Security is stronger when you can prove it.
Organisations that genuinely invest in security still struggle to demonstrate it, so buyers fall back on questionnaires that measure paperwork instead of practice. Astra is being built to assess the evidence.
Astra is Shadow Security's cybersecurity certification programme for organisations.
Assertion is currently the only option.
A buyer wants to know whether a vendor is safe to integrate with. What they get is a spreadsheet of yes/no questions, answered by the vendor, about controls nobody verifies. Everyone knows the exercise is weak, and everyone keeps doing it because there is no better option available at that price point.
The result punishes exactly the wrong organisations. A company with genuine security practice looks identical on paper to one that simply answered the questions well.
What is missing is an assessment that looks at evidence and produces something a third party can reasonably rely on.
The intended shape.
Four stages. We are publishing the shape now and the methodology when it is settled, rather than inventing detail to fill a page.
Sequence: Assess, then Improve, then Verify, then Certify.
What Astra does not claim.
No accreditation claim
Astra is not accredited by any government or international standards body.
No equivalence claim
Astra is not equivalent to ISO 27001, SOC 2, or any statutory certification.
No regulatory recognition
Holding Astra certification does not satisfy any regulatory obligation.
No published methodology yet
The assessment methodology is in development and has not been released.
Tell us what you need to prove.
Astra is early. If you are being asked to demonstrate security maturity today, the specifics of what you're asked for would genuinely shape how we build this.