1.7 KiB
1.7 KiB
Security Review and Hardening
Purpose
Reduce avoidable security risk by reviewing trust boundaries, sensitive data handling, exposure paths, and abuse opportunities in the relevant system area.
When to use
- Shipping authentication, authorization, input handling, or sensitive workflows
- Reviewing an externally exposed feature or API
- Auditing risky changes for common security failures
- Hardening an existing system area with known gaps
Inputs to gather
- Trust boundaries, user roles, and entry points
- Sensitive data flows, secrets, tokens, or privileged operations
- Existing auth, validation, logging, and rate limiting patterns
- Relevant compliance or threat concerns if known
How to work
- Start with who can do what, from where, and with which inputs.
- Check validation, authorization, data exposure, secret handling, and abuse resistance.
- Prefer concrete mitigations over vague warnings.
- Align with existing security controls unless they are clearly insufficient.
- Call out unverified areas when the environment or tooling limits confidence.
Output expectations
- Concrete risks found or a scoped hardening plan
- Recommended mitigations tied to the actual threat surface
- Clear statement of confidence and any blind spots
Quality checklist
- Review covers the real trust boundaries and attack surface.
- Findings describe exploit consequence, not just theoretical concern.
- Mitigations are practical for the system and team.
- Residual risk is visible where hardening is incomplete.
Handoff notes
- Separate must-fix risks from defense-in-depth improvements.
- Pair with code review, API/backend work, and observability when the issue spans implementation and detection.