A security assessment is only as trustworthy as the method behind it. This page sets out ours in enough detail to be judged, and to be challenged.

Engagement lifecycle

The eight stages of an engagement

The same sequence every time. Nothing proceeds to testing until authorization and rules of engagement are signed.

  1. 01

    Scope Review

    We review your assets, architecture, and objective to define what should be tested and why.

  2. 02

    Proposal

    A written proposal states the scope, approach, deliverables, and commercial terms.

  3. 03

    Rules of Engagement

    Authorization, in-scope and out-of-scope assets, dates, techniques, and emergency stop conditions are agreed in writing.

  4. 04

    Security Testing

    Manual, evidence-led testing within the approved scope, with communication throughout.

  5. 05

    Technical Report

    Findings with reproduction steps, evidence, business impact, and specific remediation guidance.

  6. 06

    Debrief

    A working session with your engineers to walk through findings and answer questions.

  7. 07

    Remediation

    Your team fixes issues; we stay available for clarification on any finding.

  8. 08

    Retest

    We verify the fixes and record the resulting status against each original finding.

Stage three is not a formality

Rules of engagement record authorization, in-scope and out-of-scope assets, permitted techniques, the testing window, named contacts, escalation routes, evidence handling, and the conditions under which testing stops immediately. Both parties sign before testing begins.

Read the Authorized Testing Policy

Testing principles

How we test

Manual testing, tool-assisted

Automation is used where it is genuinely better than a person — enumerating an attack surface, checking dependency versions, fuzzing an input — and the reasoning is done by a human. The findings that matter most in modern products are authorization and logic failures, and no scanner understands what your application is for.

Every finding is demonstrated

If we cannot reproduce it, it does not appear as a vulnerability. Suspicions are recorded as observations and clearly labelled, so you can tell the difference between what we proved and what we noticed.

Impact stated in business terms

A finding is described in terms of what an attacker gains and what it would mean for you, not only in terms of the technical class it belongs to. That is what makes prioritisation possible.

Chains reported intact

Real compromises are usually sequences rather than single flaws. Where individually modest issues combine into a serious path, we report the chain and rate it on the outcome.

Findings are written for the person who has to fix them

Reproduction steps precise enough to follow, the affected component identified, and remediation guidance specific to your stack rather than a link to generic advice.

Scope discipline

We test what was authorized and nothing else. If we notice something interesting outside scope, we tell you it exists and ask before going near it.

Severity

How findings are rated

Ratings reflect exploitability and realistic business impact in your environment, not a generic score. The reasoning is written out for every finding, so a rating can be discussed on stated grounds.

Severity levels used in CyberCache reports. Each level is always accompanied by its written label, never by colour alone.
Severity What it means
Critical Directly exploitable with severe consequence — cross-tenant data access, authentication bypass, remote code execution, or full administrative compromise. Reported to you as soon as it is confirmed rather than held for the report.
High Exploitable with significant consequence, possibly requiring a specific precondition such as an authenticated low-privilege account. Should be scheduled for prompt remediation.
Medium Genuine weakness with meaningful but contained impact, or a serious issue whose exploitation requires conditions that are unlikely though possible in your environment.
Low Limited direct impact. Often valuable to an attacker in combination with other findings, or a defence-in-depth improvement worth making.
Informational Observations, hardening opportunities, and notes on design decisions. Not vulnerabilities, and labelled as such so they do not inflate the finding count.

What the report contains

  • An executive summary written for a reader who will not read the technical sections, suitable for sharing with stakeholders or a prospect’s security reviewer.
  • The agreed scope, the testing window, the environment tested, and the accounts and roles used, so the report can be interpreted correctly later.
  • Each finding with its severity and the reasoning behind that rating, affected components, reproduction steps, supporting evidence, business impact, and remediation guidance.
  • Observations and hardening opportunities, kept separate from confirmed vulnerabilities.
  • Testing limitations and anything the scope or timeframe prevented us from examining — stated plainly rather than omitted.
  • A retest section recording the verified status of each finding after remediation.

See a worked example

References we work against

These inform our coverage. They do not replace judgement, and we do not claim certification against any of them.

OWASP Web Security Testing Guide
Coverage checklist for web application testing, so classes of issue are not missed through oversight.
OWASP API Security Top 10
Structures our review of authorization, object-level access control, and API-specific failure modes.
OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications
Coverage reference for AI features: prompt handling, insecure output handling, excessive agency, and related classes.
MITRE ATLAS
Reference for adversarial techniques against AI-enabled systems, used to reason about realistic attack paths.
CIS Benchmarks
Baseline for cloud and platform configuration review, adapted to what is genuinely relevant to your deployment.
CVSS
Reference framework for severity, used as an input to our rating rather than as the final answer.
Limits

What a security assessment cannot do

An assessment examines a defined scope during a defined period, using the access and information available at the time. It cannot prove the absence of vulnerabilities, and any provider who implies otherwise is selling reassurance rather than security work.

A clean result means that within that scope and timeframe, this team did not find a particular class of problem. Your product will change after we finish. New research will appear. An attacker with more time, different information, or different motivation may reach a different result. This is precisely why continuous review often serves a fast-moving product better than an annual test.

We state these limits in every report, including which areas the scope or timeframe prevented us from examining. A report that quietly omits its own limitations is less useful than one that names them.

Questions

Common questions

Do you follow a specific certification or standard?

We use recognised references as coverage checklists, listed on this page, so that classes of issue are not missed. We do not claim accreditation, certification, or membership that we do not hold, and we do not issue certificates or seals.

What we offer instead is a documented method you can inspect before you engage us and hold us to afterwards.

How long does an assessment take?

It depends on the scope, and we set the duration during scoping once we understand the size of the surface, the number of roles and tenants, and the depth required. It is stated in the proposal before you commit.

We would rather quote a realistic duration for the work than publish a headline figure we would have to qualify afterwards.

What if you find something critical mid-engagement?

You are told promptly, through the escalation route agreed in the rules of engagement, rather than at the end. A critical finding sitting in a draft report while your product remains exposed serves nobody.

We will also agree with you whether to continue testing, pause while you remediate, or adjust the scope in light of what was found.

Can our engineers challenge a finding or its rating?

Yes, and that is a normal part of the debrief. Because every finding has reproduction steps and every rating has stated reasoning, a disagreement can be resolved on evidence — for example, if a mitigating control exists that we could not observe from our position, the rating should change.

Where we agree, the report is corrected. Where we do not, both positions can be recorded so the disagreement is visible rather than buried.

How is our data handled?

Evidence collection is limited to what is necessary to demonstrate a finding. Evidence is stored securely, shared only through the agreed channel, and disposed of according to the retention terms in the engagement documents.

If we incidentally access personal data during testing, we minimise what we retain, record what happened, and tell you. Handling terms are agreed in writing before testing begins.

Put the method to work on your product

Start with a scope review. You will get a written scope, an approach, and a price before committing to anything.