Tools

Security Control Triage

Sixteen controls, sorted by the size of your team. Some are gaps to close now, some you can skip until you're bigger, and some you may be running ahead of your stage.

For a founding team

6 to fix · 10 you can skip

0 of 16 already hold at your size.


Close these now

  • Move every key server-side and turn on secret scanning in the repo. Anything shipped to a browser is public.
  • Enable row-level rules and write one policy per table. A single missed check in app code otherwise exposes every tenant.
  • Replace any bespoke auth or crypto with a provider implementation. This is the one place generated code is never good enough.
  • Put every prototype in version control and practise a rollback once, before you need it.
  • Turn on MFA for admins and disable SMS as a factor. Mostly provider configuration, not engineering work.
  • Add a pre-commit hook and editor linting so the feedback lands while the change is still in hand.

Safe to skip for now

  • CI runs security checks that can block a merge — worth building around 10 engineers.
  • Changes touching auth, money, or customer data get a human review before merge — worth building around 10 engineers.
  • Every app has a named owner and a deprecation date — worth building around 10 engineers.
  • Schema and migration changes go through a staging environment — worth building around 20 engineers.
  • Dependency scanning catches hallucinated and typosquatted packages — worth building around 20 engineers.
  • A formal secure-prompting and AI-risk training programme exists — worth building around 30 engineers.
  • Prompt provenance is captured as metadata — model, prompt, parameters — worth building around 30 engineers.
  • Internal and customer-facing production environments are separate — worth building around 30 engineers.
  • Builders can pull from an internal catalog of pre-vetted security building blocks — worth building around 30 engineers.
  • A multi-level assurance ladder calibrates review depth to risk — worth building around 30 engineers.

These thresholds are judgment, not measurement — they're where a control stops being paper and acquires an owner. Engagements are scoped here.