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Specialized domains and release assurance

Phase 16 of 16 in the complete engineering review.

Triggered modules for specialized products and the controls that connect lifecycle work to final production approval.

Assess every control as Pass, Fail, Blocked, or Not Applicable. A Pass needs current evidence for the exact product, revision, artifact, configuration, environment, and data state under review.

Payments, Billing, and Money Movement

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/01-payments-billing-and-money-movement.md; 18 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-5FC4DFAA — Payment credentials never enter logs, analytics, support tools, error reports, or ordinary databases unless explicitly required and protected.
  • USEQ-04ED44A7 — Amount, currency, tax, discount, exchange-rate, fee, commission, and rounding behavior is correct.
  • USEQ-333EF029 — Duplicate-charge and duplicate-payout protection is implemented.
  • USEQ-197BC003 — Payment, refund, payout, and callback requests are idempotent.
  • USEQ-6592AF43 — Payment webhooks are authenticated or signed and replay-protected.
  • USEQ-CA5B22D9 — Pending, authorized, captured, settled, failed, canceled, refunded, disputed, reversed, and chargeback states are modeled correctly.
  • USEQ-98E13A36 — The product does not claim financial success before authoritative confirmation.
  • USEQ-FB9EBF41 — Reconciliation compares application records with provider, processor, bank, or ledger records.
  • USEQ-4CDBDA9F — Full refund, partial refund, reversal, chargeback, dispute, and failed-payment workflows are tested.
  • USEQ-4E901444 — Retry behavior cannot cause accidental duplicate charges or payouts.
  • USEQ-8F8CB05C — Regional authentication, consumer-protection, and financial requirements are applied where relevant.
  • USEQ-513F01A1 — Fraud controls are monitored and reviewed for discriminatory, accessibility, and customer-harm impact.
  • USEQ-A47801E4 — Payout-destination and bank-detail changes receive enhanced verification.
  • USEQ-BE1302B9 — Financial exports and reports are access-controlled and audited.
  • USEQ-E056DB88 — Provider outage, delay, duplicate event, out-of-order event, and reconciliation failure are tested.
  • USEQ-F59B2D4E — Invoices, receipts, statements, tax documents, and disclosures are correct.
  • USEQ-C12F67B1 — Subscription renewal, trial conversion, proration, upgrade, downgrade, pause, cancellation, grace period, and retry behavior are tested.
  • USEQ-6DF3B045 — Customer support cannot alter money movement without controlled authorization, separation of duties where required, and audit.

Real-Time, Streaming, Collaboration, and Event-Driven Features

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/04-realtime-streaming-and-collaboration.md; 12 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-40B1DC25 — Connection authentication and authorization remain valid for the lifetime of the connection.
  • USEQ-2DF2A48C — Browser-origin and cross-site connection risks are addressed.
  • USEQ-9A67EA71 — Messages and events are schema-validated.
  • USEQ-65100565 — Message size, rate, fan-out, subscription count, and connection count are bounded.
  • USEQ-085B1CFB — Ordering guarantees and conflict-resolution behavior are documented.
  • USEQ-AC384A6E — Duplicate, delayed, reordered, and lost message behavior is handled.
  • USEQ-61B2D449 — Backpressure prevents memory, queue, and downstream-resource exhaustion.
  • USEQ-880F8C81 — Presence, typing, cursor, draft, and collaboration data do not leak across users or tenants.
  • USEQ-1F0175D9 — Permission changes, logout, suspension, and deletion terminate or constrain active streams.
  • USEQ-50CCE7A2 — Fan-out capacity and hot-room or hot-topic behavior are load-tested.
  • USEQ-58F7B452 — Event history and replay preserve authorization, retention, deletion, and tenant boundaries.
  • USEQ-44AC2BF0 — Collaborative edits handle concurrency, conflict, undo, attribution, and recovery correctly.

Safety-Critical and Physically Consequential Systems

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/06-safety-critical-and-physically-consequential-systems.md; 5 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-49E96333 — Establish fail-safe and fail-secure behavior.
  • USEQ-C010CAA8 — Safety alerts are perceptible, timely, actionable, and accessible.
  • USEQ-742FE91A — Safety thresholds are conservative, documented, and validated.
  • USEQ-2A52C1E5 — Sensor, input, model, communication, timing, power, and actuator failure modes are tested as applicable.
  • USEQ-69A5E188 — Recall, disablement, rollback, and customer-notification procedures exist.

Media, Voice, Video, and Live Communications

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/07-media-voice-video-and-live-communications.md; 13 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-EBD1622C — Camera, microphone, screen, and device permissions are requested only when needed.
  • USEQ-E6602317 — Permission and recording state are visible and revocable.
  • USEQ-A1A11D01 — Signaling, room membership, invitations, and media access are authenticated and authorized.
  • USEQ-2534B0B7 — Session and room identifiers are sufficiently unpredictable where required.
  • USEQ-7F4FC4B0 — Users cannot join, observe, record, or retrieve communications without authorization.
  • USEQ-FA268344 — Media relay, direct peer connectivity, network-address exposure, and metadata leakage are threat-modeled.
  • USEQ-033AF627 — Recording requires appropriate consent, indication, retention, access control, and deletion.
  • USEQ-B9628E94 — Transcription, translation, moderation, and analysis follow privacy and consent requirements.
  • USEQ-DF4B3471 — Background noise, echo, poor bandwidth, jitter, packet loss, device changes, and reconnection are tested.
  • USEQ-BD86BC9E — Participant identity, speaking state, recording state, muting, removal, and access controls are clear and reliable.
  • USEQ-4C121133 — Abuse-reporting and moderation controls exist where needed.
  • USEQ-A3195B6F — Encryption and key-management behavior match the communication risk.
  • USEQ-51374A62 — Live media cannot expose private network, location, device, or identity information beyond accepted risk.

Geolocation, Sensors, and Device Capabilities

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/08-geolocation-sensors-and-device-capabilities.md; 12 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-90C7782A — Device capabilities are requested only when necessary.
  • USEQ-9F507275 — Permission requests are contextual, understandable, revocable, and accessible.
  • USEQ-967F9F61 — Denial of permission has a safe and usable path.
  • USEQ-001D20FE — Precise data is not collected when coarse data is sufficient.
  • USEQ-CD98743E — Location and sensor-data retention is minimized.
  • USEQ-8DA60AC4 — Access is auditable where appropriate.
  • USEQ-49F1368C — Shared-device and background-access risks are addressed.
  • USEQ-12A5A8D0 — Spoofed, stale, inaccurate, unavailable, or manipulated sensor data is handled safely.
  • USEQ-FD11B478 — Map, geocoding, routing, and location providers receive only approved data.
  • USEQ-374B2E5E — Location sharing has clear audience, precision, duration, and expiry controls.
  • USEQ-49F3B2EC — Safety implications of exposing home, work, travel, or real-time location are reviewed.
  • USEQ-948F1E8C — Permission changes take effect promptly across caches, sessions, background jobs, and integrations.

