For pentest firms
serving government and federal contractor clients
Run FedRAMP, CMMC, NIST 800-171, and NIST 800-53 aligned engagements as structured records, not as zipped report drafts. Tag findings against the control the authorising official already tracks, deliver through a branded portal scoped per agency or contractor, and keep the evidence chain intact through the next continuous-monitoring review or 3PAO assessment.
No credit card required. Free plan available forever.
A platform built for the firms that test federal and government clients
Penetration testing firms that serve federal agencies, defense industrial base contractors, and state or local public-sector clients carry a different operating burden than firms that test general SaaS or enterprise IT. The work touches authorisation boundaries, the deliverables sit alongside FedRAMP packages, CMMC certifications, NIST 800-171 self-attestations, and StateRAMP authorisations, the report has to map findings back to specific controls the authorising official already tracks, and the evidence chain has to survive a 3PAO assessment, a contracting officer review, a continuous-monitoring cycle, or a DCMA audit without a missing link. Most assessment shops still run this delivery on a notes app, a screenshot folder, a shared drive of report drafts, and a ticket queue that loses context the moment an engagement closes.
SecPortal gives federal and government focused pentest firms one workspace for engagements, findings, evidence, retests, branded delivery, and invoicing. Findings carry CVSS scores from the moment they are opened, control-level tagging is part of the workflow, the client portal scopes CUI references and authorisation boundary evidence behind authenticated access, and the AI-assisted reporting drafts the control-aligned writeup the buyer is expecting. Whether the firm services a federal civilian agency, a DoD prime, a defense industrial base subcontractor, a federal SaaS vendor pursuing FedRAMP authorisation, or a state or local government client under StateRAMP, the platform scales without adding administrative overhead.
Capabilities government pentest firms actually use
Engagement records that carry the authorisation boundary
Each government or federal contractor engagement opens with the assessed entity, the authorising official or contracting officer the work is being evidenced for, the in-scope authorisation boundary, the data classes the testing touches (FCI, CUI, ePHI under federal handling rules), and the agreed rules of engagement attached to the record. The record persists after the engagement closes, so the next continuous-monitoring cycle starts from the documented prior context rather than a re-onboarded blank page.
Findings tagged to NIST 800-53, NIST 800-171, and CMMC
Log findings with CVSS 3.1 vectors, severity, and evidence, and tag them against the NIST 800-53 control, the NIST 800-171 requirement, the CMMC practice, or the FedRAMP control baseline the issue impacts. The exported report carries the control reference, so the contractor can attach the finding to their POA&M, SAR, or SSP without re-keying every line.
Branded portal scoped per agency or contractor
Each agency or defense industrial base client receives a branded portal on a tenant subdomain. Reports, findings, retest evidence, and remediation status sit behind authenticated access scoped to the assessed entity. CUI references, authorisation boundary diagrams, and exploit evidence stay off the generic file-share links that most assessment shops still default to.
Retests paired to the original finding
When the contractor closes a vulnerability, the retest pairs to the same finding rather than opening a new record. Closure evidence sits with the original capture date, so the audit trail shows when the issue was found, when remediation took effect, and which tester verified it, all on one record the contractor can hand to a 3PAO, a contracting officer, or a continuous-monitoring reviewer without reconstructing context from scratch.
AI-assisted reporting tuned to federal buyers
Generate executive summaries, technical writeups, and remediation roadmaps from the live findings record. Federal and DoD buyers expect a deliverable that ties technical detail to the control the authorising official already tracks. The AI generates a draft against the tagged record, so the senior tester edits a draft instead of typing from a blank page on the day the SAR is due.
Multi-framework evidence from one record
The same finding can be tagged against FedRAMP control baselines, CMMC practices, NIST 800-171 requirements, NIST 800-53 controls, and ISO 27001 simultaneously when the client touches multiple regimes. One engagement record produces coordinated evidence trails for each framework, so a defense contractor or a federal SaaS vendor does not commission parallel write-ups against the same exposure.
