Pentestid

Pentestid refers to a unique identifier used within penetration testing workflows to label engagements, findings, assets, or remediation tasks. It serves to unambiguously reference items across reports, ticketing systems, and evidence packages. In practice, organizations assign pentestids at different granularities, such as the engagement as a whole, individual findings, or specific assets tested.

Because there is no universal standard, the format of pentestids varies. Common patterns include an engagement prefix (for example PT-), a year or project tag, and a sequential or code-based suffix, e.g., PT-2024-INV-0052 or PT-ENG-0123. Some teams separate IDs for engagements, hosts, vulnerabilities, and remediation tickets to improve traceability.

Pentestids enable reporting and remediation workflows by enabling consistent references across security reports, asset inventories, and issue trackers. They often link to supporting evidence like scan outputs, exploit details, and screenshots, and may be mapped to other identifiers such as CVE identifiers, CWE categories, or internal risk scores.

Because implementation varies widely, governance is important: IDs should be persistent, unique, and documented in a central registry; changes should be controlled; and privacy considerations should be addressed when exposing IDs to external parties.

Though widely used in many security teams, pentestid is not a formal standard; it is a naming convention, and interoperability relies on clear documentation and integration with existing tools such as ticketing systems, asset inventories, and vulnerability databases.