Your engagement is nearing the finish line, but you aren’t done just yet. After concluding your technical testing, you have to put your findings, observations, and recommendations into a concise and actionable report for your client or engagement stakeholders.
This part of the book focuses on two main objectives, which you complete at the end of a penetration test. First is the cleanup exercise, which is not about erasing your tracks. Remember, this book focuses on a typical internal network penetration test (INPT), which usually is not stealthy in nature. Rather, cleaning up means being a professional and removing unnecessary artifacts such as leftover files, backdoors, and configuration changes from your attack phases. Chapter 11 walks you through the Capsulecorp Pentest environment cleanup activities and prepares you for the types of things you should expect to do at the end of every engagement.
In Chapter 12, you learn about the eight components that make up a solid pentest deliverable. You’ll understand what questions each section of a pentest report aims to answer, what to write there, and how best to communicate your messaging. You even get to see a completed pentest report for the Capsulecorp Pentest environment. This report includes all eight components introduced in Chapter 12.