🍎 The Transparency Paradox in Cybersecurity
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Including—especially—publishing your complete Information Security Management System on GitHub while your competitors hide theirs behind "CONFIDENTIAL" stamps and vendor questionnaires filled with aspirational claims. Think for yourself: Why do security consultancies insist their security policies must remain secret? What are they hiding? FNORD.
Most cybersecurity firms treat their ISMS like the Colonel's secret recipe—locked away, unavailable for inspection, "trust us, we're secure." They claim publishing security policies would give attackers an advantage. We claim hiding them gives incompetence an advantage. Because if your security depends on attackers not knowing your defenses, you don't have security—you have wishful thinking wrapped in NDAs.
Are you paranoid enough to question this conventional wisdom? Why should potential clients trust vendor promises over verifiable evidence? Why should "30 years of experience" matter if you can't inspect the actual policies, frameworks, and threat models that experience supposedly produced? Question authority. Especially security authorities who profit from opacity while claiming transparency would be "irresponsible."
At Hack23 AB, we're paranoid enough to assume attackers already know our defenses—nation-states have budgets, patience, and capabilities that make "security through obscurity" a joke. So we get marketing value and peer review by publishing everything. 30+ ISMS policies on GitHub. Our complete Information Security Management System: 70% fully public, 30% redacted only for specific operational details (credentials, contract pricing—the boring stuff that would bore attackers to tears).
ILLUMINATION: Welcome to Chapel Perilous, where you realize that vendors hiding their security policies are admitting transparency would expose inadequacy. Real security survives scrutiny. Weak security requires darkness. Which do you have? We publish 30+ policies because we're confident they'll survive global peer review. Competitors hide theirs because... well. Think for yourself. FNORD.
Need expert guidance on security compliance? Explore Hack23's cybersecurity consulting services backed by our fully public ISMS.
📚 What's Actually in Our Public ISMS
Evidence, not claims. When we say "comprehensive ISMS," we don't mean a PDF with buzzwords. We mean 30+ detailed policies covering every aspect of information security—all publicly reviewable, forkable, and verifiable. Not marketing material. Actual operational documentation.
🔐 Core Security Framework
15+ Foundation Policies Demonstrating Security Maturity:
- Information Security Policy — Overall security posture and governance
- Information Security Strategy — How ISMS becomes competitive advantage (yes, our strategy for using transparency is transparent)
- Access Control Policy — Zero trust, MFA, least privilege
- Cryptography Policy — AES-256, RSA-4096, approved algorithms (not the keys, obviously)
- Incident Response Plan — Complete IR framework and procedures
- Secure Development Policy — SDLC security, code review, vulnerability management
- Network Security Policy — AWS architecture, VPC design, CloudFront/WAF configuration
- Threat Modeling Policy — STRIDE methodology, attack surface analysis
Every policy links to actual implementation—threat models for each project, security architectures, control mappings. Not aspirational. Operational. FNORD.
✅ Compliance & Risk Management
Evidence-Based Multi-Framework Compliance:
Regulatory Frameworks: GDPR, NIS2, EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), ISO 27001, NIST CSF 2.0, CIS Controls—all documented with control mappings and evidence trails.
Compliance theater = annual audit checkbox ritual. Evidence-based compliance = continuous documentation proving you actually do what you claim. We publish the evidence. FNORD.
🛡️ Business Continuity & Supplier Management
Complete Operational Resilience Documentation:
Supply Chain Security: SolarWinds, Log4Shell, MOVEit—modern breaches come through suppliers. We document supplier assessments, security requirements, and continuous monitoring. Your security is only as good as your weakest vendor. Are you auditing yours?
Plus: Classification Framework, Open Source Policy, Physical Security, Acceptable Use, Change Management, and 10+ additional policies. Complete threat models for every product (CIA, Compliance Manager, Black Trigram). Security architectures. Control mappings. All public. All verifiable.
💼 Business Benefits: Why Transparency Wins
Radical transparency isn't altruism—it's strategic competitive advantage. Publishing our ISMS creates multiple business benefits that closed-door competitors can't replicate without exposing their own inadequacies. Think for yourself about why hiding security documentation became industry standard—and whether that standard serves customers or vendors.
1. 🤝 Trust Through Verification
Sales Cycle Acceleration: Buyers verify our security before the first conversation. No "trust us" required—they inspect our actual policies. RFP security questionnaires? Link to relevant GitHub policies. Due diligence? Here's 30+ documents demonstrating comprehensive ISMS. Evidence beats claims. Always.
Client Confidence: Potential clients assess expertise through implementation quality, not PowerPoint promises. They see our threat models, security architectures, compliance mappings—verifiable proof of security maturity. Competitors claim "enterprise-grade security." We prove it. Question authority. Especially authority that refuses to show you their actual security policies.
In security consulting, "trust us" is what vendors without evidence say. "Here's the public GitHub repo" is what confidence looks like. FNORD.
2. 🥇 Competitive Differentiation
First-Mover Advantage: Hack23 AB is Sweden's only cybersecurity consultancy with fully public ISMS. Competitors can't replicate this without publishing their own policies—revealing either excellence (validating our approach) or inadequacy (validating our differentiation). We created a competitive moat through transparency that requires vulnerability disclosure to cross. Are your competitors brave enough?