Analytics, Experimentation, Advertising, and Attribution

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/10-analytics-experimentation-advertising-and-attribution.md; 15 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-DCB37BC2 — Every event, property, identifier, destination, and retention period is inventoried.
  • USEQ-03BBB392 — Event names and semantics are versioned and documented.
  • USEQ-E990B2BF — Analytics never receives secrets, credentials, full payment data, prohibited health data, or unnecessary sensitive content.
  • USEQ-376714FD — Consent and opt-out choices are enforced at collection and transmission time.
  • USEQ-1DB8EA36 — User and tenant isolation is preserved in analytics and reporting.
  • USEQ-E52D44A3 — Experiment assignment is deterministic and does not bypass authorization, pricing, safety, or legal controls.
  • USEQ-7E879111 — Experiment combinations and interactions are bounded and tested.
  • USEQ-9DB9E528 — Experiments have owners, hypotheses, stop criteria, monitoring, and expiry dates.
  • USEQ-838BB8B2 — Harmful or degraded variants can be disabled immediately.
  • USEQ-36303028 — Metric definitions resist double counting, bot traffic, missing events, retries, and clock differences.
  • USEQ-6F0BAC43 — Attribution and advertising code does not alter critical behavior or leak sensitive data.
  • USEQ-A77F523C — Session replay and recording tools mask sensitive fields and are privacy-reviewed.
  • USEQ-5C3A4846 — Data quality, loss, duplication, delay, schema drift, and provider outage are monitored.
  • USEQ-4BF18A72 — Deletion and privacy requests propagate to analytics providers where required.
  • USEQ-7C1F74A2 — Reports do not expose small-group or individual data improperly.

E-Commerce, Orders, Inventory, Fulfillment, and Returns

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/11-ecommerce-orders-inventory-fulfillment-and-returns.md; 12 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-FAC20782 — Product, price, tax, discount, availability, inventory, delivery, and return information is accurate.
  • USEQ-D4A8D9FB — Inventory reservation, decrement, release, oversell, backorder, and cancellation behavior is correct under concurrency.
  • USEQ-AA20A64E — Cart and checkout totals cannot be manipulated by the client.
  • USEQ-100B6DA2 — Coupon, promotion, referral, loyalty, and gift-card rules cannot be abused or stacked improperly.
  • USEQ-2F559873 — Order creation is idempotent and reconciled with payment and inventory systems.
  • USEQ-F072E319 — Partial fulfillment, split shipment, substitution, backorder, cancellation, refund, and return workflows are tested.
  • USEQ-9818DD41 — Delivery addresses, contact details, and fulfillment instructions are protected.
  • USEQ-96A83B0F — Shipping, customs, tax, and regional restrictions are applied correctly.
  • USEQ-2B9E1A68 — Order status reflects authoritative state and handles delayed or out-of-order provider events.
  • USEQ-8848D08B — Marketplace seller and buyer permissions, payouts, disputes, and fees are isolated and audited.
  • USEQ-E1CC2FBF — Customer support cannot modify prices, refunds, inventory, or fulfillment without controlled authorization.
  • USEQ-2DA04192 — Product recalls and safety notifications can identify and contact affected customers.

Blockchain, Smart Contracts, Digital Assets, and Irreversible Ledgers

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/12-blockchain-smart-contracts-and-irreversible-ledgers.md; 12 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-FB281AC4 — On-chain and off-chain components, networks, contracts, bridges, oracles, custodians, signers, and keys are inventoried.
  • USEQ-4EE7054B — Smart-contract code and upgrades receive independent review and testing.
  • USEQ-5A5F7869 — Irreversible actions require clear confirmation, address validation, amount validation, and network validation.
  • USEQ-367B41AA — Replay, reorganization, finality, nonce, fee, front-running, sandwiching, and transaction-replacement behavior is addressed.
  • USEQ-102C77C7 — Private keys and signing devices follow strong key-management controls.
  • USEQ-416C0FA5 — Multi-party approval is used for high-value or administrative actions where appropriate.
  • USEQ-76F26E01 — Contract ownership, upgrade authority, pause authority, and emergency controls are documented and restricted.
  • USEQ-20A50596 — Oracle, bridge, exchange, custodian, and wallet-provider failures are threat-modeled.
  • USEQ-C38E0EC6 — Chain congestion, network fork, delayed finality, and provider outage are handled.
  • USEQ-14B6379E — User balances reconcile across internal records and authoritative ledgers.
  • USEQ-F6401644 — Token, asset, sanctions, tax, consumer-protection, and financial-regulatory applicability is reviewed.
  • USEQ-FA3950BD — Recovery limitations and irreversible-risk warnings are clear and accurate.

IoT, Device Control, Industrial, and Cyber-Physical Integrations

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/13-iot-device-control-industrial-and-cyber-physical.md; 12 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-427D419B — Devices, firmware, gateways, protocols, commands, sensors, actuators, and ownership states are inventoried.
  • USEQ-D9C174A7 — Device identity, enrollment, ownership transfer, reset, and decommissioning are secure.
  • USEQ-0E3D9A51 — Commands are authenticated, authorized, scoped, replay-protected, and auditable.
  • USEQ-3A5CABA3 — Unsafe or conflicting commands are rejected.
  • USEQ-922D07FC — Offline, delayed, duplicated, reordered, and partially executed commands are handled safely.
  • USEQ-01750D1D — Device firmware and configuration have trusted update, rollback, and integrity verification.
  • USEQ-7C316720 — Lost, stolen, compromised, or resold devices can be revoked and reset.
  • USEQ-72F94CB0 — Local physical access and network exposure are threat-modeled.
  • USEQ-A69FFAC6 — Safety interlocks remain effective if the web application, network, cloud, or identity provider fails.
  • USEQ-BC5663A0 — Telemetry accuracy, spoofing, calibration, drift, and missing-data behavior are monitored.
  • USEQ-958BBF9F — Device and user privacy, location, audio, video, and household data are minimized and protected.
  • USEQ-2D51DCAA — Emergency disablement, field support, recall, and end-of-life procedures exist.

Open-Source Projects and Public Packages

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/14-open-source-projects-and-public-packages.md; 20 non-duplicative controls.

Category-specific universal rules

  • USEQ-6497B434 — Publish a clear license and ensure all included code and assets are legally compatible.
  • USEQ-D73106BF — Define governance, maintainer roles, decision process, code of conduct, and conflict resolution.
  • USEQ-89F5E97A — Provide contribution, development, testing, review, security, and release guidance.
  • USEQ-6C1118DF — Require contributor provenance or attestation appropriate to project risk.
  • USEQ-94A60F9D — Protect maintainer accounts, repositories, packages, domains, registries, and signing keys.
  • USEQ-23087C10 — Use protected branches, independent review, and trusted release automation.
  • USEQ-888978BC — Publish release artifacts, checksums, provenance, SBOM, compatibility, and change notes.
  • USEQ-B88FA04F — Define supported versions, security maintenance, deprecation, and end-of-life.
  • USEQ-BC106078 — Provide a private vulnerability-reporting path and coordinated disclosure policy.
  • USEQ-DBBB57B9 — Triage reports promptly and publish advisories with affected versions and mitigation.
  • USEQ-A1F8E702 — Avoid exposing reporter identity or exploit detail before users can protect themselves.
  • USEQ-8BB2D4E1 — Review dependencies, install scripts, generated content, examples, and package metadata.
  • USEQ-01F8B782 — Prevent package-name takeover, abandoned namespace, and unauthorized release.
  • USEQ-795582EF — Track downstream consumers and ecosystem impact for breaking or security changes.
  • USEQ-C714CD1A — Use semantic or otherwise documented versioning consistently.
  • USEQ-93F18228 — Provide reproducible setup and tests for contributors.
  • USEQ-266D92FB — Make public documentation accessible and free of secrets or private data.
  • USEQ-F4CC9891 — Plan maintainer succession and avoid single-person release authority.
  • USEQ-8A380A72 — Disclose commercial sponsorship, conflicts of interest, and governance changes.
  • USEQ-ADC4E444 — Archive or transfer abandoned projects responsibly rather than leaving vulnerable packages silently active.

