Security review
Definition
A structured evaluation of a feature, system design, or code change focused on identifying security vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and data risks before the work ships to production.
Security reviews are the engineering equivalent of a legal review: necessary, sometimes slow, and vastly cheaper than the alternative. A security vulnerability found in review costs hours; the same vulnerability found in production can cost millions in breach remediation, regulatory fines, and trust damage.
Types of security reviews:
- Design review: Evaluates the architecture before implementation. Catches fundamental flaws (e.g., storing sensitive data without encryption) early.
- Code review with security focus: Looks for common vulnerability classes — injection, broken authentication, insecure deserialization, CSRF, etc.
- Penetration test: Actively tries to exploit the system. Typically done before major launches or annually.
- Threat modeling: Systematically identifies threats against a system and designs controls to mitigate them.
Who does it: Dedicated security engineers, AppSec teams, or external security consultants. In organizations without dedicated security resources, security-conscious engineers may conduct peer security reviews.
Common focus areas: Authentication and authorization, data at rest and in transit, API security, dependency vulnerabilities, secrets management, input validation, and compliance requirements (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR).
On a whiteboard: Threat modeling sessions — one of the most productive security activities — happen on whiteboards. Data flow diagrams with trust boundaries, attacker entry points, and data stores all get drawn. Snap those boards with BoardSnap to capture the threat model before the session ends.
Examples
- A fintech startup requires a security review for every feature that touches user financial data, staffing it with an external AppSec consultant.
- A B2B SaaS company adds a security review gate to the product development process after a bug bounty submission reveals an authentication flaw that was in the codebase for 18 months.
- An engineering team runs a threat modeling session on a whiteboard, identifying three high-priority attack vectors before the architecture is finalized.
- A security review reveals that API keys are being logged in plaintext — caught before the code ships, preventing a significant credential exposure.
Related terms
Snap a security review. Ship its actions.
BoardSnap turns any whiteboard — including this one — into a summary and action plan.