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CybersecurityHQ exists to issue and preserve dated, bounded external cyber judgment. Not news reaction, advisory opinion, or consensus analysis.
CHQ-P-2025-12 v1.0
Position Type: Structural Governance Condition
Position Effective: December 2025
A standing governance position
This document records a binding judgment regarding breach disclosure authority under contemporary regulatory conditions.
It is written to preserve judgment continuity across board review, audit scrutiny, and regulatory dialogue.
This Position remains in effect until superseded by a future CHQ Position.
Position Statement
CybersecurityHQ adopts the position that breach disclosure obligations increasingly apply to organizations that do not possess forensic custody of incident evidence.
This condition produces a persistent separation between regulatory accountability and evidentiary authority. It exists independently of control maturity, vendor selection, contractual assurances, or security program sophistication. Disclosure judgment is therefore constrained regardless of technical posture.
This Position asserts that accountability for disclosure is now exercised under conditions where regulatory obligation precedes evidentiary control, and that this misalignment is not correctable within the disclosure window itself.
Scope of Validity
This Position applies to:
Organizations subject to breach notification or materiality disclosure obligations
Enterprises operating with material third-party service dependencies
Environments where incident evidence is initially held by upstream vendors or service providers
Disclosure regimes requiring judgment prior to full forensic stabilization
This Position does not apply to:
Incidents where the organization retains direct forensic custody of all relevant artifacts
Environments operating exclusively on first-party infrastructure without upstream evidence dependency
Situations where disclosure authority and evidentiary control reside within the same organizational boundary
Assumptions Retired
The following assumptions are no longer defensible under this Position:
Breach notification timing can be controlled through contractual provisions with upstream vendors
Forensic evidence flows downstream at the speed of disclosure obligation
Materiality determinations can be made with full evidentiary access at time of disclosure
Legal counsel can reliably advise on disclosure posture using secondhand forensic summaries
Third-party risk programs produce evidentiary access rather than control attestations
Insurance and financial sector breach propagation follows predictable notification chains
Replacement Frame Installed
Under this Position, the following conditions are now treated as structural:
Disclosure authority and evidentiary custody are decoupled
Notification obligations activate before forensic chains stabilize
Materiality determinations occur under conditions of incomplete evidence possession
Third-party risk programs produce contractual coverage, not operational visibility
The party accountable to regulators is frequently not the party holding incident artifacts
Breach timelines are inherited, not controlled
Decisions Now Exposed
Under this Position, the defensibility of the following decisions is exposed:
Existing vendor contracts may not specify evidentiary access timing during active incidents
Materiality determinations may be required absent direct forensic authority
Disclosure obligations may activate before upstream evidence possession is established
Legal and security functions may not share a common evidentiary provenance model
Board-level reporting may conflate control coverage with evidentiary access
Decisions Deferred
The following decisions remain explicitly deferred under this Position:
Thresholds for renegotiating third-party contracts around forensic access provisions
Allocation of disclosure preparation responsibility across security, legal, and procurement
Conditions under which inherited breach timelines become externally indefensible
Board tolerance for disclosure posture built on secondhand forensic artifacts
Timing of formal review of evidence custody across critical vendor relationships
Deferral reflects structural sequencing constraints, not avoidance.
Reference-Ready Language
“We are accountable for disclosure on timelines we do not control.”
“Our forensic authority does not match our regulatory exposure.”
“Materiality is being determined without direct evidence custody.”
“Third-party contracts specify controls, not evidence access.”
“The notification obligation arrived before the forensic chain stabilized.”
“We inherited the breach timeline. We did not set it.”
“Disclosure posture is currently built on secondhand artifacts.”
Continuity Note
This Position remains valid until superseded by a future CHQ Position.
Subsequent Weekly Briefs may introduce additional pressure without altering this stance.
Board-level rehearsal validating this Position under audit and disclosure scrutiny. Available to Decision Continuity Access members.