A service security card is a single page per service listing its owner, data handled, dependencies, access, alerts, runbooks and open risks. It lets an engineer, an on call responder or an auditor understand the service's security posture in five minutes, and it gives your knowledge base a reliable unit to link to.
Why one page per service
Security knowledge usually lives in many places: a wiki, a repository, a ticket tracker, a scanner. When a question arrives, such as "is this service affected by that vulnerability?", nobody knows where to look. A card is the index. It does not hold every detail, it points to where each detail lives.
The template
| Field | What to write |
|---|---|
| Service name and purpose | One sentence in plain words |
| Owner and backup | Named people and a team channel |
| Data handled | Categories such as customer personal data, payment data, internal use |
| Exposure | Public internet, partners, internal use |
| Authentication and access | How users and services authenticate; who can reach production |
| Key dependencies | Link to the current dependency inventory or software bill of materials |
| Third parties | External services it calls, and what data goes to them |
| Alerts | Where alerts go, and who is paged |
| Runbooks | Links for incident, rollback, key rotation |
| Known risks | Open exceptions with owner and expiry date |
| Last reviewed | Date, and who confirmed |
Keep each field short. If the answer needs a paragraph, link to a longer page.
Steps to roll it out
- Create the template as a page template in your wiki or a markdown file in each repository.
- Start with the five most critical services. Do not try for full coverage first.
- Have each service owner fill in a card in a 30 minute session with someone from security. The conversation is as useful as the page.
- Link the card from the repository README and the service catalog.
- Add a review date and include the card in the quarterly docs review. See owners and review dates.
- Use the cards during incidents: when a dependency issue appears, the card tells you who to ask and where the inventory is.
Keep dependency facts live
The dependency row is where cards most often go stale. Do not copy a list of packages into the page. Link to a generated inventory instead, so it is correct whenever someone opens it. The dependency inventory demo below shows the idea, and committing an SBOM or generating it in CI compares the approaches.
Try it yourself
Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen. Look at how a single inventory view answers the dependency row of the card without a hand written list.
Where Safeguard fits
Safeguard's SBOM and dependency scanning and asset discovery can supply the inventory your cards link to, and compliance and evidence automation can attach evidence for the controls the card mentions.
Quick check
Should every small script get a card?
No. Start with services that handle sensitive data, face the internet or are on call critical. Add others as time allows.
Who fills in the card?
The service owner, with help from security in the first session. They know the service, and security knows what to ask.
Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.
