03Cybersecurity
Security that is part of the architecture.
We work with engineering and security teams to make systems defensible by design — threat models, authorisation architecture, secure delivery practice, and remediation plans that get finished.
01Where it starts
What we usually walk into.
Security arrives as a report at the end of a project. The findings are real, the deadline is fixed, and the team ships anyway with a list of accepted risks that never gets closed.
A penetration test produced 60 findings three weeks before launch.
Authorisation logic is scattered across controllers and nobody can answer "who can see this record".
A customer security questionnaire is blocking a contract.
Cloud configuration has drifted and no one knows what is publicly reachable.
The team knows the practices but has no time or mandate to apply them.
02Approach
How we do the work.
We embed security into design and delivery: threat modelling while the architecture is still soft, authorisation designed as a first-class part of the domain, and remediation sequenced by exploitability and business impact.
- 01
Threat modelling while design is cheap
We run structured threat modelling against the architecture — trust boundaries, assets, actors, abuse cases — at the point where changing the design still costs days rather than quarters.
- 02
Authorisation as domain logic
Most severe application findings are authorisation failures, not exotic exploits. We design access control explicitly, centralise the decision, and make it testable.
- 03
Remediation you can actually finish
Findings are sequenced by exploitability and business impact, with a concrete fix, an owner and an effort estimate. A prioritised list of twelve real fixes beats an unread report of sixty.
- 04
Practice, then tooling
Scanners find what scanners find. We start with the design and the review practice, then automate the checks that repeat, so tooling reinforces judgement instead of substituting for it.
Capabilities and deliverables
Capabilities
- Threat modelling (STRIDE and attack-tree based)
- Application and API security architecture
- Identity, authentication and authorisation design
- Cloud security architecture and configuration review
- Secrets management and key handling
- Secure SDLC and pipeline hardening
- Security requirements engineering
What you receive
- Threat model with documented trust boundaries and abuse cases
- Authentication and authorisation architecture review
- Secure design review of new or changed architecture
- Prioritised remediation plan with owners and effort estimates
- Secure development guidance tailored to your stack and workflow
- Security requirements for supplier and procurement processes
- Working sessions with your engineers — the knowledge stays in-house
Common use cases
- Security architecture for a new platform
- Preparing for external penetration testing or certification
- Responding to a customer security assessment
- Reviewing an acquisition target’s technical estate
- Establishing a secure software development lifecycle
- Post-incident architectural hardening
Technologies typically involved
- HashiCorp Vault
- OpenID Connect
- OAuth 2.1
- SPIFFE
- Kubernetes
- Terraform
- OPA
- Trivy
- Semgrep
- OpenTelemetry
03Engagement
How it runs.
- 01
Scoping
1 week
Systems in scope, authorisation to test, data-handling agreement and success criteria.
- 02
Assessment
2–4 weeks
Architecture review, threat modelling workshops, targeted code and configuration review.
- 03
Plan
1 week
Prioritised remediation plan, presented to both engineering and leadership.
- 04
Support
Ongoing
Implementation support, re-review of fixed items, and secure design review of new work.
04Security
Security considerations.
These apply to this service specifically. They are engagement conditions, not aspirations, and we will put them in the contract.
- We test only systems we are contracted and authorised in writing to test
- Findings are handled under an agreed disclosure and retention policy
- Client data is never copied into our environment without an explicit agreement
- Reports are delivered through a channel your security team nominates
05Outcomes
What changes afterwards.
Fewer findings late, a shorter path from finding to fix, and an engineering team that can reason about its own threat surface.
- 01
Security findings appear in design review instead of in a pre-launch report
- 02
Access-control questions have a single, testable answer
- 03
Customer security reviews stop blocking commercial progress
- 04
Your engineers can run the threat modelling session next time
06Questions
Asked before every engagement.
No. A penetration test answers "can this be broken right now". Our consulting answers "why is it breakable, and what should change". The two complement each other — see Security Audits for our assessment work, and we are happy to work alongside a third-party testing provider.
Usually not. Architecture, code, configuration and a non-production environment cover most of the work. Where production access is genuinely required, it is scoped narrowly, time-boxed, logged and agreed in writing first.
Yes. We help you answer accurately — which sometimes means fixing the underlying gap rather than writing a better answer. We will not help present controls that are not in place.
Not yet. BYAK holds no security certifications at present, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise — we do not list credentials we cannot evidence. Judge the work on the reports: we will walk you through a redacted example of what you would actually receive.
Frequently runs alongside
Ready to scopecybersecurity?
Bring the problem, the constraints and the deadline. We will tell you what is achievable, what it costs and what we would do first.