vital?Ideally, you need to solely have to carry out this analysis course of as soon as, as it is going to outline the main focus of all future cybersecurity studies.
It is very important observe that your cybersecurity report shouldn’t be restricted to the forms of dangers the board deems related. Nearly all of the board is probably going not aware of the technical elements of cybersecurity, and complicated zero-day dangers will inevitably emerge and require the board’s visibility.
After collating your checklist of major cybersecurity issues, quantify their potential monetary affect on the enterprise the place attainable. Doing this can considerably improve the relevance and worth of your cybersecurity report back to senior administration.
Most board members drastically admire when safety groups make an effort to translate their major cyber danger issues right into a language the board can perceive (i.e. {dollars} and cents).
This submit about cyber danger quantification outlines methodologies for calculating the monetary affect of cybersecurity dangers.
Step 2: Write an government abstract
An government abstract of a cybersecurity report is a concise overview of the complete report. This part usually covers the next factors for a given reporting interval:
(i). Cyber danger findingsA abstract of all main cyber dangers found throughout the reporting interval, emphasizing dangers deemed essential by the board
Here is an instance of a cyber danger detection discovering merchandise for an government abstract of a cyber report:
“We discovered several third-party services impacted by two zero-day exploits – Log4Shell and Spring4Shell. Remediation actions were promptly deployed by installing the latest security patch issued by the product developers, in addition to bolstering our network security and firewall configurations. No sensitive information was compromised during this exposure, and no other internal systems were impacted.”
(ii). Cybersecurity incident summaryA abstract of all safety occasions and the effectiveness of respective incident response crew efforts
Here is an instance of a cybersecurity incident merchandise for an government abstract of a cyber report:
“We discovered that 80% of our critical third-party vendors, those supporting our critical, were impacted by the CrowdStrike IT outage. We used our Vendor Risk Management product to promptly identify and address all areas of our supply chain affected by the incident.”
Watch this video to find out how Cybersecurity helped its clients promptly perceive their publicity to the CrowdStrike incident and deploy applicable mitigation measures.
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(iii). Cyber menace summaryA abstract of all vital menace intelligence developments that might affect the corporate
Here is an instance of a cyber menace abstract merchandise for an government abstract of a cyber report:
Due to our safety questionnaire automation options, all questionnaires have been promptly accomplished, confirming none of our distributors have been affected by the occasion. All safety questionnaires have been accomplished, indicating that none of our distributors have been affected by the occasion.”
UpGuard’s newsfeed indicates vendors impacted by security incidents mentioned in the media.(iv). Cyber risk mitigation recommendationsRecommendations for addressing cyber risks detected in the reporting period
Here’s an example of a cyber threat summary item for an executive summary of a cyber report:
“To mitigate the chance of employees falling sufferer to a rising pattern of phishing assaults, common safety consciousness coaching ought to be deployed throughout the group. As well as, a real-time vendor safety posture monitoring answer ought to be deployed to handle the board’s issues in regards to the firm being impacted by third-party breaches, particularly throughout all of our vital distributors.”
Step 3: Summarize vendor security posture performanceThis stage relates to cyber reports about the organization’s third-party risk exposure.
To address the board’s objection to cybersecurity jargon, this section of a cybersecurity board report should represent the complexities of the organization’s evolving third-party risk exposure in an easy-to-understand manner, best achieved with graphical elements.
It’s helpful to start at the highest level by indicating the vendor’s overall security posture, quantified as a security rating.
Snapshot of a vendor’s overall security rating taken from UpGuard’s vendor cybersecurity reports.
Security rating data integrations also allow the board to track the vendor’s security posture changes over time, an especially helpful feature for critical vendors.
Snapshot of a vendor’s security rating changes over time taken from UpGuard’s vendor cybersecurity reports.
It’s helpful for the board to understand how a vendor’s risk posture is distributed across different cyber risk categories. Here’s an example of how you could represent this graphically.
A break down of a vendor’s security rating by category, snapshot taken from UpGuard’s vendor cybersecurity reports.
A break down of a vendor’s security rating by category, snapshot taken from UpGuard’s vendor cybersecurity reports.The insights above are typically used in reports delineating cybersecurity performance for a single vendor. Such reports would also include the findings of cyber risks detected from questionnaires and other sources of security performance evidence.
A snapshot of the security questionnaire risks detected in a vendor’s risk assessment reports taken from the UpGuard platform.
Some board members will request detailed vendor risk assessment reports when they prefer to be involved in the risk treatment planning process for critical vendors. For board members preferring just an overview of the organization’s overall third-party risk exposure, including a vendor risk matrix in your cybersecurity report is helpful.
Here’s an example of a vendor risk matrix distributing a company’s vendor network across a scale of increasing business impact based on their security rating and criticality classification (where Tier 1 represents the company’s most critical vendors)
UpGuard’s vendor risk matrix tracks vendor security postures across all criticality tiers.
To learn more about the role of vendor risk assessment in developing a risk treatment plan for critical vendors, a process some board members will expect to be involved in, watch this video:
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Step 4: Identify your evidence sources
To highlight the credibility of your reports and increase the chances of the board agreeing with any costly remediation suggestions, identify all of the data sources you referenced to build your cyber report.
Evidence sources could include:
Security questionnairesCertificationsAutomate scanning resultsCompliance certifications
Example of a list of data sources a user referenced to build a cybersecurity report.
UpGuard’s Trust Exchange is a free resource that expedites the evidence-gathering process for vendor risk assessments and cybersecurity reports. The following video offers an overview of the tool.
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Best practices for cybersecurity reporting in 2026
When building your cybersecurity report, keep the following best practices in mind:
Be clear and precise
Producing a clear and concise report will ensure your intended audience—executives, board members, or security teams—can quickly understand your security suggestions without wasting time on clarification requests.
This will require the inclusion of high-level summaries and short explanations that get straight to the point. When technical stakeholders are reading your cyber reports, more detailed cyber risk explanations should supplement high-level summaries in a separate section of the report.
Above all, try to avoid using cybersecurity jargon. When it’s essential, include concise explanations of all the technical terms you’ve used.
Back up your claims with evidence-based reporting
For stakeholders to take your cybersecurity reports and recommended mitigations seriously, they must be grounded on verifiable evidence. Include a list of data sources that were referenced to build your report, and be ready to provide a copy of each source if requested.
Evidence-based reporting will give your cybersecurity report the credibility to be taken seriously by the board.Offer actionable recommendations
A cybersecurity report is useless to senior management if it lists identified cyber and compliance risks. Each listed risk should be supported with concrete responses that will directly impact the organization’s security posture. To ensure you communicate remediation suggestions with the greatest impact, utilize a tool like UpGuard to project how security postures will be affected by selected remediation tasks.
Remediation affect projections on the Cybersecurity platform.
