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Security Audit Checklist

A 40-point checklist for auditing code security. Run the full audit quarterly. Between audits, automated scanning handles continuous checks.

How to Use

For each item mark: Pass (implemented and verified), Fail (not implemented), or N/A (not applicable to your stack).

Items marked Fail need a remediation owner and deadline:

  • Critical gaps (secrets, auth, injection) — fix within 7 days
  • High gaps (headers, CORS, session) — fix within 30 days
  • Medium gaps (logging, monitoring, docs) — fix within 90 days

Track evidence for each check (CI run URL, scan artifact, policy result, config screenshot).

1. Secrets Management (6 items)

# Check Severity How to Verify
1 No hardcoded secrets in source code Critical rg -n "sk_live_|sk-proj-|password\s*=" -t code
2 .env files in .gitignore Critical Check .gitignore, run git log --all -- .env*
3 No secrets in client-side env vars Critical rg "VITE_.*SECRET|NEXT_PUBLIC_.*KEY" .env*
4 Pre-commit secret scanning enabled High Check .pre-commit-config.yaml for Gitleaks/TruffleHog
5 Production secrets in a secrets manager High Verify Vault/AWS SM/Doppler config
6 No secrets in Docker image layers High docker history <image> — check for embedded secrets

2. Dependency Security (6 items)

# Check Severity How to Verify
7 SCA scan runs on every build Critical Check CI pipeline for Trivy/Grype/Snyk step
8 Critical CVEs block deployment Critical Verify CI fails on CRITICAL severity findings
9 Lock files committed to Git High Check for uv.lock / package-lock.json / go.sum
10 Dependencies updated within last 30 days High Check Dependabot/Renovate PR activity
11 No unused dependencies Medium Run deptry . (Python) or npx depcheck (Node)
12 License compliance checked Medium Run pip-licenses or license-checker

3. Code Analysis (6 items)

# Check Severity How to Verify
13 SAST runs on every pull request Critical Check CI for Semgrep/SonarQube/Bandit
14 No SQL string interpolation Critical rg "f\".*SELECT|f\".*INSERT|f\".*UPDATE" -t py
15 No shell=True with user input Critical rg "shell=True" -t py — review each usage
16 All user input validated server-side High Review API endpoints for Pydantic/Zod schemas
17 No dangerouslySetInnerHTML with user data High rg "dangerouslySetInnerHTML" -t tsx -t jsx
18 Output encoding for all rendered data High Verify framework auto-escaping is enabled

4. Authentication & Authorization (7 items)

# Check Severity How to Verify
19 Passwords hashed with Argon2id/bcrypt Critical Review auth code for hash algorithm
20 Every API endpoint requires auth Critical Audit route definitions for missing middleware
21 Auth conditions are not inverted Critical Review if session vs if not session guards
22 DB queries scoped to authenticated user Critical Check for IDOR — queries include user_id filter
23 Role checks enforced server-side High Verify admin endpoints check role from session
24 Session cookies have secure attributes High Check for httpOnly, secure, sameSite flags
25 Failed logins are rate-limited High Verify rate limiter on /login, /register, /reset

5. Configuration & Headers (6 items)

# Check Severity How to Verify
26 CORS restricted to frontend domain Critical rg 'origin.*"\*"|origin.*\*' -t py -t js
27 HTTPS enforced everywhere (TLS 1.2+) Critical Check for HSTS header, mixed content
28 Security headers set (CSP, X-Frame, etc.) High Test at securityheaders.com
29 Error responses don't leak internals High Trigger errors, check for stack traces
30 File uploads validated (magic bytes, size) High Review upload endpoints
31 Admin interfaces have extra access controls Medium Check for IP restrictions, additional auth

6. CI/CD Pipeline (5 items)

# Check Severity How to Verify
32 Pipelines run with least-privilege High Review CI/CD service account permissions
33 Third-party actions pinned to SHA High rg "@v[0-9]|@latest" .github/workflows/
34 Pipeline config changes are code-reviewed High Check branch protection rules
35 Secrets not exposed in CI logs High Search recent build logs for secret patterns
36 Container images scanned before deploy High Check CI for Trivy/Grype image scan step

7. Monitoring & Response (4 items)

# Check Severity How to Verify
37 Security events logged centrally High Verify auth events, failures logged to SIEM
38 Alerts on brute-force and anomalies High Check alerting rules in monitoring system
39 Incident response plan documented Medium Review IR runbook, check last tabletop date
40 DAST scans run against staging Medium Check for ZAP/Nuclei in CI or scheduled scans

These controls are strongly recommended for 2026 production environments.

Check Severity How to Verify
Artifact has signed provenance attestation High cosign verify-attestation --type slsaprovenance <image>
Deploy gate verifies signature + provenance High Admission policy/Kyverno rule evidence
CI actions pinned to full commit SHA only High rg "@v[0-9]|@latest|@master" .github/workflows/ should return none
Trusted registry allowlist enforced Medium CI/package manager config only allows approved registries
Lockfile integrity enforced in CI Medium uv sync --frozen / npm ci is mandatory in pipeline
AI prompt/tool logs are redacted Medium Logging policy and sample logs show token masking

Scoring

Score Assessment Priority Action
35-40 Strong security posture Address remaining gaps, maintain
25-34 Good foundation with gaps Close high-risk gaps within 30 days
15-24 Significant risk exposure Focus on Secrets + Auth sections first
Below 15 Immediate action needed Start with items 1, 7, 13, 19, 20, 26, 27

Minimum Tooling Matrix

Category Tool Free/OSS Purpose
SAST Semgrep / Bandit Yes Code vulnerability scanning
SCA Trivy / pip-audit Yes Dependency vulnerability scanning
Secrets Gitleaks / TruffleHog Yes Secret leak prevention
DAST ZAP / Nuclei Yes Runtime vulnerability scanning
Container Trivy / Grype Yes Image vulnerability scanning
IaC Checkov / KICS Yes Infrastructure misconfiguration
Headers securityheaders.com Yes HTTP header verification
Deps update Dependabot / Renovate Yes Automated dependency PRs

OWASP ASVS 5.0 Mapping (Quick View)

Checklist Area ASVS 5.0 Domain (example)
Secrets, config, data protection V1 + configuration/data protection controls
Input validation + encoding V5 validation/sanitization controls
Authentication + sessions V2 authentication/session controls
Authorization + access checks V3 authorization controls
API and token checks API + token/OAuth controls
Logging + error handling Logging/monitoring controls

Quick-Start: Security in 1 Hour

If you can only spend 1 hour, do these 5 things:

  1. 10 min — Run gitleaks detect --source . --verbose to find leaked secrets
  2. 10 min — Run trivy fs . to find vulnerable dependencies
  3. 10 min — Search for shell=True, SQL string interpolation, dangerouslySetInnerHTML
  4. 15 min — Verify every API endpoint has auth middleware
  5. 15 min — Check CORS config, add .env to .gitignore, add pre-commit hook

Track your score over time

Run the full 40-point audit quarterly. Track your score per audit to measure security program improvement. Aim to gain 5+ points per quarter until you reach 35+.