Mobile, Desktop, and Installed Clients

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/15-mobile-desktop-and-installed-clients.md; 20 non-duplicative controls.

Category-specific universal rules

  • USEQ-FBF0A7B0 — Define supported operating systems, versions, device classes, architectures, input modes, and assistive technologies.
  • USEQ-C56B91A7 — Sign distributable applications and protect signing and store accounts.
  • USEQ-B7D00E9D — Use trusted distribution channels and verify update authenticity and integrity.
  • USEQ-222045D3 — Make updates compatible, resumable, rollback-aware, and safe under interruption.
  • USEQ-328B6D42 — Define minimum and recommended versions and communicate end-of-support.
  • USEQ-C7371C71 — Request device permissions only at the moment of need with clear purpose.
  • USEQ-ADE1D9DE — Provide functional alternatives when optional permissions are denied.
  • USEQ-01CFD666 — Protect local databases, files, caches, logs, notifications, clipboard, backups, and screenshots according to sensitivity.
  • USEQ-8955879F — Clear or protect user data during logout, account switch, uninstall, device transfer, and remote revocation.
  • USEQ-B9555C7E — Handle offline changes, conflict, replay, and synchronization safely.
  • USEQ-0EC9D8F4 — Prevent stale clients from bypassing current authorization, safety, or data rules.
  • USEQ-AA7C2DC9 — Validate deep links, inter-application messages, extensions, custom schemes, and shared files.
  • USEQ-51B9E38A — Use platform security storage for credentials and keys where appropriate.
  • USEQ-B5BDC412 — Avoid embedding long-lived secrets in distributed binaries.
  • USEQ-0EA47DFB — Detect rooted, jailbroken, tampered, or compromised environments only where signals are reliable and user impact is justified.
  • USEQ-0E6064FC — Test battery, memory, storage, network, background, interruption, suspension, and resume behavior.
  • USEQ-5053A39C — Provide accessible keyboard, screen-reader, scaling, contrast, and reduced-motion behavior.
  • USEQ-4C38FC1C — Respect enterprise management and privacy boundaries where supported.
  • USEQ-389EAD2A — Make crash and usage telemetry consented, minimized, redacted, and diagnosable.
  • USEQ-F43D141E — Test clean install, upgrade from supported versions, migration, repair, uninstall, and reinstallation.

Cloud-Native and Managed Platforms

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/16-cloud-native-and-managed-platforms.md; 20 non-duplicative controls.

Category-specific universal rules

  • USEQ-B7FB0BC0 — Document the shared-responsibility boundary for every managed service and control.
  • USEQ-40B56A39 — Separate production, nonproduction, security, logging, and shared-platform accounts or projects according to risk.
  • USEQ-45C59E66 — Use workload and human identities with least privilege and strong authentication.
  • USEQ-0A87718E — Inventory regions, zones, endpoints, public exposure, service policies, keys, and quotas.
  • USEQ-242E52E4 — Encrypt and control data according to sensitivity and residency requirements.
  • USEQ-4842963A — Protect provider control planes, organization roots, billing, DNS, and identity administration.
  • USEQ-542A6C62 — Use policy and automation to prevent prohibited configurations.
  • USEQ-8155C7A6 — Monitor control-plane, quota, billing, identity, network, region, and managed-service failures.
  • USEQ-0DCA89D1 — Design resilience across actual failure domains rather than nominal instance count.
  • USEQ-B68F5F66 — Test provider-service outage, throttling, regional loss, identity failure, and quota exhaustion.
  • USEQ-28D7D9E6 — Maintain backups and recovery that are isolated from ordinary account compromise.
  • USEQ-FE43BE53 — Avoid provider defaults that create public access, weak retention, or broad identity trust.
  • USEQ-7ACBEBF3 — Version infrastructure and detect drift.
  • USEQ-43BE2B24 — Review managed-service upgrade, deprecation, and maintenance behavior.
  • USEQ-A842153A — Model data egress, inter-region transfer, support access, and supplier subprocessor implications.
  • USEQ-C2368A23 — Maintain provider support and escalation appropriate to impact.
  • USEQ-FFE8903C — Forecast cost and prevent runaway resource creation without disabling critical service.
  • USEQ-29CD22E1 — Define exit, export, migration, key, DNS, and continuity plans for critical services.
  • USEQ-A4D95CE3 — Avoid claiming multi-cloud portability that has not been exercised.
  • USEQ-C0562936 — Include provider incidents and control changes in internal risk and postmortem processes.

Containers and Orchestration

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/17-containers-and-orchestration.md; 20 non-duplicative controls.

Category-specific universal rules

  • USEQ-7D4DA192 — Use minimal trusted base images pinned by immutable identity.
  • USEQ-A2E62F38 — Build images from reviewed source with provenance and SBOM.
  • USEQ-726D8BC7 — Scan final images and monitor them after release.
  • USEQ-A3559C64 — Run workloads as non-root and without unnecessary privilege, capabilities, host access, or writable filesystem.
  • USEQ-13CBD6C6 — Define resource requests, limits, priorities, disruption, and eviction behavior.
  • USEQ-B1114E9E — Use workload identities rather than shared node or cluster credentials.
  • USEQ-43AEBF8E — Keep secrets out of images and ordinary environment output.
  • USEQ-84D35810 — Restrict network communication to declared flows.
  • USEQ-071F5865 — Protect admission, policy, registry, control-plane, and cluster administration.
  • USEQ-D72B3DB5 — Verify image signatures or attestations before admission where risk warrants.
  • USEQ-2C2AF8DA — Separate tenants and trust levels across namespaces, nodes, clusters, or accounts according to isolation needs.
  • USEQ-901CB8A9 — Define readiness, liveness, startup, graceful termination, and drain behavior.
  • USEQ-5154706D — Test rescheduling, rolling update, node loss, zone loss, storage failure, and control-plane degradation.
  • USEQ-CD9A34E1 — Protect persistent volumes, snapshots, backups, and restoration.
  • USEQ-7E6911D8 — Keep cluster, node, runtime, image, policy, and add-on versions supported and patched.
  • USEQ-4E9A0CB6 — Prevent untrusted workloads from reaching metadata, host sockets, control APIs, or other tenants.
  • USEQ-41A84AD1 — Audit privileged operations, exec, port-forward, secret access, and policy changes.
  • USEQ-8EAA66DC — Bound autoscaling and prevent scale storms against dependencies.
  • USEQ-884ADA51 — Detect configuration drift and unmanaged workloads.
  • USEQ-472604C8 — Practice cluster rebuild and workload recovery from trusted source.

Serverless and Managed Execution

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/18-serverless-and-managed-execution.md; 20 non-duplicative controls.