Market Positioning: While others claim "decades of experience," we demonstrate it through documented policies, threat models, security architectures. Clients choosing between vendors see: claims vs. evidence, promises vs. proof, aspirational vs. operational. Transparency makes the comparison unfair—in our favor.
Thought Leadership: Public ISMS generates speaking opportunities, media coverage, industry recognition. Security researchers review our policies and cite them as examples. We get free peer review from global security community. Competitors get... vendor questionnaires and hope.
3. 🔄 Continuous Improvement Through Community
Global Peer Review: Security community reviews our policies, suggests improvements, identifies gaps. We get feedback from CISSP holders, security researchers, practitioners worldwide—free expertise that closed systems never access. Open security evolves faster than proprietary security. Always.
Accountability Forcing Function: Can't claim "world-class security" when policy quality publicly visible. Transparency eliminates organizational bullshit—we actually implement what we document because global community verifies. Closed organizations claim excellence. Open organizations prove it or get called out. Which would you trust?
Network Effects: Every GitHub star, fork, review enhances credibility. Public ISMS becomes self-reinforcing marketing asset—the more people examine it, the more trustworthy it becomes. Closed policies create suspicion. Open policies create confidence. FNORD.
4. 📊 Operational Excellence Through Transparency
Documentation Quality: Knowing documentation is public forces clarity, precision, completeness. Internal-only documents decay into jargon, outdated references, wishful thinking. Public documents face scrutiny—they stay accurate or get corrected. Public visibility = quality enforcement.
Implementation Reality: Publishing policies creates commitment device—can't document security controls we don't actually implement because community verification would expose discrepancies. Transparency forces execution alignment between documentation and reality. Most organizations suffer documentation-implementation gap. We can't afford to.
Knowledge Sharing: Public ISMS serves as free training material for industry. We contribute to community knowledge while demonstrating expertise. Hoarding security knowledge helps competitors (through market opacity). Sharing it helps clients (through education) while marketing ourselves. Win-win beats zero-sum.
❓ Addressing Objections: "But Isn't This Giving Away Secrets?"
Every time we mention public ISMS, someone asks: "Aren't you giving attackers a roadmap?" Short answer: No. Long answer: attackers already have the roadmap. They have budgets, time, sophisticated tooling, and zero interest in reading policy documents when they can just scan for vulnerabilities. Are you paranoid enough to assume nation-states haven't already mapped your defenses? If so, who benefits from your secrecy—you or your competitors?
🛡️ "You're Helping Attackers!"
The Objection: Publishing security policies gives attackers information about defenses, making breaches easier.
The Reality: Attackers don't need your policy documents. They have automated scanners, vulnerability databases, exploit frameworks. Publishing that you use "AES-256 encryption" doesn't help them—they assumed that already. If publishing your security framework makes you vulnerable, your framework is broken.
What We Publish: Frameworks, methodologies, approved algorithms, security architectures, control categories. What We Don't Publish: Encryption keys, credentials, specific configurations, vulnerability details, supplier pricing. Think for yourself: Does knowing we require MFA help attackers? Or does it demonstrate we're not idiots?
Security through obscurity assumes attackers are lazy amateurs scanning randomly. Real attackers are sophisticated professionals with resources. Your "secret" policies leak in every M&A due diligence anyway. Transparency just makes you honest about it. FNORD.
🔓 "What About Competitive Intelligence?"
The Objection: Competitors will steal your security strategies and methodologies.
The Reality: Let them. Competitors replicating our transparency approach validates our strategy and improves industry security posture. Win-win. Competitors not replicating it reveals they're hiding inadequacy—competitive advantage for us. Either way, we benefit. First-mover advantage in radical transparency creates moat competitors can't cross without vulnerability disclosure.
Implementation Matters: Publishing policies is easy. Actually implementing them correctly is hard. Knowing we require "zero trust architecture" doesn't help competitors if they lack expertise to implement it. Documentation without execution is theater. We publish both because we're confident in execution quality. Are your competitors?
📜 "Isn't This Compliance Risk?"
The Objection: Auditors require confidentiality. Public ISMS violates compliance requirements.
The Reality: Wrong. ISO 27001, NIST CSF, CIS Controls, GDPR, NIS2—none require policy confidentiality. They require appropriate information classification. Our Classification Framework defines what's public (policies, frameworks, methodologies) vs. confidential (credentials, personal data, active vulnerabilities). We're compliant and transparent. Compliance doesn't require secrecy. Auditors might be surprised, but they can't fail you for it.
70% Public, 30% Redacted: Where documents contain mixed sensitivity (asset registers with credentials, risk registers with financial impacts), we publish redacted versions. Demonstrate security maturity without exposing exploitable details. Redaction enables transparency where full disclosure creates risk. Don't let perfect (100% public) be enemy of good (70% public).
Bottom Line: If your security depends on attackers not knowing your defenses, you don't have security. You have security theater. Real security survives transparency. Weak security requires obscurity. We publish because we're confident our security withstands scrutiny. FNORD. Can your competitors say the same?
