Resources to make security work visible

These guides, checklists, and templates are designed to help security, engineering, and compliance teams collaborate effectively on penetration testing and code review initiatives.

Successful security testing is as much about preparation and follow-through as it is about the days spent actively probing systems. Clear scoping, stakeholder alignment, and expectations around deliverables all determine whether a penetration test or code review drives meaningful change or simply produces another report that is difficult to act on. Our resources focus on these practical aspects of planning and execution so you can get more value out of every engagement, regardless of whether you work with us or another provider.

We have drawn on patterns from hundreds of assessments across different industries to identify the questions teams most often struggle with: how to define a realistic scope, how to prioritize systems for testing, how to schedule work around release cycles, and how to communicate results to both engineers and executives. The materials on this page are intended to give you a head start on those conversations and provide a shared vocabulary for cross-functional planning.

Many organizations adapt these resources into their internal security playbooks, onboarding materials for new engineers, or templates for engaging with external providers. You are encouraged to customize them heavily so they reflect your environment, constraints, and risk tolerance while preserving the proven structure that makes them effective.

Penetration Test Scoping Checklist

A well-scoped penetration test begins with a clear understanding of what you want to protect and why. Our scoping checklist walks you through key questions about your environment, including which applications and APIs are most critical, how your network and cloud infrastructure are organized, and where sensitive data is stored or processed. It also prompts you to think about the types of attackers you are most concerned about and the business processes that would be most impacted by a breach.

The checklist is organized into sections for asset inventory, technical context, business drivers, and operational constraints. For each area, we provide example answers and guidance drawn from real engagements, highlighting common pitfalls such as over-scoping, under-scoping, or neglecting key dependencies. By capturing this information up front, you can work with any testing provider more efficiently and avoid spending time on systems that do not meaningfully affect your risk profile.

Teams that use the checklist regularly often find that it improves their internal communication as well. Product owners, engineers, security staff, and compliance leaders gain a shared picture of the environment, which in turn makes it easier to prioritize remediation and plan future testing cycles.

Secure Code Review Playbook

Our secure code review playbook outlines a practical approach to examining source code for security issues without trying to read every line. It explains how to identify high-risk components, such as authentication modules, authorization checks, cryptography wrappers, and data access layers, and then focus manual review effort where it will have the greatest impact. The playbook also describes how to combine static analysis tools with manual techniques to reduce noise and surface genuinely important findings.

We include suggested workflows for integrating security-focused reviews into your existing pull request and code review processes. This covers topics like when to trigger specialized security review, how to annotate code with security-relevant comments, and how to document recurring patterns that should be avoided or standardized. The goal is to help your development teams build a sustainable habit of considering security implications as part of everyday engineering work.

Finally, the playbook offers guidance on training and knowledge sharing. We provide example exercises, recommended reading, and ideas for internal workshops that can help engineers develop an intuition for how vulnerabilities arise and how to prevent them. Over time, this investment reduces the number of issues found in formal assessments and shortens remediation timelines when problems are discovered.

Preparing for Your Next SOC 2 or ISO Audit

For organizations pursuing SOC 2, ISO 27001, or similar attestations, security testing is just one part of a broader set of requirements. Our preparation guide focuses on how to weave penetration testing and code review into your overall audit readiness effort so that they reinforce, rather than complicate, your narrative. We outline which controls are commonly supported by technical assessments and how to time tests so that results are fresh when auditors review your environment.

The guide provides templates for mapping each assessment to specific control objectives, documenting remediation activities, and recording evidence of retesting and improvement. We also highlight common questions that auditors and customer security teams ask about testing methodologies, independence, and coverage, and suggest ways to answer those questions clearly and confidently.

By following these recommendations, many organizations find that audits become more predictable and less disruptive. Teams know what evidence will be requested, where to find it, and how to explain it, which reduces last-minute scrambling and allows more energy to be spent on substantive security improvements instead of administrative tasks.

Incident Simulation & Tabletop Exercise Outlines

In addition to technical testing, we provide outline materials for running your own incident simulations and tabletop exercises. These scenarios are designed to test not just your tooling, but also your processes and decision-making under pressure. Exercises can be tailored for technical teams, executives, or mixed audiences, with storylines that reflect likely threats for your industry.

Each outline includes objectives, recommended participants, a suggested timeline, and key decision points to explore during the exercise. We also list follow-up questions that can be used to identify gaps in logging, communication, escalation, and external coordination with customers, regulators, or partners. The goal is to create a safe environment where teams can practice responding to complex events before they occur in production.

Organizations that run regular tabletop exercises often discover that they can shorten detection and response times, reduce confusion during real incidents, and improve the quality of communication with both internal and external stakeholders. Our materials are meant to help you build that discipline in a way that fits your culture and resource constraints.