Category-specific universal rules

  • USEQ-2BE63A79 — Inventory every function, trigger, event source, destination, identity, secret, region, and failure target.
  • USEQ-1A3AAD5A — Use a separate least-privilege identity per workload or cohesive group.
  • USEQ-7FAE65A8 — Assume event retries and duplicate delivery unless guarantees prove otherwise.
  • USEQ-21DF7AD2 — Make handlers idempotent and safe under concurrent execution.
  • USEQ-AAC6692F — Define timeout, memory, payload, temporary storage, connection, and concurrency limits.
  • USEQ-4919EBF1 — Protect downstream systems from burst scaling and retry amplification.
  • USEQ-2916316A — Configure dead-letter, failure destination, replay, and reconciliation.
  • USEQ-C6F8CEBE — Keep deployment packages minimal, signed or attested, and dependency-scanned.
  • USEQ-28FDB25A — Do not place secrets in code, packages, logs, or event payloads.
  • USEQ-6843A15C — Control public invocation, cross-account triggers, and event source permissions.
  • USEQ-4B7E5463 — Measure cold-start and scale behavior against user objectives.
  • USEQ-B43F9D53 — Reuse connections safely without assuming process lifetime.
  • USEQ-C47082A7 — Handle process reuse so one invocation cannot leak state to another user or tenant.
  • USEQ-AFE31124 — Propagate trace, identity, tenant, deadline, and correlation context.
  • USEQ-A5E51F84 — Monitor throttling, duration, errors, retries, age, concurrency, cost, and downstream saturation.
  • USEQ-C27ADF5F — Test provider outage, delayed events, partial region failure, and control-plane failure.
  • USEQ-E28C525F — Define versioning, aliases, traffic shift, rollback, and event compatibility.
  • USEQ-2BFBFB1A — Avoid unbounded invocation chains and recursive triggers.
  • USEQ-BACD0649 — Forecast cost amplification from abuse, loops, and large events.
  • USEQ-6D182068 — Maintain a migration and continuity plan for critical provider-specific execution.

Healthcare and Regulated Sensitive Systems

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/19-healthcare-and-regulated-sensitive-systems.md; 20 non-duplicative controls.

Category-specific universal rules

  • USEQ-2E4F8C0C — Determine every applicable healthcare, medical-device, research, records, privacy, security, and professional obligation.
  • USEQ-7EEBE134 — Classify clinical, patient, subject, caregiver, provider, identity, insurance, and research data.
  • USEQ-EAE30A78 — Apply minimum-necessary access and purpose-based disclosure.
  • USEQ-CC64FD64 — Verify patient, professional, organization, device, and service identity proportionately.
  • USEQ-5136CD3A — Protect emergency access while logging, limiting, and reviewing its use.
  • USEQ-053C255E — Maintain complete tamper-evident audit of access, correction, disclosure, order, result, and administrative action where required.
  • USEQ-D2E3E2DF — Preserve data provenance, units, reference ranges, time, author, status, correction, and version.
  • USEQ-8A2B11D6 — Prevent stale, incomplete, duplicate, misattributed, or unit-confused information from appearing authoritative.
  • USEQ-5C75B50F — Use controlled vocabularies and interoperability standards where applicable.
  • USEQ-2855968A — Validate clinical rules, calculations, alerts, and decision support with qualified domain experts.
  • USEQ-5F39178C — Prevent alert fatigue and unsafe suppression.
  • USEQ-781C2D61 — Separate advisory output from authoritative diagnosis or order when appropriate.
  • USEQ-7ABEA012 — Provide human review, correction, escalation, and downtime procedures.
  • USEQ-AC848C87 — Test continuity during network, provider, device, identity, and regional failure.
  • USEQ-92E715A2 — Protect research consent, protocol, cohort, deidentification, and data-use restrictions.
  • USEQ-B931B65F — Validate data migration and reconciliation with clinical or regulated invariants.
  • USEQ-5A73044C — Train users for high-impact workflows and assess competence where required.
  • USEQ-A07EC898 — Maintain incident, breach, safety, and regulatory reporting procedures.
  • USEQ-99FF0E3C — Use independent validation and documented change control for high-impact functionality.
  • USEQ-7AFC88F2 — Do not deploy when patient or subject harm cannot be bounded, detected, and mitigated.

Public-Sector and High-Assurance Systems

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/20-public-sector-and-high-assurance-systems.md; 20 non-duplicative controls.

Category-specific universal rules

  • USEQ-0A7E51B2 — Determine applicable public-records, procurement, accessibility, identity, security, privacy, localization, and continuity obligations.
  • USEQ-02E0F51C — Design for equitable access across disability, language, device, bandwidth, literacy, geography, and lack of commercial identity.
  • USEQ-80BCEB64 — Provide non-digital or assisted alternatives where exclusion would deny essential service.
  • USEQ-3358D1EF — Use transparent eligibility, decision, appeal, correction, and complaint processes.
  • USEQ-9D2A742A — Avoid requiring unnecessary private accounts, tracking, or third-party platforms.
  • USEQ-08693ABE — Protect high-value identity, benefit, tax, justice, licensing, voting, or civic records according to impact.
  • USEQ-D39A0138 — Provide complete auditability and records retention without exposing sensitive information.
  • USEQ-E3C13E8C — Use strong supplier transparency, data ownership, exit, and continuity terms.
  • USEQ-0E684597 — Avoid proprietary lock-in that prevents public accountability or service continuity without explicit justification.
  • USEQ-0701D270 — Publish service status, maintenance, accessibility, privacy, security contact, and support information.
  • USEQ-A0B4A6E4 — Test peak civic events, deadlines, emergencies, and coordinated abuse.
  • USEQ-E1AB8D23 — Design for operation during disasters, regional failure, identity outage, and supplier failure.
  • USEQ-39F51DEC — Protect public interfaces against denial, defacement, disinformation, impersonation, and data manipulation.
  • USEQ-24FDB6CD — Use independent assurance for high-impact releases and security claims.
  • USEQ-9806BBFD — Make algorithmic or rules-based decisions explainable and contestable where required.
  • USEQ-59716E09 — Maintain multilingual and accessible notices and forms.
  • USEQ-797FD404 — Preserve evidence for audit, oversight, legal challenge, and historical record.
  • USEQ-7C31FB6D — Separate political or administrative preference from authorized policy and law.
  • USEQ-979BA5B0 — Review disparate impact and barriers to essential access.
  • USEQ-459E7E15 — Do not launch an essential service without demonstrated continuity and support capacity.

Libraries, SDKs, CLIs, and Developer Tools

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/21-libraries-sdks-clis-and-developer-tools.md; 20 non-duplicative controls.

Category-specific universal rules

  • USEQ-5DB27264 — Define supported languages, runtimes, platforms, package managers, shells, architectures, and versions.
  • USEQ-D73379F6 — Use stable idiomatic contracts appropriate to each target ecosystem.
  • USEQ-36FDC9A4 — Keep default behavior safe, predictable, non-destructive, and suitable for automation.
  • USEQ-6F66FA4B — Separate machine-readable output from human-readable diagnostics.
  • USEQ-4C2BBB0D — Use meaningful exit status, structured errors, and actionable messages.
  • USEQ-09D01674 — Support noninteractive, quiet, dry-run, confirmation, timeout, retry, and cancellation behavior as appropriate.
  • USEQ-AAC6303F — Do not expose secrets in command history, process listings, logs, examples, or error output.
  • USEQ-D027BA27 — Validate paths, URLs, configuration, environment, and untrusted project content.
  • USEQ-939DF129 — Avoid executing project or remote code implicitly.
  • USEQ-CC6BECF8 — Protect update, plugin, extension, and package-loading mechanisms.
  • USEQ-BB61ED88 — Version contracts and publish compatibility and deprecation policy.
  • USEQ-F8B8E814 — Provide migration guidance and test against representative downstream consumers.
  • USEQ-C6981D19 — Generate signed or attested packages with provenance, SBOM, and checksums.
  • USEQ-09B1BA8F — Keep examples executable and documentation synchronized.
  • USEQ-D91045B1 — Provide deterministic behavior and output where automation depends on it.
  • USEQ-9AF6A86A — Respect platform conventions without silently changing semantics across platforms.
  • USEQ-D2CD8EC4 — Make telemetry optional, transparent, minimized, and safe.
  • USEQ-933B0296 — Test fresh install, upgrade, downgrade where supported, offline, proxy, permission, and restricted-network behavior.
  • USEQ-AC6AC548 — Provide security reporting and supported-version information.
  • USEQ-65DF370E — Avoid making a convenience tool a hidden production single point of failure.

