Encryption model & independent audits
How this is scored
What the vendor can prove about its security design: end-to-end encryption with named algorithms and key derivation, which fields are encrypted on the device and which are not, independent audits and penetration tests with published results, a bug bounty, and incident history disclosed.
0 — Security described in adjectives ("bank-grade", "military encryption") with no architecture, no audit and no statement of what the vendor can read.
3 — Encryption algorithms named and "zero knowledge" claimed, but no whitepaper, no statement of which fields stay unencrypted, and audits mentioned without dates, auditors or results.
5 — A published security whitepaper naming algorithms, key derivation and the client-side encryption model, a stated list of what is and is not encrypted (including URLs and metadata), and a named independent audit or certification (ISO 27001, SOC 2) with its date.
8 — Recurring independent penetration tests or code audits with reports or summaries published, a public bug bounty or vulnerability disclosure policy, past security incidents documented with their impact, and open-source clients or cryptography that can be reviewed.
10 — The design is verifiable end to end: full source or cryptographic design public, every field encrypted client-side including metadata, audits by named firms repeated yearly with full reports, a threat model that states what a compromise of the vendor's servers would expose, and incident post-mortems published.
The DevOps Engineer
The security-standard page and the version 19 FAQ publish a real cryptographic model — AES-GCM via Windows CNG for new databases, Argon2id defaults given down to memory and parallelism, PBKDF2 at 600,000 iterations, TLS 1.3 in transit, and a statement that the master password is never stored in plain text — which is documentation I can actually review before putting the server in our racks. A SySS penetration test is named, but I found no date, no published report, no statement of which fields stay unencrypted, and no public information on a bug bounty or past incidents. 1 6 7