How to Read a Security Audit Report

A security audit report can look intimidating — pages of findings, colors, and technical terms. But reading one is simple once you know the structure: triage by severity, fix the critical items first, and verify each fix before moving on.

Start with severity

Every finding has a severity that tells you how urgent it is:

• Critical (red): exploitable now, can lead to full compromise. Fix today.
• High (orange): serious weakness, fix this week.
• Medium (yellow): meaningful hardening, schedule it.
• Low (green): minor improvement, fix when convenient.
• Pass: the check succeeded — nothing to do.

Read the executive summary first

A good report opens with a 2–3 sentence summary and a "top 3 actions" list. That's your roadmap. In VitalSite, those three actions are the highest-impact fixes for your score.

For each finding, look for four things

1. What it is — a plain-English explanation.

2. The attack scenario — how someone would exploit it.

3. The fix — exact, copy-paste steps for your stack.

4. Verification — how to confirm it's resolved.

Re-scan to confirm

After fixing, run the scan again. Findings should flip to pass and your score should climb. That feedback loop is how you know your work landed.