# Security Posture

## Summary

GlassAlpha maintains enterprise-grade security fundamentals for an open source compliance toolkit:

- ✅ **Branch protection** with required reviews and status checks
- ✅ **Minimal token permissions** following principle of least privilege
- ✅ **Production dependencies pinned** for reproducible builds
- ✅ **Release process secured** with SBOM and artifact signing
- ✅ **Professional maintenance** with regular releases

## Scorecard Status

- **Overall Score**: 6-7/10 (Acceptable for OSS compliance toolkit)
- **Branch Protection**: 8/10 (Excellent - prevents unauthorized changes)
- **Token Permissions**: 9/10 (Excellent - minimal attack surface)
- **Pinned Dependencies**: 0/10 (Development tools unpinned by design)
- **Maintained**: 5/10 (Recent release, proper documentation)

## Security Architecture

### 🔒 Core Security Controls

1. **Branch Protection Rules**

   - Required status checks before merge
   - Required pull request reviews (1 reviewer minimum)
   - Admin enforcement enabled
   - Stale review dismissal on new commits

2. **Minimal Token Permissions**

   - Workflows use `contents: read` (no unnecessary write access)
   - Only release workflow has `id-token: write` for PyPI publishing
   - No workflows have dangerous permissions like `actions: write`

3. **Production Pipeline Security**
   - Release workflow pins all build tools to specific versions
   - SBOM generation for supply chain transparency
   - Artifact signing with Sigstore for integrity verification

### 🛡️ Attack Surface Analysis

**High Security Impact (Fully Secured)**:

- ✅ Model loading and prediction code
- ✅ Audit report generation
- ✅ Data preprocessing pipelines
- ✅ Release and distribution process

**Medium Security Impact (Secured)**:

- ✅ CI/CD workflows (branch protection prevents tampering)
- ✅ Documentation generation
- ✅ Test execution environments

**Low Security Impact (Development Tools)**:

- ⚠️ Development dependencies (linting, testing tools)
- ⚠️ Local development scripts
- ⚠️ Documentation workflows

## Rationale for Current Posture

### Why Accept Unpinned Development Dependencies

1. **Branch Protection Mitigates Risk**

   - All changes require PR review and status checks
   - Malicious code cannot reach users without approval
   - Repository history is protected from force pushes

2. **No User-Facing Impact**

   - Development tools don't ship to end users
   - Audit reports are generated from pinned production dependencies
   - Users interact with `glassalpha` package, not development tools

3. **Maintenance Burden vs Security Benefit**

   - 83+ development dependencies to track and update
   - High maintenance cost for diminishing security returns
   - Better use of time building features users actually need

4. **OSS Project Constraints**
   - Contributors need flexible development environment
   - Strict pinning slows down feature development
   - Focus should be on audit correctness, not dev tool versions

### For Enterprise Users

If your organization requires 100% pinned dependencies across all tools:

- **Contact us** for the enterprise edition with full dependency management
- **Enterprise features** include comprehensive supply chain controls
- **Custom deployments** can implement additional security layers

## Security Best Practices Implemented

### ✅ Code Security

- Type hints throughout codebase (`mypy --strict` enforced)
- Input validation and sanitization
- Secure defaults (no unsafe fallbacks)
- Comprehensive test coverage

### ✅ Supply Chain Security

- SBOM generation for all releases
- Artifact signing with Sigstore
- Dependency vulnerability scanning
- Reproducible builds

### ✅ Access Control

- Minimal workflow permissions
- Branch protection with admin enforcement
- Required reviews for all changes
- No direct main branch pushes

### ✅ Audit Trail

- Deterministic outputs (same inputs → identical results)
- Comprehensive manifest generation
- Git commit tracking in reports
- Evidence pack export for compliance

## Compliance Considerations

This security posture is designed for:

- **Regulatory compliance** (banking, insurance, healthcare)
- **Audit trail requirements** (reproducible results)
- **Professional deployment** (enterprise environments)
- **OSS distribution** (PyPI, conda-forge)

The current approach prioritizes **audit correctness and reproducibility** over development environment hardening, which aligns with the project's core mission as a compliance toolkit.

## Future Enhancements

As the project matures and enterprise demand grows:

1. **Enterprise edition** with full dependency pinning
2. **Advanced supply chain controls** (SBOM signing, provenance)
3. **Enhanced access controls** (SSO, RBAC for enterprise users)
4. **Compliance-specific features** (regulator templates, batch processing)

## Contact

For security questions or enterprise deployment requirements, please open an issue or contact the maintainers.
