Hacken Announces Elimination of Security Scores in Audits

At Hacken, we are dedicated to continually enhancing our services to better support our clients and the Web3 community. Today, we are ready to announce a significant change: Hacken will no longer use Security Scores (0-10) in our audits and other services.

With this change, we want our clients and the broader Web3 community to prioritize addressing security and performance risks instead of fixating on a numerical score, shifting the focus to codebase maturity and mitigating potential threats and vulnerabilities.

Why We’re Making This Change

While security scores have been a useful tool in simplifying complex security assessments, we believe they can sometimes oversimplify critical issues and provide a false sense of security. We aim to provide a more comprehensive, nuanced understanding of security postures.

From Oversimplification to Comprehensive Insights

Security is inherently complex, and reducing it to a single number can mask underlying issues or nuances. A score fails to capture the complete picture of a project’s security posture, potentially leading to misconceptions about the actual security state. We encourage our clients’ communities to dive deeper into reports rather than just checking scores, avoiding misinterpretation or oversimplification of audit results.

From Incomparability to Contextual Evaluation

Scores across different projects and various Web3 and DeFi niches are incomparable and don’t paint a complete picture. Each project has unique security challenges and requirements; a single score does not accurately reflect this diversity. Different stakeholders might interpret the score differently, leading to misaligned expectations or actions. Without a score constraint, our audits can be more adaptable to various domains and client-specific requirements, allowing for a flexible and meaningful evaluation of security posture.

What This Means For You

Focus on What Matters

Our reports already provide comprehensive vulnerability tracking tailored to each project’s needs. By eliminating audit scores, we help clients and their communities better focus on what’s truly important: robust security, code quality, documentation, and thorough test coverage.

Embrace A New Level of Maturity

By eliminating audit scores from our security assessments, we emphasize the increasing maturity of the industry. Focusing on actual vulnerabilities and the codebase, rather than scores, enhances the quality and depth of our evaluations, underscoring our commitment to providing the most accurate and helpful risk assessments possible. 

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