🎯 How Clients Benefit From Our Public ISMS
Radical transparency isn't just marketing—it's value delivery. Our public ISMS provides concrete benefits to clients beyond "trust us" vendor promises. Question authority that claims transparency helps vendors but not customers. It helps both. That's why vendors who profit from opacity resist it.
Before Engagement: Due Diligence Acceleration
- Pre-Sales Verification: Review our security posture before first meeting. No vendor questionnaires. No "we'll get back to you on that." Evidence available 24/7 on GitHub.
- RFP Responses: Security questions answered with links to actual policies instead of marketing claims. Buyers verify implementation quality, not promises.
- Risk Assessment: Evaluate our security maturity against your requirements independently. No sales pressure. Just documentation.
- Competitive Comparison: Compare our evidence vs. competitors' claims. Think for yourself about which is more trustworthy.
During Engagement: Confidence Through Transparency
- Implementation Standards: See the security frameworks we'll apply to your project. Not aspirational—operational.
- Process Clarity: Understand how we handle incidents, vulnerabilities, changes, risks. No surprises. Just documented procedures.
- Compliance Evidence: Verify we actually implement ISO 27001, NIST CSF, CIS Controls—not just claim compliance. Control mappings public. Evidence trails visible.
- Quality Benchmarking: Compare your security posture against our documented standards. Identify gaps systematically.
Post-Engagement: Knowledge Transfer & Continuous Value
- Template Reuse: Fork our policies as starting point for your ISMS. We contribute to industry security maturity while demonstrating expertise.
- Best Practice Reference: Use our documentation as benchmark for security program development. Free training material demonstrating professional security implementation.
- Continuous Improvement: See our ISMS evolve via GitHub commits. Watch security maturity progression in real-time, not annual reports.
- Community Engagement: Contribute improvements back. Open security creates network effects benefiting entire industry.
Key Insight: Most vendors treat clients as adversaries in information asymmetry game—withhold documentation, control access, leverage opacity for higher prices. We treat clients as partners in security excellence—share documentation freely, enable verification, compete on execution quality not information hoarding. Transparency builds trust. Opacity builds suspicion. Choose accordingly. FNORD.
🚀 Ready to Work With Sweden's Most Transparent Cybersecurity Consultancy?
We don't ask you to trust us. We ask you to verify us.
Explore our public ISMS: github.com/Hack23/ISMS-PUBLIC
See what comprehensive security documentation actually looks like:
- 30+ ISMS policies covering every security domain
- ISO 27001, NIST CSF 2.0, CIS Controls compliance mappings
- Complete threat models for every product we build
- Security architectures, risk registers, supplier assessments
- Evidence-based security metrics and continuous monitoring
Fork it. Judge us. Hold us accountable. We're paranoid enough to want public oversight. Because real security survives scrutiny. And transparency beats vendor promises. Every. Single. Time.
🔐 Security Consulting Services
Need help implementing the security practices we document publicly? We offer:
- ISMS Implementation: Build comprehensive security management systems based on proven frameworks
- Compliance Support: ISO 27001, NIST CSF, CIS Controls, GDPR, NIS2, EU CRA
- Cloud Security Architecture: AWS security assessment and implementation (Advanced level)
- DevSecOps Integration: Security into agile development without slowing teams
- Threat Modeling & Risk Assessment: STRIDE methodology, attack surface analysis
View Services →💬 Contact Us
James Pether Sörling
CEO / Cybersecurity Expert
CISSP | CISM | AWS Security Specialty
LinkedIn | GitHub
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Remote Services: Available
Let's build security that withstands transparency. Because if it can't survive public scrutiny, it isn't security—it's theater.
🎯 Final Thoughts: Transparency as Weapon
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Including publishing your complete ISMS while competitors hide theirs and hope nobody asks why. We weaponize transparency because we're paranoid enough to understand: attackers already know your defenses. Nation-states have capabilities that make "security through obscurity" laughable. Your "confidential" policies leak in every M&A due diligence, every audit, every RFP response.
The only question: Do you get marketing value and community improvement from that inevitable disclosure? Or do you pretend secrecy protects you while losing competitive advantage to transparent competitors?
We chose transparency. 30+ policies on GitHub. 70% fully public. Complete threat models. Security architectures. Control mappings. Evidence trails. Sweden's only cybersecurity consultancy with fully public ISMS. Not because we're reckless. Because we're confident our security survives scrutiny. Are your competitors?
Think for yourself. Question authority. Especially security authorities who claim transparency would be "irresponsible" while hiding their inadequacy behind confidentiality stamps. Real security survives transparency. Weak security requires obscurity.
Which do you have? FNORD.
Welcome to Chapel Perilous. You can't unsee what you've read. The comfortable illusion that hiding security policies protects organizations dissolves here like Dual_EC_DRBG's credibility post-Snowden. Are you paranoid enough to compete on verifiable execution instead of confidential promises? If this sounds reasonable, you're already too deep. If this sounds paranoid, you're not paying attention. The only winning move is transparency—because they can't co-opt what's already public. Think for yourself. Question everything—especially this. All hail Eris! 🍎