Do you need a simple way to assess the security of your product or a third party? The Minimum Viable Secure Product (MVSP) checklist is a great place to start. It provides a clear, actionable framework to ensure essential security controls are in place, helping you identify gaps and strengthen your security posture. Whether you’re performing a self-assessment or vetting a vendor, the MVSP offers a streamlined approach without the complexity of traditional security questionnaires. Backed by industry leaders like Google and CISA, it sets a modern, practical security baseline for enterprise-ready products and services.
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Starting or improving your security journey with the MVSP
At Assumed, we believe that “security” isn’t simple, but it should be! When we first began our mission at Assumed, we set out to find an easy way to guide companies of all shapes and sizes on their information security journey. A framework or guidelines were an obvious solution. However, frameworks like SOC2, ISO27001, and even NIST were too big and too complex to be a starting point for most organizations. So we decided to create our own. Before we got very far, I discovered the Minimum Viable Secure Product or MVSP checklist. The timing was perfect.
What is the Minimum Viable Secure Product?
The MVSP is a checklist of requirements to assess a product’s or application’s security. You can use it as a self-assessment tool or a third-party vetting questionnaire to evaluate your partners. It helps establish a minimum security baseline for enterprise-ready products and services. It intends to be minimal, practical, and modern, unlike most other security frameworks and questionnaires you might be used to. We were so delighted about this discovery that we joined the MVSP Working Group to contribute to furthering the idea. The MVSP is backed by some of the best security-minded companies, including Google, CISA, Salesforce, and Okta. We are in good company.
The MVSP was created to address the growing need for a simple yet effective security standard that organizations could use to evaluate vendors and partners. It emerged as a collaborative effort between major tech and security-focused companies looking to streamline the security vetting process without the complexity of traditional frameworks.
Initially launched as an open-source initiative, the MVSP aimed to cut through the bureaucracy of extensive security questionnaires by providing a straightforward, actionable checklist. Over time, it has gained traction among enterprises and security professionals who recognize the value of a clear, minimal, and universally applicable security baseline. Today, the MVSP continues to evolve, with contributions from industry leaders and security practitioners committed to making security requirements more accessible and enforceable across the ecosystem.
The MVSP will guide you in answering essential questions about the security posture of your product or service, such as:
- Do you provide your employees with security training relevant to their role in your organization?
- Does your product use secure password authentication mechanisms?
- Do you log user activity?
- Is application data encrypted in transit and at rest?
- Does your application have backup and disaster recovery procedures in place?
If you would like to go through the MVSP checklist yourself, check out our spreadsheet. It is an easy way to go through and check everything off for yourself, ensuring your product or service meets the minimum security standards. Whether you’re conducting a self-assessment or evaluating a third party, this checklist simplifies the process and helps identify potential gaps in security controls. Additionally, Assumed Seeds are a fantastic way of checking the data seeding or data leak monitoring sections! By planting Assumed Seeds in your systems, you can detect unauthorized access, monitor for breaches, and verify that your partners are handling data securely.
