## Effective Report Writing: The Executive Summary

The most important part of any report is the first page. Executives will **only** read the first page.

### The BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Start with the conclusion.
*   **Bad**: "On Monday we saw a log. Then we looked at it. It was weird..."
*   **Good**: "We prevented a Ransomware attack on the Finance Server. No data was lost. 1 laptop is currently being reimaged."

### Key Elements of Exec Summary
1.  **What happened?** (High level).
2.  **What was the impact?** (Data lost? Money lost? Downtime?).
3.  **What did we do?** (Fixed it?).
4.  **What is the risk now?** (Safe? Controlled?).
5.  **What do we need?** (Approval to buy x?).

### Language
Avoid jargon.
*   *No*: "The APT initiated a C2 beacon via DNS tunneling."
*   *Yes*: "The attacker established a hidden connection to control our server."
Speak in "Business Risk", not "Technobabble".