Security & compliance

Vulnerability Disclosure Policy

1. Purpose

We want security researchers to have a clear, published route to tell us about a vulnerability in our products and services. This document is that route. It tells you what we want you to test, how to report what you find, what we will do in response, and what protection you have when you follow it.

If you are reading this because you have already found something: go to section 4, How to report. You do not need to read the rest first.

2. In scope

If you are unsure whether a target belongs to us, ask before you test. Send the question to the contact in section 4. A target that merely mentions our name is not necessarily ours.

3. Out of scope

Do not test, and we will not accept reports about, the following.

Systems that are not ours

Activity we will never authorise

Report classes we routinely close as informational

4. How to report

Send your report by email to:

support@theclinician.com

Please include, as far as you can:

  1. The affected product, hostname, or endpoint.
  2. What kind of issue it is, and what an attacker gets from it.
  3. Reproduction steps precise enough for us to see it ourselves.
  4. Any proof-of-concept code, request/response captures, or screenshots.
  5. Whether, to your knowledge, anyone else already knows about this.

Two requests about the contents of your report:

If you believe the issue is being actively exploited, put ACTIVE EXPLOITATION in the subject line.

5. What you can expect from us

StageWhat happensTarget
AcknowledgementA human confirms we have your report30 minutes
TriageWe reproduce it and assign a severity1 hour
Status updatesWe tell you where the fix has got toevery 30 minutes
Fix — CriticalRemediated or mitigated in production2 days
Fix — HighRemediated or mitigated in production5 days
Fix — MediumRemediated or scheduled with a date7 days
Fix — LowScheduled into normal maintenance10 days

The four fix targets are the strictest tier of our internal remediation matrix, in which remediation time is a function of business impact and severity and the clock starts at discovery. Publishing that tier alone holds us to a shorter target than the matrix requires.

Reports arrive at our general support address, so the 30-minute acknowledgement clock starts when your message lands in that queue, at any hour. The 30-minute update cadence runs for the life of a report, not just its first day.

We will also:

We do not currently operate a paid bug bounty. We will not offer a reward and then dispute it afterwards; if that changes, this section changes with it.

6. Coordinated disclosure

We ask that you give us 30 days from your first report before you publish, so a fix can reach the people running our software.

We will not use that period to stall. If we need longer — a fix that requires a coordinated customer upgrade, for example — we will ask you, explain why, and propose a date. If we go quiet on you, or we dispute that a demonstrated issue is real, you are not obliged to keep waiting.

Because some of our customers operate their own deployments, a fix on our side is not the same as a fix everywhere. We may ask for extra time so those operators can upgrade. We will tell you if that is what we are asking for, and we will not present it as an indefinite embargo.

7. Safe harbour

If you make a good-faith effort to follow this policy, then in respect of your security research on our in-scope systems:

We consider you to be acting in good faith when you:

Limits, stated honestly. This safe harbour is what we undertake. We cannot waive the rights of third parties, and we cannot bind a prosecutor or a regulator in any jurisdiction. If your research would reach a third party's system or data, get their authorisation too. If in doubt about whether an action is covered, ask us first — we would much rather answer the question than argue about it afterwards.

Nothing in this section authorises access to patient health information. There is no good-faith route to that, and we will not indemnify it.

8. This document

We will review this policy at least annually, and whenever the accompanying security.txt approaches its Expires date.