Transparency or Reconnaissance-as-a-Service?

In today’s hyperconnected digital ecosystem, security scorecards have emerged as tools for evaluating and publicising an organisation’s cybersecurity posture. Built on publicly accessible data, these platforms compile metrics into simple ratings or dashboards. The ostensible goal is to promote transparency, benchmarking, and proactive defence. However, beneath this façade lies a complex ethical dilemma: when vulnerabilities are exposed without consent, do security scorecards serve the public good, or the adversary?

Security Scorecards as a Concept: Promise and Pitfall
Security scorecards claim to empower organisations by highlighting weaknesses in configurations, authentication protocols, or encryption practices. In principle, they mirror the ethos of responsible disclosure, identifying flaws so they can be addressed. However, unlike responsible disclosure frameworks, many of these platforms operate unilaterally, aggregating and publishing sensitive data without coordination with the affected entity. This practice is less a public service and more a form of unsolicited exposure.

Reconnaissance-as-a-Service: Lowering the Barrier for Adversaries
In the traditional cyber kill chain, reconnaissance is the first and often most time-consuming phase. Security scorecards condense this phase into a ready-made intelligence product, available with a few clicks. Indicators such as exposed ports, expired SSL certificates, absent DMARC policies, or historical breach records, while technically public, become exponentially more dangerous when centralised.

This aggregation turns security scorecards into reconnaissance-as-a-service platforms. For threat actors, especially those engaged in opportunistic scanning or targeted ransomware campaigns, these tools offer tactical advantages with minimal effort. It’s almost the digital equivalent of leaving blueprints to your building’s weak points on a billboard outside.

A Cautionary Parallel: The Zuckerberg Approach
There are troubling parallels between security scorecards and the early philosophy of Facebook, epitomised by Zuckerberg’s infamous mantra: “Move fast and break things.” While this approach may catalyse innovation, it often dismisses privacy and consent as obstacles rather than pillars. The Cambridge Analytica scandal illustrates the fallout from prioritising data visibility over ethical stewardship.

Security scorecards echo this recklessness. By publishing data without organisational consent, they fail to balance transparency with autonomy. Their creators may argue the data is public, but ethical data use demands more than legality, it requires intent, proportionality, and context.

Public Data ≠ Public License
The misconception that publicly accessible data is fair game for republishing at scale is deeply flawed. There is a difference between data being available and being harvested, interpreted, and broadcast. For instance, querying a DNS record to verify a DMARC policy is routine; flagging the absence of that policy on a public dashboard invites attackers to exploit the finding before remediation can occur.

Further, many scorecards sensationalise breach histories without context. A company that suffered a breach in 2016 may now be among the most secure in its sector, but the public profile seldom reflects that journey.

Profit from Exposure: The Business of Security Scorecards
Compounding the ethical concerns is the commercial model underpinning many security scorecard platforms.

These companies often collect publicly accessible data without consent, generate profiles on organisations, frequently highlighting vulnerabilities, and then monetise that information by offering paid services back to the very entities they have exposed.

For example, platforms like SecurityScorecard and BitSight offer subscription-based tiers that include detailed risk analysis, continuous monitoring dashboards, alerts for third-party vendor risks, and remediation guidance, features only accessible behind paywalls.

In some cases, organisations are essentially coerced into purchasing access to their own security profiles to verify accuracy or mitigate reputational harm caused by a low score. This practice raises serious questions about fairness and conflicts of interest, as it risks becoming a pay-to-remediate model: vulnerabilities are identified and exposed publicly for free, but managing or contextualising that exposure becomes a paid privilege.

Not Always Accurate: Why Scorecards Require Skepticism
While security scorecards present themselves as authoritative measures of an organisation’s cyber hygiene, they are far from infallible. The data they rely on, such as DNS records, SSL configurations, and open ports, is typically collected through passive or unauthenticated scanning. This means the resulting profiles can be outdated, incomplete, or simply incorrect. In practice, this leads to scenarios where third parties, such as potential business partners, vendors, or insurers, may base risk assessments on flawed representations. Relying on these scores without verification can be misleading and even detrimental to forming accurate business judgments.

A particularly revealing example encountered by the author involved a company that was initially assigned a score below 65% by a major scorecard platform. This rating suggested a high level of risk, likely to raise red flags for anyone conducting due diligence. However, upon investigation, it became clear that several of the flagged issues were either already remediated or misinterpreted by the automated scanning process. After the company submitted documentation and evidence to dispute the findings, such as recent SSL certificate renewals and corrected DMARC records, their score was revised to over 90%. This swing illustrates just how volatile and error-prone these systems can be, particularly when there is no initial engagement or notification sent to the evaluated organisation.

Furthermore, many organisations only become aware of their score when a third party points it out. By that time, reputational harm may already be done, or contractual decisions influenced. This lack of real-time accuracy and absence of due process in generating these scores underscores the need for critical thinking. Scores should be treated as preliminary indicators at best, not definitive judgments. When organisations are assessed and scored without their involvement, it is incumbent upon evaluators to validate the data independently before drawing conclusions.

In short, security scorecards should be viewed as starting points for conversation, not as gospel. Much like credit scores, they often lack context, nuance, and human oversight. Their results are only as trustworthy as the data feeding them, and when that data is incorrect or out of date, the consequences can be unjust and damaging.