Games, Immersive, and High-Engagement Products

Consolidated from quality standards/15-conditional-domains/22-games-immersive-and-high-engagement-products.md; 20 non-duplicative controls.

Category-specific universal rules

  • USEQ-77183203 — Define supported devices, controls, displays, performance modes, network conditions, and accessibility options.
  • USEQ-CC1754CB — Maintain fair authoritative state for competitive or economic outcomes.
  • USEQ-4AEFAFB8 — Protect against cheating, automation, item duplication, economy manipulation, and account theft.
  • USEQ-96AE9F3B — Validate matchmaking, ranking, rewards, randomization, and progression for integrity and unintended bias.
  • USEQ-925DD3FB — Disclose probabilities, purchases, recurring costs, virtual currency, expiration, and irreversible choices clearly.
  • USEQ-FFAB4E8F — Protect children and vulnerable users from exploitative monetization and social interaction.
  • USEQ-3DEFD074 — Provide controls for harassment, blocking, reporting, moderation, voice, chat, and user-generated content.
  • USEQ-7473B28D — Provide motion, flashing, color, audio, input, text, difficulty, and cognitive accessibility options.
  • USEQ-F7140184 — Avoid forcing sensory effects or physical movement without alternatives and safety warnings.
  • USEQ-F84463E8 — Preserve progress across crash, disconnect, patch, device change, and account recovery.
  • USEQ-7083EEB1 — Test latency, synchronization, prediction, rollback, reconnect, and regional capacity.
  • USEQ-7A4816F3 — Protect local save, cloud save, downloadable content, mods, and plugins.
  • USEQ-5002400A — Use anti-cheat controls proportionate to privacy, device control, and false-positive harm.
  • USEQ-7FABC8C3 — Provide appeal and recovery for enforcement actions.
  • USEQ-2A00C28A — Monitor toxic behavior, fraud, economy inflation, crash, performance, and player safety.
  • USEQ-C873F83A — Avoid deceptive engagement loops and make time or spending controls available where appropriate.
  • USEQ-C6F35C3F — Respect streaming, recording, spectator, and privacy preferences.
  • USEQ-F2EE2423 — Test long-session heat, battery, memory, network, and motion comfort.
  • USEQ-D2EEA3DA — Plan seasonal content, live operations, event rollback, and end-of-service continuity.
  • USEQ-EA1879A2 — Do not launch high-stakes economies or social features without abuse and support readiness.

Release Control Record

Consolidated from quality standards/16-release-production/02-release-control-record.md; 18 non-duplicative controls.

Release identity

  • USEQ-7EFB51F6 — Record exact source commits and release tags.
  • USEQ-8C855A06 — Record immutable digests for every deployable service, worker, job, frontend bundle, and infrastructure artifact.
  • USEQ-18DBA736 — Record production configuration versions and feature-flag states.
  • USEQ-E03B5E82 — Record target regions, accounts, projects, environments, clusters, and domains.
  • USEQ-EDFA793D — Record the deployment date and change window.
  • USEQ-A68072E7 — Record the previous known-good artifact and configuration.
  • USEQ-B1A0C473 — Record the rollback artifact or tested roll-forward plan.
  • USEQ-D1D57EA1 — Confirm source, artifacts, configuration, migrations, tests, and approvals all refer to the same release.

Scope inventory

  • USEQ-8B5934D8 — List every API, webhook, callback, streaming connection, and machine-to-machine interface.
  • USEQ-7F798459 — List every worker, queue, scheduled task, batch process, administrative tool, and support tool.
  • USEQ-9EE38C0B — List every database, object store, search index, cache, message broker, analytics store, and backup location.
  • USEQ-D8184B36 — List every identity, payment, communications, analytics, advertising, experimentation, support, logging, monitoring, CDN, DNS, hosting, and infrastructure provider.
  • USEQ-305EF1D6 — List all user types, administrative roles, support roles, service accounts, external actors, and partner systems.
  • USEQ-C7F3DF66 — List supported countries, languages, locales, currencies, time zones, browsers, devices, and viewport classes.
  • USEQ-CEECE86D — List accessibility conformance targets.
  • USEQ-D81B1472 — List all data classifications and regulated or contractually restricted data.
  • USEQ-282C5B2F — List excluded components and explain why they are outside the assessment.
  • USEQ-3D969CA9 — Identify shared platforms and dependencies that can affect the application even when another team operates them.

Deployment and Release Engineering

Consolidated from quality standards/16-release-production/03-deployment-and-release-engineering.md; 18 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-8CF2C791 — The deployment plan identifies exact artifacts, target environments, migrations, configuration changes, infrastructure changes, feature flags, and external dependencies.
  • USEQ-34987B94 — The deployer cannot silently substitute an unapproved artifact.
  • USEQ-2222C9D0 — Predeployment checks validate environment health, data state, provider health, quotas, and available capacity.
  • USEQ-CF32EB78 — Migration steps and ordering are explicit.
  • USEQ-EB431FD0 — Application, worker, scheduled-job, event, and schema compatibility is maintained during rollout.
  • USEQ-321B8525 — Progressive, canary, blue-green, cohort, regional, or equivalent controlled rollout is used where risk warrants it.
  • USEQ-DC6E1BDA — Health gates examine user-facing success, latency, errors, saturation, data integrity, security, abuse, and business outcomes.
  • USEQ-58678F75 — Rollout pauses automatically or operationally on predefined signals.
  • USEQ-BBD42F35 — Stop, rollback, roll-forward, and incident-declaration criteria are documented before launch.
  • USEQ-1409AA23 — Rollback can be initiated quickly and has been rehearsed.
  • USEQ-9EEEEBB8 — Rollback is compatible with database, event, cache, and interface changes.
  • USEQ-99B06FF3 — Feature flags or kill switches can independently disable risky behavior where appropriate.
  • USEQ-3E2AD22B — Traffic shifting, load-balancer behavior, cache invalidation, CDN invalidation, DNS changes, and certificate changes are planned and tested.
  • USEQ-96297CBB — Rate limits, quotas, and capacities are adjusted where needed.
  • USEQ-3AC480C5 — No critical step exists only in someone's memory.
  • USEQ-4C6B2EA9 — Manual steps are minimized, scripted where practical, and peer-checked where material.
  • USEQ-7BC2F497 — The full procedure has been rehearsed in a production-like environment.
  • USEQ-161C6591 — Engineering, operations, security, data, support, communications, and provider contacts are available as needed.

