Security Milestones

Predefined triggers for when to increase security effort — harden further, commission an audit, or gate a claim — rather than deciding ad hoc. This satisfies OSTIF best-practices step 7 ("milestones in mind" for escalating security). Each milestone pairs a trigger (an observable condition) with the action it gates, decided in advance and honored when the trigger fires.

Last reviewed: 2026-07-10. Owner: Security Lead (see vuln-response.md).

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Escalation milestones

#	Trigger	Action it gates	Status
M1	Before advertising any compliance / enterprise-grade security claim	An independent external security audit must be complete and its findings remediated.	⛔ Hard gate — not yet met.
M2	First named production / enterprise adopter, OR sustained adoption (notable PyPI download volume, notable downstream project depending on Perseus)	Commission a full independent audit and re-approach OSTIF — at this point Perseus meets their "widely-used open-source infrastructure" bar (the exact status change they asked us to signal).	⬜ Open — see OSTIF re-approach
M3	Ship signed releases with SLSA provenance	Complete and enable it, so users can verify the artifact they install.	🟡 In progress — GitHub Artifact Attestations over sdist/wheel + PEP 740 PyPI attestations wired into publish.yml; validates on the next release.
M4	Before perseus serve (HTTP API) or perseus mcp serve network transport is ever enabled by default (today both are opt-in and off)	A transport security + authentication review.	⬜ Open (default-off holds it back)
M5	Before relaxing or removing the @query shell-execution double-gate (today requires both render.allow_query_shell and PERSEUS_ALLOW_DANGEROUS=1)	A security review; the default-deny posture stays unless explicitly re-justified.	♻️ Standing invariant
M6	Any Critical or High severity vulnerability report	Execute the vuln-response.md timeline (48h ack, severity-banded fix targets, coordinated disclosure + CVE).	♻️ Standing
M7	Continuous	pip-audit (runtime) + osv-scanner (toolchain) + CodeQL stay green; weekly advisory sweep; review new dependencies before merge.	♻️ Standing

Legend: ⛔ hard gate · ⬜ open · ♻️ standing/recurring.

The OSTIF re-approach trigger

Milestone M2 is deliberately also our re-engagement criterion with OSTIF. In July 2026 OSTIF declined a gratis audit because Perseus was pre-traction, but explicitly left the door open: "if anything changes with your project's status, don't hesitate to let us know." M2 defines that status change concretely — a named adopter or real download volume — so we know exactly when to reopen the conversation rather than guessing. Until then we work OSTIF's best-practices guide (this doc and SECURITY-INDEX.md are part of that preparation).

Maintenance

Review this list whenever a milestone is met (move it to a "completed" note and update the Last reviewed date), when a new claim/feature introduces a new risk threshold, or at each major release. Milestones are commitments — if one cannot be met on schedule, record why and the interim mitigation.