Regulatory, Legal, and Ethical Fault Lines
Security scorecards potentially violate regulatory frameworks such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which codifies principles of fairness, necessity, and transparency in data processing. Furthermore, in jurisdictions such as the United States, practices that resemble unauthorised scanning or data aggregation may fall within the ambiguous reach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Moreover, these practices diverge sharply from standards of responsible disclosure as outlined by CERT and similar institutions. Responsible vulnerability disclosure is a structured, collaborative process, not a unilateral publication of raw risk data.

Disproportionate Harm to SMEs
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often lack the infrastructure or expertise to respond rapidly to newly discovered vulnerabilities. Public exposure magnifies their risks, reputation loss, increased likelihood of phishing, and targeted exploitation. Ironically, the organisations most in need of help become the most exposed.

From Accountability to Exploitation
While scorecards may drive accountability in theory, they do so by publicly shaming companies rather than supporting them. The format oversimplifies nuanced security postures into reductive scores, often failing to account for context or remediation status. This binary representation misleads stakeholders and creates a false equivalency between negligent and under-resourced organisations.

Path Forward: A Responsible Model
Security scorecard platforms must recalibrate their operating model to align with ethical norms and defensive utility. This includes:

• Implementing consent mechanisms, allowing organisations to opt in or be notified of evaluations.
• Enforcing delayed disclosure policies, mirroring responsible vulnerability timelines.
• Restricting detailed data access to verified stakeholders.
• Publishing contextual information, including remediation efforts and data age.

These adjustments would help shift the model from passive exposure to active collaboration.

Conclusion: Transparency with Restraint
Security scorecards, in their current form, are a double-edged sword. While they aspire to illuminate, they often expose. Their promise of transparency must be tempered with consent, context, and a clear ethical framework. Otherwise, they risk becoming yet another tool in the attacker’s arsenal—weaponising visibility and eroding trust in the name of progress.

References

• Borhani, M., Gaba, G.S., Basaez, J., Avgouleas, I. and Gurtov, A. (2024). A Critical Analysis of the Industrial Device Scanners’ Potentials, Risks, and Preventives. Journal of Industrial Information Integration, 41, p.100623. (Analyzes how internet-wide scanning tools like Shodan can inadvertently disclose vulnerabilities to attackers and increase attack risk)linkedin.com.
• FIRST. (2017). Guidelines and Practices for Multi-Party Vulnerability Coordination and Disclosure. Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams. (Industry best-practice guide emphasizing coordinated, consent-based vulnerability disclosure among stakeholders)first.org.
• Hofmann, M. (2013). Legal Considerations for Widespread Scanning. Rapid7 Blog, 30 Oct 2013. (Discusses the ambiguity under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act regarding “unauthorized” internet scanning and recommends ethical practices like transparency and respecting opt-outs)rapid7.com.
• KimbaXO (Reddit user). (2022). “BitSight – totally bogus rating of my network.” Reddit: r/msp post, 24 Mar 2022. (First-hand account of an SME whose security rating was inaccurately low due to outdated data, causing business loss, and the process required to remediate errors through the platform)reddit.com.
• Krebs, B. (2018). Scanning for Flaws, Scoring for Security. Krebs on Security blog, 12 Dec 2018. (Reports on the rise of security rating services and warns that publicly visible security weaknesses – “broken windows” – invite malicious reconnaissance by threat actors)krebsonsecurity.com.
• Novinson, M. (2024). BitSight, SecurityScorecard, Panorays Lead Risk Ratings Tech. BankInfoSecurity, 27 May 2024. (Notes that CISOs initially questioned cybersecurity rating platforms due to high false-positive rates and low real-world ROI; recent improvements aim to address accuracy and transparency issues)bankinfosecurity.com.
• Palo Alto Networks. (2021). Security Ratings Are a Dangerous Fantasy. Palo Alto Networks Whitepaper. (Critical analysis arguing that external security scores can be misleading, noting the danger of quantifying cyber risk via external scans without context; suggests such ratings may misrepresent true security posture).
• Piltz, C. (2021). “German DPA on the Lawfulness of Port Scans as Security Measure.” LinkedIn Pulse, 8 Feb 2021. (Summarizes a German data protection authority’s decision that certain non-intrusive port scans can be lawful under GDPR’s legitimate interest, highlighting legal and privacy considerations of scanning without explicit consent)linkedin.com.
• Voci, V. (2022). Principles for Fair and Accurate Security Ratings. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Cybersecurity Report, 19 Jan 2022. (Outlines industry principles – transparency, accuracy, dispute resolution, independence, and confidentiality – to ensure that security scorecard services are fair; advises against publicizing individual organizations’ ratings and stresses careful use of disclosed vulnerabilities)uschamber.com.
• “BitSight is snake oil, right?” (Reddit thread, 2013). Reddit: r/cybersecurity. (Discussion among security professionals describing third-party risk rating services as “thinly veiled extortion” that scan and grade organizations without insight or consent, sometimes misattributing vulnerabilities (e.g., personal sites counted against a company) and pressuring less-resourced firms)reddit.com.