How a federal pentest practice runs inside SecPortal
Federal and government pentest delivery is most defensible when one operating picture covers scope, evidence, finding-to-control mapping, retest verification, and the report. SecPortal supports the full delivery rather than a single phase of it.
- Open the engagement against the right contractor record so the authorisation boundary, in-scope systems, data classes (FCI, CUI), and agreed rules of engagement are documented before any testing starts.
- Run external scans, authenticated scans against agency-hosted web and API surfaces, code scans against contractor repositories, and manual testing under one engagement, with the findings consolidated to a single record rather than scattered across separate tool exports.
- Track every finding through open, in-progress, fix-pending, retest-pending, and verified-closed states with a date and actor on each transition, so the audit trail covers what 3PAOs, authorising officials, and continuous-monitoring reviewers expect to see.
- Generate executive, technical, and remediation views from the same source data, so the same finding base produces the right artefact for the contracting officer, the system owner, the ISSO, and the 3PAO assessor.
- Map findings to the FedRAMP control baseline, the CMMC practice, the NIST 800-171 requirement, or the NIST 800-53 control on the same record they live on, with ISO 27001 and StateRAMP tagging where the engagement scope demands them.
- Invoice the engagement against the same record the work was tracked against, so billing closes on the same source of truth the deliverable closed on.
From engagement kickoff to verified close, on one record
The leverage in federal pentest delivery is the durability of the audit chain after the engagement closes. SecPortal runs a single delivery flow that the next continuous-monitoring cycle, the next retest, and the next 3PAO visit can build against without reconstructing context.
- 1Open the federal or government engagement with assessed entity, authorising official reference, in-scope authorisation boundary, scope statement, rules of engagement, testers, and dates stamped against the record. The rules-of-engagement template populates the standard sections; the engagement record holds the bespoke federal context.
- 2Run the testing programme inside the engagement record. External scans, authenticated DAST against agency-hosted web and API surfaces, SAST and SCA via the Git provider connection, and manual testing all consolidate to the same findings database, with raw outputs attached to the finding they support.
- 3Tag each finding against the NIST 800-53 control, the NIST 800-171 requirement, the CMMC practice, or the FedRAMP control baseline it impacts as it is logged. Add ISO 27001 and StateRAMP tags where the contract demands them. The tagging is part of the testing workflow, not a post-engagement reconciliation step.
- 4Generate the technical report, executive summary, and remediation roadmap with AI assistance from the live record. The deliverable lands in the client portal alongside the underlying finding-level evidence, so the report and the source-of-truth point at the same data.
- 5Run retests after the contractor remediates, attach verification evidence to the same finding, and either close the issue with a status change actor recorded automatically or revert to open with regression notes captured in place. The audit chain stays intact for 3PAO review, contracting officer oversight, and continuous-monitoring activities.
Where government pentest firms typically start
Most federal-focused firms adopt the platform in three phases: bring the active contractor list and engagement records under one workspace, layer in finding-to-control tagging and branded portal delivery, then consolidate retests, AI-assisted reporting, and invoicing onto the same record. The relevant framework, capability, and workflow pages explain each phase in detail.
- The federal authorisation context that civilian and DoD clients expect lives in the FedRAMP framework page, the defense contractor obligations sit in the CMMC framework page, and the underlying control catalogues are covered in the NIST 800-53 framework page and the NIST 800-171 framework page.
- For methodology references that map cleanly onto federal assessment scopes, the NIST SP 800-115 framework page and the MITRE ATT&CK framework page cover how to structure the testing methodology and tag findings by tactic and technique for the SAR narrative.
- The core engagement and findings workflow lives in the penetration testing use case, with onboarding for new federal clients covered in the pentest client onboarding workflow. API-heavy contractor estates lean on the API security testing use case for the authenticated DAST coverage.
- The finding-tagging model that produces control-aligned reports sits in the findings management feature, with the multi-framework mapping covered by the compliance tracking feature.
- Branded delivery scoped per assessed entity lives in the client portal feature, with the AI-drafted writeup produced from the live record covered by the AI reports feature. Authenticated DAST against agency web and API surfaces sits in the authenticated scanning feature.
