What penetration testing evidence should you request from a translation vendor before localizing security reports?

Last reviewed: September 20, 2026

What penetration testing and vulnerability management evidence should a translation vendor be able to produce?

A translation vendor should be able to produce eight artifacts, and a procurement review is stronger when it asks for each by name rather than accepting a security overview in their place.

• Third-party penetration test executive summary and letter of attestation. The executive summary names the testing firm, the dates, the targets, the count of findings by severity, and the overall conclusion; the letter of attestation confirms the engagement took place. Full technical reports are rarely shared, and a redacted summary under NDA is the normal deliverable.
• Scope statement mapped to your content path. The targets tested should include every hop your security reports will take: the web application, the API, the authentication service, any CMS or repository connector, the translator workspace, and any machine translation or LLM routing layer. A gap between tested targets and your content path is a finding in itself.
• Methodology reference. Reputable tests cite a public methodology such as the OWASP Web Security Testing Guide, the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard, the Penetration Testing Execution Standard, or NIST SP 800-115, and score findings with CVSS v3.1 or v4.0. A methodology reference lets your team compare the vendor's test to your own.
• Remediation and retest record. Evidence that each critical and high finding was fixed and retested, with dates. A test that found issues and closed them is stronger evidence than a test that reports none, because it shows the remediation loop operates.
• Vulnerability scanning cadence. How often internal and external scans run and against which remediation timelines. PCI DSS v4.0 Requirement 11.3 sets a common reference: internal and external vulnerability scans at least once every three months, with external scans performed by an Approved Scanning Vendor.
• Published vulnerability disclosure or bug bounty policy. The public statement of how outside researchers report flaws, which systems are in scope, what is excluded, and how fast the vendor commits to respond. Smartling's Bug Bounty Policy in the Smartling Help Center names eight in-scope targets including www.smartling.com, dashboard.smartling.com, sso.smartling.com, and api.smartling.com, sets a first response time of 1 business day and a triage time of 5 business days, and pays validated submissions between $50 and $10,000 USD.
• Customer testing policy. The rules under which your own security team may run an authorized penetration test against the vendor's platform, including the request process and the requirement to report anything found. Ask whether such a policy exists and what it permits before assuming you can test.
• Secure development testing. Static and dynamic application security testing, dependency scanning, and code review inside the release process. ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A control 8.29 covers security testing in development and acceptance, so an ISO 27001 certificate implies this control was audited even when the test detail is not shared.

Penetration testing reference points a translation buyer can verify

How do you review a translation vendor's penetration test results during procurement?

Reviewing a translation vendor's penetration test evidence is a five-step exercise that fits inside a standard vendor risk assessment once the documents are in hand.

1. Request the summary, attestation letter, and scope under NDA - Ask for the most recent third-party executive summary and the letter of attestation, and confirm the test date falls within the past twelve months. Smartling's Security page states that documents and reports are available upon request, which is the route for this material.
2. Map tested targets to the path your reports will take - List every system your pen-test deliverables will touch: file upload or API, the translation workspace, translation memory storage, any machine translation or LLM engine, human linguists, and the export path back to PDF or Word. Each should appear in the tested scope or be explained.
3. Read findings by severity and check the retest dates - Filter for critical and high findings, confirm each has a remediation date and a retest result, and ask about any finding accepted as risk. Unresolved highs in an authentication or authorization component are disqualifying when the content is a list of your own vulnerabilities.
4. Verify the scanning cadence and disclosure policy independently - Ask for the internal and external scan frequency and remediation SLAs, then read the vendor's public disclosure or bug bounty policy yourself. Smartling's Bug Bounty Policy is a public Help Center article that lists in-scope targets, exclusions, program rules, and a business-day response SLA.
5. Decide whether to run your own authorized test - If policy requires first-party validation, ask the vendor for its customer penetration testing process and permission requirements before scheduling anything, and agree on how findings will be reported back. Untested assumptions about permission are how a routine assessment becomes an incident.

Detta tillvägagångssätt passar team som...

• Translate penetration test reports, vulnerability assessments, CVE descriptions, or remediation guides for regional offices, subsidiaries, or non-English-speaking executives and boards.
• Run a formal vendor risk assessment in which a third-party penetration test summary is a required artifact for any SaaS platform that stores company content.
• Answer customer or regulator security questionnaires that ask how sub-processors, including translation vendors, test their own platforms.
• Route security content through machine translation or LLM engines with human post-editing and need to know the tested boundary includes that routing layer.
• Give external linguists or agencies platform access and therefore care most about authorization findings, tenant isolation, and segmentation testing.

When penetration test evidence may not be the right lens

• The content is public. Published security advisories, blog posts, or marketing pages about security services carry little confidentiality risk, and a standard vendor questionnaire is a proportionate review.
• Your policy requires the content never leave your network. No cloud translation vendor's penetration test changes that constraint; the relevant evaluation is on-premise deployment, covered in the advantages of on-premise LLMs over cloud-based ones.
• The concern is AI data use rather than platform intrusion. Whether a vendor trains models on your findings is a data processing and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 question, addressed in how to ensure data privacy when using large language models.
• The volume is a single report, once. A one-time translation of a single assessment may be better served by a cleared, in-house bilingual reviewer than by onboarding a platform vendor and completing a full risk assessment.