Post-Deployment Verification

Consolidated from quality standards/16-release-production/04-post-deployment-verification.md; 14 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-CA947752 — Verify the deployed artifact digest, configuration, feature-flag state, schema version, and migration completion.
  • USEQ-5E936430 — Test login, logout, account recovery, and privileged authentication.
  • USEQ-C2B79849 — Test authorization with multiple roles and tenants where applicable.
  • USEQ-A5477858 — Verify public, authenticated, administrative, API, worker, scheduled-job, and batch paths.
  • USEQ-F30D75DE — Verify payment, webhook, email, SMS, push, identity, storage, search, analytics, and other critical integrations.
  • USEQ-CA491689 — Verify transport security, certificates, redirects, cross-origin behavior, cache controls, and security headers.
  • USEQ-CCE6C371 — Verify CDN and application-cache behavior.
  • USEQ-3904EEC5 — Review errors, latency, traffic, saturation, queues, database health, replication, and dependency metrics.
  • USEQ-2A66A878 — Review logs and traces for unexpected exceptions, data leakage, authorization failures, and abnormal behavior.
  • USEQ-8780BABB — Verify alerts, synthetic monitoring, dashboards, and paging.
  • USEQ-6FAC2881 — Confirm support receives expected telemetry and current documentation.
  • USEQ-6DFB4E7F — Confirm no unexpected increase in abuse, fraud, failed payments, duplicate operations, data-integrity failures, or support volume.
  • USEQ-46A643BE — Roll back, roll forward, or declare an incident rather than rationalizing unexplained anomalies.
  • USEQ-23CEBF4F — Record the final go, hold, rollback, roll-forward, or incident decision.

Required Sign-Offs

Consolidated from quality standards/16-release-production/05-required-signoffs.md; 13 non-duplicative controls.

Universal controls

  • USEQ-603F2296 — Product owner signs off on scope, behavior, acceptance criteria, launch objectives, and customer impact.
  • USEQ-DFE5DFDB — Engineering owner signs off on architecture, implementation, tests, migrations, maintainability, and technical risk.
  • USEQ-9A317D5C — Quality owner signs off on test completeness, evidence, defects, and regression status.
  • USEQ-4A5E2EB1 — Security owner signs off on threat modeling, application-security verification, findings, supply chain, and residual security risk.
  • USEQ-3077E62C — Reliability or operations owner signs off on SLOs, capacity, observability, on-call, rollout, rollback, and recovery.
  • USEQ-F81F6CE4 — Data owner signs off on integrity, migration, retention, reconciliation, and restoration.
  • USEQ-17F410B4 — Privacy owner signs off on data inventory, purpose, rights, notices, transfers, and privacy risk.
  • USEQ-1C6662C7 — Accessibility owner or qualified reviewer signs off on target conformance and unresolved barriers.
  • USEQ-92006B53 — Legal or compliance owner signs off on applicable obligations, terms, contracts, regulatory risk, and required notices.
  • USEQ-615F9CB7 — Support owner signs off on support readiness, escalation, documentation, and customer communications.
  • USEQ-2A0C5DBF — Business risk owner explicitly accepts remaining material risk.
  • USEQ-3437198D — Executive or designated release authority makes the final decision for high-impact launches.
  • USEQ-9A466E24 — No person signs an area for which evidence is absent or for which they are not qualified or authorized.

Go, Conditional-Go, and No-Go Decision Rule

Consolidated from quality standards/16-release-production/06-go-conditional-go-and-no-go.md; 12 non-duplicative controls.

GO

  • USEQ-A4723C18 — Every critical requirement has current evidence tied to the exact production artifact and configuration.
  • USEQ-98349D6B — Critical journeys meet approved correctness, performance, security, privacy, accessibility, and reliability objectives.
  • USEQ-4CECD69F — No known residual risk exceeds the organization's approved risk appetite.
  • USEQ-A8D674CC — Every accepted risk has an accountable owner, compensating control, monitoring, remediation plan, and expiry.
  • USEQ-3FE0D592 — Rollout, rollback or roll-forward, restoration, incident response, and customer communication are demonstrably workable.
  • USEQ-4084EC49 — Required operational, support, security, legal, privacy, and business personnel are ready.

CONDITIONAL GO

  • USEQ-A4B3AB62 — User, security, privacy, integrity, financial, legal, accessibility, reliability, and safety impact is bounded and understood.
  • USEQ-87C1B515 — The affected feature can be disabled, isolated, rolled back, or rolled forward safely.

NO-GO

  • USEQ-88CFEFEC — Evidence is missing, stale, contradictory, or tied to a different artifact.
  • USEQ-F96A1B86 — Rollback, safe roll-forward, restoration, or incident response is unavailable.
  • USEQ-F38CE10F — Required legal, regulatory, contractual, privacy, accessibility, safety, or security approval is absent.
  • USEQ-6E882462 — The team relies on "we will monitor it" without a concrete, tested detection and mitigation path.

Final Gap Closure — Scientific Reproducibility, Digital Credentials, Signatures, and Trust Services

Consolidated from final consolidated corpus/11-conditional-specialized-safety-critical-regulated-domains.md#Final Gap Closure — Scientific Reproducibility, Digital Credentials, Signatures, and Trust Services; 156 non-duplicative controls.

Applicability of this specialized module

  • USEQ-75FBD07C — Apply the scientific and computational reproducibility controls when software creates, transforms, analyzes, simulates, or publishes evidence used for research, engineering, medicine, policy, finance, safety, or other material conclusions.
  • USEQ-E2073ED7 — Apply the digital-credential and trust-service controls when software issues, stores, presents, verifies, signs, seals, timestamps, notarizes, or relies on portable cryptographic claims.
  • USEQ-CC2A5D3C — Document which sections apply, the intended assurance level, legal context, relying parties, and consequences of error.
  • USEQ-6FD0AD80 — Obtain qualified domain, statistical, cryptographic, identity, legal, and accessibility review where the stakes warrant it.

Research and computational governance

  • USEQ-22EC4A27 — Define the research question, hypothesis, intended use, decision context, stakeholders, and prohibited interpretations before analysis.
  • USEQ-03CB3B9C — Distinguish exploratory, confirmatory, operational, and regulatory analysis.
  • USEQ-E60FC501 — Predefine primary outcomes, inclusion criteria, exclusions, transformations, and stopping rules for confirmatory work where appropriate.
  • USEQ-3CEE0B8F — Register or preserve time-stamped analysis plans when undisclosed flexibility could distort conclusions.
  • USEQ-B2EFE726 — Disclose conflicts of interest, sponsorship, incentives, and material prior beliefs.
  • USEQ-F7A3E9DF — Obtain required ethics, privacy, safety, legal, data-access, and participant approvals.
  • USEQ-B67B4198 — Define authorship, contribution, review, data stewardship, and correction responsibilities.
  • USEQ-1E65593D — Protect the ability to report negative, null, inconvenient, or contradictory results.
  • USEQ-6C67A496 — Prohibit fabrication, falsification, selective deletion, deceptive presentation, and undisclosed result manipulation.
  • USEQ-E736C3A5 — Preserve decisions and deviations from the original plan with rationale.
  • USEQ-859AA9C7 — Define correction, retraction, and downstream-notification procedures.

