Security Requirements Document: sample

A security requirements document is the register of verifiable security statements a system must satisfy: the authentication method and the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) level targeted, encryption at rest and in transit, input validation, session management, cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) and content security policy (CSP) rules, secrets handling, defence-in-depth layers and an incident response playbook. It lets a team decide which controls are mandatory for this release and prove each one was verified before shipping.

Hand-written security requirements arrive as slogans. "The system shall be secure" has no driver, no test and no owner, so it survives every review untouched and gets rediscovered as an incident. Even careful teams restate the threat landscape in prose, then lose the link between a control and the threat it answers when either document changes.

What sections does a security requirements document contain?

Specira's governed default template produces nine sections, from the authentication method through the security architecture diagram to the incident response playbook, each with its required decisions and evidence.

Section	Depth	How it is produced
Authentication Method	core	Prose synthesized from discovery
Data Encryption Basics	core	Prose synthesized from discovery
Input Validation Strategy	standard	Prose synthesized from discovery
Session Management	standard	Prose synthesized from discovery
CORS & CSP Policy	standard	Prose synthesized from discovery
Secrets Management	standard	Prose synthesized from discovery
Security Architecture Diagram	full	Generated diagram
Defense-in-Depth Layers	full	Prose synthesized from discovery
Incident Response Playbook	full	Prose synthesized from discovery

How does Specira build the security requirements document?

The Security Analyst owns this artefact and reads the regulatory obligations, security constraints and governance policies in your knowledge base before it asks anything. In the sample, section 1 (Scope, Drivers and Assurance Tier) records which triggers were true (personal data, enterprise contracts, AI features) and which were false (payments, health data), so the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) family is omitted with the reason written down rather than silently skipped. Section 2 (Security Requirements Register) is the core: one stable identifier, one testable "shall" statement, the driver cited as a threat identifier, regulation or contract clause, a verification method from a closed list, an owner role and a status. Section 3 (Data Protection and Classification) maps each data class to the rows that protect it, including retention and residency.

Every row's driver must resolve, and the template's validators reject subjective wording, so the Red Team Critic's inline notes about an evidence gap or a compliance exposure land before export. A category with no decided rows renders as a named gap, or as not applicable with a written rationale; the sample does exactly that for output encoding. Provenance sits on every row: who agreed, when, on what evidence, with the knowledge base citation and its confidence score. The export gate counts resolved decisions, ships deferred ones in a gap report, and delivers DOCX, Markdown, JSON or a push to Jira, Confluence, GitHub or Linear.

First page of the sample: Security Requirements Document

Rendered sample

Rendered from the Specira governed default template on a fictional company, watermarked, with its diagrams. Read it in the browser or take the PDF.

PDF View online

How do teams use the security requirements document?

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Scope the assurance tierTrigger values decide which requirement families engage, so a team scaling down records why instead of hoping nobody asks.
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Trace controls to threatsEach row cites the threat model entry, the clause or the baseline that demanded it, so a changed threat finds its control.
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Plan verification earlyThe verification method is chosen per row (configuration, code review, dynamic test), which feeds the security test plan directly.
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Walk into the audit readyOwners, statuses and drivers on one register answer most compliance questions without a slide deck.

What does the register look like inside Specira?

These screens follow a requirement row from the Security Analyst's question through the typed decision to the compiled register and its export.

Specira requirement detail for REQ-012 with acceptance criteria, evidence rail, review checklist and external sync — **Requirement detail with provenance**REQ-012, WCAG 2.1 AA compliance: three promised outcomes, five supporting sources, a three-step review checklist and an evidence rail that separates user-generated from AI-generated items, with the freshness and author of each.

Specira Knowledge Base: 68 entries, 90% health, 61 active signals, aging entries flagged — **Knowledge base with health signals**68 entries at 90% average health, 61 active signals, five drafts awaiting review. Aging entries are flagged before an agent relies on them.

Specira audit trail table with timestamp, actor, action, entity and details for each event — **Audit trail**Every action logged with who, what and which entity: requirement transitions, knowledge base updates, logins, integration connections and exports, filterable by date and user, exportable as CSV.

Specira export package listing 28 deliverables grouped by Business Analyst, UX Researcher, Solutions Architect and Security Analyst — **Export package: 28 deliverables**The bundle grouped by owning agent: 8 of 8 business analysis, 4 of 4 experience, 9 of 9 architecture, then security and compliance, each deliverable with its page estimate.

Screens are from a seeded Specira demo workspace; counts and scores are sample data.

Book a demo and see the Security Analyst derive your first security requirements register from the obligations already in your knowledge base.

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What do teams ask about this artefact?

The threat model analyzes what could go wrong and rates it; the security requirements document states the controls that must exist and how each is verified. Specira keeps them separate on purpose: the threat model points at a requirement row for every mitigation, and the register cites the threat as its driver, so neither document restates the other.

The template asks the Security Analyst to declare the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) level together with the trigger values that selected it. Personal data or enterprise contracts typically pull the tier up; the decision, its approver and its date are recorded in the scope section rather than assumed.

The template treats them as conditional families. When a trigger such as payments or European personal data is true, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rows engage and cite the clause; when it is false, the omission is written down with the trigger value. The Security Analyst reads the obligations you loaded into the knowledge base first.

Yes, with a rationale. Every engaged category must be represented by rows or explicitly declared not applicable with the reason, and the validators refuse silent categories. In the sample, output encoding is marked not applicable because the dispatch board renders no untrusted markup, and that sentence is part of the evidence.

They ship as named gaps. The export gate measures decisions resolved rather than pages written, so an undecided encryption row appears in the gap report with its open question and its owner, never as invented text. The document stays honest, and the next discovery session picks up exactly where the gap starts.