Evaluation checklist: questions to ask a translation vendor about penetration testing

When was your last third-party penetration test, and who performed it?
Expect a date within the past twelve months and a named testing firm. Ask for the executive summary and letter of attestation under NDA.

Which systems were in scope?
Name them: the web application, API, SSO service, connectors, translator workspace, machine translation and LLM routing, and any website proxy. Ask the vendor to point to each in the scope statement.

What methodology and scoring were used?
Look for OWASP WSTG or ASVS, PTES, or NIST SP 800-115, and CVSS scoring. A methodology reference lets your team judge the test rather than take it on trust.

What were the critical and high findings, and when were they retested?
A clean report is less informative than a report with closed findings and retest dates. Ask specifically about authorization and tenant-isolation findings.

How often do you run vulnerability scans, and what are your remediation timelines by severity?
Quarterly internal and external scanning is a widely published baseline under PCI DSS v4.0 Requirement 11.3; remediation SLAs by CVSS band show whether findings actually close.

Do you publish a vulnerability disclosure or bug bounty policy?
Read it yourself. Check the in-scope targets, exclusions, and response SLA. Smartling's is a public Help Center article with a 1-business-day first response commitment.

May our security team run an authorized penetration test against your platform?
Ask for the request process, the permitted targets, and the reporting obligation for anything found. Never test without written authorization.

How do you keep CVE identifiers, hostnames, and code from being altered in translation?
Ask whether identifiers can be locked as do-not-translate glossary terms or placeholders so a CVE number or command survives machine translation intact; the mechanics are covered in how translation platforms handle do-not-translate terms.

Can we restrict which linguists and which AI engines handle security findings?
Project- and language-scoped roles for linguists, and administrator control over which LLM providers are enabled, keep a vulnerability report from reaching people or engines you have not cleared. The controls are described in what tools are best for protecting sensitive content during translation.

What else corroborates the penetration test?
SOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001, PCI DSS, and HITRUST each audit that vulnerability management operates. Smartling's set is summarized in what enterprise localization platforms are trusted by security teams.

How does Smartling document its penetration testing and vulnerability disclosure?

Smartling documents its security testing posture in three public places rather than through assurances in a sales call. Its Security page lists the compliance record that puts the platform under audited vulnerability management requirements: PCI Level 1 continuously maintained since 2012, SOC 2 since 2013, HIPAA since 2013, GDPR standards met since 2018, ISO/IEC 27001 certification, ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification for artificial intelligence management systems, and a HITRUST e1 certification for the translation management system residing at Amazon Web Services. The same page states that documents and reports are available upon request, which is how a security reviewer obtains the third-party penetration test summary and letter of attestation under NDA. PCI DSS v4.0 Requirement 11 makes the cadence concrete for any Level 1 service provider: internal and external penetration tests at least once every 12 months and after significant changes, segmentation testing at least every six months, and internal and external vulnerability scans at least once every three months.

The Smartling ISO 27001 Certification page publishes the ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate itself, states that Smartling has been in compliance since 2025, and describes the scope as security practices across TMS infrastructure, customer support, and software development. For a buyer, that scope statement matters because Annex A of ISO/IEC 27001:2022 includes control 8.8 on management of technical vulnerabilities and control 8.29 on security testing in development and acceptance, so both were inside the audited management system.

The vulnerability disclosure side is fully public. Smartling's Bug Bounty Policy, published in the Smartling Help Center, explains that the company has run a private program only since March 10, 2018, with researchers requesting an authorization ID through itsec@smartling.com. The policy names eight in-scope targets, including www.smartling.com, dashboard.smartling.com, sso.smartling.com, and api.smartling.com; sets program rules that prohibit accessing other users' data, running automated scanners, and social engineering; lists excluded finding classes such as descriptive error messages and missing SPF, DKIM, or DMARC settings; and commits to a response SLA measured in business days of 1 for first response, 5 for triage, and 30 for bounty. Rewards run from $50 to $10,000 USD per validated submission, and the policy states that Smartling does not disclose, discuss, or confirm security matters until it has investigated, diagnosed, and fixed the issue. For a team whose translated content is itself a vulnerability report, that combination of a public channel, written rules, and a committed timeline is the part of a vendor's posture a badge cannot show.

Inside the platform, the controls that limit exposure of a translated security report are the same ones covered on Smartling's adjacent security pages: role scoping for external linguists by project and language, single sign-on and multi-factor authentication, administrator control over which LLM providers are enabled, and exportable string change history for evidence. Those are detailed in what a translation platform audit trail records and how to read a translation management system's SOC 2 Type II report.

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