Data provenance and research integrity

  • USEQ-C0B40BD6 — Record the origin, collection method, time, population, sampling, consent, rights, instruments, and custodianship of input data.
  • USEQ-799CC460 — Preserve raw or source data where lawful and necessary for verification.
  • USEQ-3AFF5D69 — Separate source data from cleaned, transformed, imputed, labeled, and derived data.
  • USEQ-1B66E032 — Version data sets and assign immutable identifiers or digests.
  • USEQ-58289267 — Record every material transformation, parameter, rule, exclusion, and manual correction.
  • USEQ-B1A1ADE9 — Preserve metadata needed to interpret units, codes, missingness, uncertainty, calibration, and measurement conditions.
  • USEQ-FD67EB4A — Identify selection, survivorship, measurement, labeling, and missing-data biases.
  • USEQ-8EAB17B5 — Validate data integrity through checksums, constraints, reconciliation, and representative review.
  • USEQ-96CE023A — Protect participant and confidential data while retaining sufficient verification evidence.
  • USEQ-0AEEC3E1 — Record access, export, sharing, retention, legal hold, and deletion decisions.
  • USEQ-12965298 — Ensure synthetic or simulated data is labeled and not confused with observed data.
  • USEQ-ECC129AC — Maintain provenance when data passes through suppliers, instruments, platforms, or collaborators.

Code, model, workflow, and environment reproducibility

  • USEQ-B736D113 — Version all source code, scripts, notebooks, queries, models, prompts, configuration, workflow definitions, and analysis documents.
  • USEQ-99DC8215 — Record exact dependencies, operating environment, hardware-relevant behavior, random seeds, locale, time zone, and numerical settings.
  • USEQ-D619E4EE — Use immutable artifacts and environment descriptions sufficient for reconstruction.
  • USEQ-89F501C0 — Avoid hidden manual steps and undocumented interactive state.
  • USEQ-CD20CF4C — Convert critical notebook or exploratory steps into reviewable, repeatable workflows.
  • USEQ-DF7C3CCE — Record external services, data versions, model endpoints, and provider behavior relied upon.
  • USEQ-EA49C886 — Preserve intermediate outputs needed to diagnose and independently verify results.
  • USEQ-A5E603FC — Make pipelines fail visibly on missing, stale, malformed, or incompatible inputs.
  • USEQ-B8C41BE3 — Use deterministic execution where scientifically appropriate and record unavoidable nondeterminism.
  • USEQ-A4FE6369 — Quantify sensitivity to seeds, ordering, hardware, precision, and implementation differences where relevant.
  • USEQ-8B7B27AC — Preserve build and execution logs with timestamps and artifact identifiers.
  • USEQ-A075D067 — Test reconstruction from a clean environment.
  • USEQ-4F2985C0 — Maintain migration plans for obsolete formats, dependencies, hardware, and services.

Statistical and analytical validity

  • USEQ-73892384 — Use methods appropriate to the design, data, assumptions, sample, and intended inference.
  • USEQ-0288301B — State assumptions and test or justify them.
  • USEQ-937EF1C5 — Distinguish association, prediction, causal effect, and mechanism.
  • USEQ-B973FBCE — Avoid causal language when the design does not support it.
  • USEQ-2152BD91 — Define the population to which results may generalize.
  • USEQ-2BEA31BC — Address sampling bias, confounding, dependence, censoring, clustering, and repeated measurement where relevant.
  • USEQ-7DF3111E — Justify sample size and power or precision for confirmatory work.
  • USEQ-43A3105F — Report effect sizes and uncertainty, not significance labels alone.
  • USEQ-3D01DFEE — Control or disclose multiplicity, repeated testing, subgroup search, and adaptive analysis.
  • USEQ-A8BAA9E5 — Distinguish prespecified from post hoc analyses.
  • USEQ-1C27B4EA — Validate model assumptions, calibration, discrimination, residuals, and stability.
  • USEQ-47485FE7 — Use held-out, external, temporal, or prospective validation appropriate to the claim.
  • USEQ-75EECCDF — Avoid leakage between training, validation, test, and future data.
  • USEQ-BCDA51BA — Assess robustness to reasonable alternative preprocessing, models, exclusions, and parameters.
  • USEQ-27E7E9A7 — Report missing data, exclusions, failures, and sensitivity analyses.
  • USEQ-C5DE8CA3 — Avoid misleading axes, aggregation, smoothing, scales, truncation, or visual emphasis.
  • USEQ-B8334A46 — Make tables and figures accessible and interpretable without color alone.
  • USEQ-2A24761B — Have material calculations independently reviewed or reproduced.

Replication, artifacts, and publication

  • USEQ-D22F346B — Define the materials needed for an independent party to reproduce or replicate the result.
  • USEQ-0B22A42C — Provide data, code, environment, parameters, documentation, and expected outputs unless restricted for a documented reason.
  • USEQ-3D4A2C29 — Use durable repositories, persistent identifiers, licenses, and citation information.
  • USEQ-2473255B — State access restrictions and provide a lawful controlled-access process where possible.
  • USEQ-FF062A21 — Validate shared artifacts from a clean environment before publication.
  • USEQ-A9A1F3FE — Include machine-readable metadata and provenance.
  • USEQ-974F199E — Preserve original and corrected versions with clear status.
  • USEQ-21A6AB1A — Record known limitations, unsupported uses, uncertainty, and negative findings.
  • USEQ-ED92B2E3 — Link publications and decisions to exact artifact and data versions.
  • USEQ-D88815E2 — Monitor material downstream use and issue corrections when a defect changes conclusions.
  • USEQ-386A9BCD — Avoid claiming reproducibility merely because files were uploaded.
  • USEQ-D66C65D4 — Use independent artifact review or replication for high-impact conclusions where feasible.

Digital credential ecosystem governance

  • USEQ-01B4FBC4 — Define issuers, holders, subjects, verifiers, relying parties, registries, wallets, trust frameworks, and governance authorities.
  • USEQ-6FF86021 — Define the legal and semantic meaning of each credential type and each claim.
  • USEQ-BC76C6E3 — Specify who is authorized to issue, suspend, revoke, renew, update, and verify credentials.
  • USEQ-146AF17B — Define assurance requirements for identity proofing, source evidence, authentication, authorization, and issuance.
  • USEQ-F3A59165 — Prevent a technically valid credential from implying a broader claim than the issuer established.
  • USEQ-698D6079 — Establish governance for schemas, namespaces, identifiers, trust lists, status methods, and dispute resolution.
  • USEQ-61D8F4B6 — Define liability, support, incident, correction, and termination responsibilities among ecosystem participants.
  • USEQ-FAC43689 — Avoid one proprietary wallet, ledger, registry, or verifier becoming an unexamined universal trust anchor.
  • USEQ-E4E575DA — Provide interoperability and exit paths proportionate to the credential’s expected lifetime.
  • USEQ-FFB35851 — Document jurisdictional, accessibility, privacy, records, and consumer-protection obligations.

Credential issuance and lifecycle

  • USEQ-7F2CC1B2 — Verify source evidence and issuer authority before issuance.
  • USEQ-0D3FDB91 — Bind the credential to the correct subject or holder using an assurance process appropriate to harm.
  • USEQ-D893965C — Collect and disclose only claims necessary for the credential purpose.
  • USEQ-3911661A — Use stable, governed schemas and unambiguous semantics.
  • USEQ-92C1B996 — Include issuer, validity, status, version, and intended-use information.
  • USEQ-2DA81E4D — Protect issuer signing keys using controls proportionate to credential impact and volume.
  • USEQ-BB83CC0C — Separate test and production issuers, keys, identifiers, and trust lists.
  • USEQ-C228C307 — Prevent duplicate, conflicting, backdated, or unauthorized issuance.
  • USEQ-FA251CC8 — Record issuance evidence and audit events without storing unnecessary subject data.
  • USEQ-829899FE — Provide secure correction, renewal, suspension, and revocation.
  • USEQ-0F08A687 — Define behavior after issuer merger, compromise, insolvency, renaming, or retirement.
  • USEQ-75AC7967 — Ensure credentials remain verifiable for their required lifetime or clearly state limits.
  • USEQ-5FC720EB — Notify affected parties when a credential type, issuer key, or trust framework is compromised.