- The retest workflow that pairs verification to the original finding is covered in the retesting use case, the wider report-delivery pattern is documented in the pentest report delivery use case, and the cadence between formal assessments lives in the remediation tracking use case.
SecPortal is built for pentest firms that want one platform for the whole federal delivery: live engagements, control-tagged findings, evidence, retests, branded portals, AI-assisted reporting, and invoicing. Federal and government clients get a deliverable that ties to the controls their authorising official already tracks, and the firm gets back the hours that used to disappear into post-engagement document production and control-mapping reconciliation.
If your firm is structured as a smaller partner-led practice between two and ten testers, the SecPortal for boutique security firms page covers the operating model that fits a specialist consultancy. If your firm runs a broader multi-vertical book of business, the SecPortal for cybersecurity firms page covers the multi-client delivery model without the federal-specific framing. Firms that also serve healthcare clients can read the SecPortal for healthcare penetration testing firms page, and firms with banking or fintech exposure can read the SecPortal for banking and fintech security consultancies page for the financial-services variant of the same delivery model.
For broader context on how federal pentest deliverables hold up after the engagement closes, the aging pentest findings research and the severity calibration research cover what happens after the report ships and the contractor starts working through the controls the engagement surfaced.
The problems you face
And how SecPortal solves each one.
Reports do not map findings to the NIST 800-53 control, the NIST 800-171 requirement, or the CMMC practice that the authorising official already tracks
Tag each finding against the control or practice it impacts at the moment it is logged. NIST 800-53 controls, NIST 800-171 requirements, CMMC practices, and FedRAMP control baselines coexist on the same record, so the firm produces one engagement record and multiple coordinated evidence packs instead of writing parallel control narratives.
Email and shared drives are the wrong delivery channel for findings that touch CUI, exploit evidence against authorisation boundaries, or 3PAO assessment artefacts
Each agency or defense contractor client gets a branded portal on a tenant subdomain. Reports, findings, retest evidence, and remediation status sit behind authenticated access scoped to the assessed entity, not on a generic file-share link that ages out and leaks through forwarded threads.
Authorisation packages, SARs, POA&M entries, and 3PAO evidence ship as zipped folders that lose the chain back to the original assessment activity
Findings carry CVSS vectors, evidence attachments, retest verification, and an immutable activity log of who triaged what and when. The activity log exports to CSV when an authorising official, an internal audit lead, or a continuous-monitoring reviewer asks for the trail behind a control assertion.
Penetration testers, code reviewers, and configuration assessors each produce findings in different tools and the consolidated picture lives in a spreadsheet
External scans, authenticated DAST against agency-hosted web and API surfaces, SAST and SCA via the Git provider connection, and manually logged red-team or tabletop findings all consolidate on the same engagement record. Deduplication and CVSS scoring run across the consolidated set, so the engagement closes with one defensible findings list rather than four overlapping exports.
Retests after remediation get treated as new engagements, breaking the audit chain a federal regulator or a contracting officer expects to see
Retests pair to the original finding rather than opening a new record. Closure evidence sits with the original capture date, so the trail shows when the issue was found, when remediation took effect, and which tester verified it, all on one record the contractor can hand to a 3PAO, a contracting officer, or a continuous-monitoring reviewer.
Multi-agency or multi-programme contractor clients need evidence for FedRAMP, CMMC, NIST 800-171, NIST 800-53, and ISO 27001 from a single test cycle
Compliance tracking lets one finding be tagged against multiple controls at once. The same engagement record produces evidence aligned to FedRAMP control baselines, CMMC practices, NIST 800-171 requirements, NIST 800-53 controls, and ISO 27001 Annex A, so a defense industrial base contractor or a federal SaaS vendor does not pay for parallel reports against the same exposure.
Run government pentest delivery on one platform
FedRAMP, CMMC, NIST 800-171, NIST 800-53 aligned findings, branded portals, and invoicing on one workspace. Free plan to start.
No credit card required. Free plan available forever.