Wallets, holders, and credential storage

  • USEQ-EDD63A64 — Protect holder keys and credentials against theft, malware, backup leakage, coercion, and unauthorized synchronization.
  • USEQ-382CDFE5 — Use strong, accessible holder authentication appropriate to risk.
  • USEQ-C381ED25 — Provide secure recovery without enabling account takeover or issuer surveillance.
  • USEQ-AD6C7346 — Explain which claims will be presented, to whom, for what purpose, and with what linkability.
  • USEQ-9A840858 — Obtain meaningful holder authorization before presentation except where lawfully designed otherwise.
  • USEQ-607BBB3A — Support selective disclosure or data minimization where the ecosystem and threat model permit it.
  • USEQ-A61D2298 — Avoid presenting stable identifiers unnecessarily across unrelated verifiers.
  • USEQ-27926632 — Prevent one verifier from silently requesting broader claims than the holder expects.
  • USEQ-08205AC1 — Make credential status, expiry, issuer, and trust level understandable.
  • USEQ-7088AFC1 — Provide accessible rendering, alternative modalities, and support for assistive technology.
  • USEQ-2F8BCF2A — Protect credentials during device migration, backup, restoration, loss, and replacement.
  • USEQ-5B79CEF1 — Provide a safe way to remove credentials and revoke wallet access.
  • USEQ-83FE6385 — Distinguish locally stored, cloud-synchronized, custodial, and noncustodial key arrangements.
  • USEQ-25EBD53E — Disclose material provider access and retention.

Presentation, verification, and relying-party decisions

  • USEQ-A27982C6 — Authenticate the verifier or presentation destination when misdirection would create harm.
  • USEQ-AB8D7525 — Bind presentations to the intended verifier, session, challenge, purpose, and time where replay is a risk.
  • USEQ-11A087E3 — Validate credential structure, issuer, proof, algorithm, key, status, validity, audience, schema, and required claims.
  • USEQ-D9F22BC7 — Reject unsupported algorithms, ambiguous encodings, malformed proofs, and invalid status information.
  • USEQ-676F80FE — Resolve issuer and status data through authenticated, available, privacy-preserving mechanisms.
  • USEQ-C2412308 — Prevent presentation replay and cross-context reuse.
  • USEQ-BBE4D4DE — Verify the holder binding when the credential requires proof of possession or subject control.
  • USEQ-95D3A5B4 — Distinguish cryptographic validity from truth, current eligibility, legal effect, and business authorization.
  • USEQ-EB08BD56 — Apply independent authorization and business rules after credential verification.
  • USEQ-F96152CF — Minimize storage of presented credentials and derived identity data.
  • USEQ-4639163D — Avoid unnecessary verifier–issuer correlation and tracking.
  • USEQ-BF72D1D6 — Provide understandable reasons and appeal or correction paths for rejected credentials.
  • USEQ-845CAC28 — Log material verification decisions without recording secrets or excessive personal data.
  • USEQ-930768B8 — Test expired, revoked, suspended, unknown, conflicting, offline, and compromised-issuer scenarios.

Electronic signatures, seals, timestamps, and trust services

  • USEQ-CE0AAADE — Define the intended legal, evidentiary, and business effect of each signature, seal, or timestamp.
  • USEQ-DC979C4C — Select identity, key, consent, and ceremony controls proportionate to that effect.
  • USEQ-F3521B8A — Present the exact document, transaction, scope, and consequences before signature.
  • USEQ-D2D9767A — Prevent substitution of content between review and signing.
  • USEQ-3F86DFBF — Bind the signature to the complete intended content and relevant context.
  • USEQ-B994594D — Preserve signer intent, authentication evidence, time, certificate status, and validation material.
  • USEQ-3EB6D593 — Distinguish human signatures from organizational seals and automated service signatures.
  • USEQ-C6BF8280 — Protect signing keys against unauthorized use and provide rapid revocation.
  • USEQ-6E1D8851 — Use trusted time sources and preserve timestamp-chain validation where long-term proof matters.
  • USEQ-E31E1530 — Support long-term validation through archival evidence, algorithm migration, and preserved status information.
  • USEQ-0A67A96B — Make the signing process accessible and provide equivalent review of all content.
  • USEQ-FC05CB3D — Avoid forcing consent to unrelated terms as part of a required signature ceremony.
  • USEQ-4CD7BD25 — Define procedures for disputed signatures, compromised keys, corrected documents, and superseded agreements.
  • USEQ-E8034D11 — Verify exported or printed representations do not misstate signature validity.

Privacy, unlinkability, accessibility, and inclusion

  • USEQ-E071C3CF — Perform privacy and human-rights assessment for credential ecosystems that can enable tracking, exclusion, or surveillance.
  • USEQ-79ED6733 — Avoid central logs of every credential presentation unless strictly necessary and authorized.
  • USEQ-4D4D7C2A — Limit verifier requests to claims necessary for a declared purpose.
  • USEQ-B8DDA406 — Prevent status checks from revealing holder activity unnecessarily.
  • USEQ-BCE7A5A9 — Provide alternatives for people without compatible devices, stable connectivity, official documents, biometrics, or particular abilities.
  • USEQ-9CEB51E5 — Ensure loss of a device or credential does not permanently exclude a legitimate person.
  • USEQ-F3DD21EB — Provide accessible enrollment, presentation, recovery, support, and dispute processes.
  • USEQ-C016832D — Test names, scripts, addresses, family structures, and identity situations across intended populations.
  • USEQ-271DE6C6 — Prevent automated decisions from treating inability to present one credential format as evidence of ineligibility when alternatives are required.
  • USEQ-DA631250 — Publish understandable information about data flows, retention, trust, status, and remedies.

Cryptographic agility, continuity, and assurance

  • USEQ-A48D2BAD — Inventory algorithms, keys, certificates, identifiers, proofs, status mechanisms, registries, and trust anchors used by the ecosystem.
  • USEQ-FD3F890D — Define migration before an algorithm, format, provider, registry, or issuer becomes obsolete.
  • USEQ-FB095D6A — Support key rotation without invalidating legitimate credentials unnecessarily.
  • USEQ-5E18FC51 — Test compromise, revocation, offline verification, registry outage, wallet loss, and issuer retirement.
  • USEQ-BEB1A131 — Preserve evidence needed to validate long-lived credentials and signatures after ordinary services change.
  • USEQ-942AB317 — Prevent downgrade to weaker proof or status behavior.
  • USEQ-1B9B5CDF — Verify independent implementations interoperate against the declared profile.
  • USEQ-137674FC — Perform security, privacy, accessibility, usability, conformance, and abuse testing.
  • USEQ-48D94432 — Monitor issuance anomalies, verification failures, replay, fraud, mass correlation, and support burden.
  • USEQ-07A28D8C — Maintain incident coordination among issuers, wallets, verifiers, trust services, and governance authorities.
  • USEQ-87B20C17 — Treat ambiguous semantics, unverifiable status, inaccessible presentation, compromised issuer keys, or missing recovery as no-go conditions when material.

Standards and source references

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