Legal

Disclaimer

Last updated: October 14, 2026

Effective date: October 14, 2026

Last updated: October 14, 2026

SecuritySage may update this Disclaimer from time to time. The version posted on this page, with the “Last updated” date shown above, is the version that applies.

Key takeaways

  • Our website content is general information to help small businesses understand cybersecurity. It is not tailored advice for your organization.
  • Nothing on this site is legal, regulatory or compliance advice.
  • No one can guarantee that a business will never be breached, and we do not make that promise.
  • Content about how attacks work is published to help you defend your own systems, never to attack anyone else’s.

1. General information only

The information published on https://www.securitysage.org (the “Site”) by SecuritySage (“SecuritySage,” “we,” “us” or “our”), including blog articles, the cybersecurity glossary, checklists, guides, the free security self-assessment, newsletters and other free resources, is provided for general informational and educational purposes only.

We work hard to keep our content practical, accurate and up to date. However, every organization’s systems, risks, budget, industry and legal obligations are different. General content cannot take your specific circumstances into account, so it should not be treated as a substitute for advice from a qualified professional who understands your situation.

Your use of the Site and reliance on any information on it is at your own risk. This Disclaimer should be read together with our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

We regularly write about laws, regulations and industry standards that affect small businesses, such as the GDPR, HIPAA and PCI DSS, as well as state data breach notification laws and frameworks published by organizations such as NIST and CISA. These discussions are intended to help you understand the general landscape and ask better questions.

SecuritySage is a cybersecurity consultancy, not a law firm, and does not provide legal advice. Nothing on the Site, in our newsletters or in our self-paced programs:

  • constitutes legal, regulatory, accounting, tax, insurance or financial advice;
  • creates an attorney-client relationship;
  • confirms, certifies or guarantees that your organization complies with any law, regulation, contract or standard; or
  • replaces the formal assessments required by certain standards, such as those carried out by a PCI Qualified Security Assessor.

Laws and standards change, and their application depends heavily on the facts. Questions about your legal obligations should be directed to a qualified attorney licensed in the relevant jurisdiction. Policy templates and toolkits we provide are starting points that should be reviewed and adapted for your organization.

3. No guarantee of results or security

Cybersecurity is about reducing risk to a level your business can accept. It is not possible to eliminate risk entirely. Attackers continually develop new techniques, software vulnerabilities are discovered every day, and human error can never be ruled out completely.

Accordingly, we make no representation or guarantee that following our content, completing our programs, using our self-assessment, or engaging our services will prevent a data breach, ransomware infection, business email compromise, fraud, data loss, downtime, regulatory penalty or any other incident or loss. Any statement about the benefits of a security measure describes its general purpose, not a guaranteed outcome.

The free security self-assessment produces an automated, simplified score based only on your answers. It is meant to start a conversation, not to provide a definitive evaluation of your security posture. A low-risk result does not mean your organization is secure, and a high-risk result does not mean you have been or will be compromised.

4. Professional engagement required for tailored advice

Advice tailored to your organization is only provided through a formal engagement. Reading our content, completing a quiz, submitting a contact form, exchanging emails, attending a free introductory call or receiving a proposal does not create a consulting relationship or any duty of care toward you.

A client relationship begins only when you and SecuritySage sign a written engagement agreement or statement of work describing the scope, deliverables and terms of the work. If you would like advice specific to your business, please get in touch and we will be glad to discuss how we can help, for example through an IT security audit or vCISO advisory.

If you believe you are experiencing an active security incident, act quickly: disconnect affected devices from the network if it is safe to do so, contact your IT provider, and consider reporting to law enforcement, for example through the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) or CISA. General website content is not a substitute for incident response support.

The Site contains links to external websites, such as government agencies, standards bodies and other authoritative sources, to help you learn more. We link to these resources because we believe they are useful, but we do not control them. We are not responsible for the accuracy, availability, security, privacy practices or content of any external site, and a link does not mean we endorse the organization, its products or its views.

External sites may change or move their content after we link to it. If you find a broken or questionable link on our Site, please let us know at [email protected].

6. Educational content about attacks is for defense only

To defend against threats, it helps to understand how they work. Some of our content therefore explains attack techniques, such as how phishing emails are constructed, how ransomware spreads, how business email compromise schemes unfold, or how weak Wi-Fi configurations can be exploited.

This content is published solely for defensive and educational purposes: to help business owners, employees and IT staff recognize, prevent, detect and respond to threats against systems they own or are responsible for. It is deliberately written at a level that supports defense rather than providing step-by-step instructions for attacks.

You must not use any information from the Site, our programs or our services to access, test, scan, disrupt or attack any system, network, account or person without explicit written authorization from the owner. Unauthorized access to computer systems is illegal in the United States and most other countries. SecuritySage accepts no responsibility for any misuse of our educational content, and we ourselves never carry out security testing without written authorization.

7. Testimonials and results

SecuritySage does not publish any guaranteed results. Any examples, scenarios or illustrations on the Site describe typical situations to explain a concept. They are not descriptions of specific client outcomes, and they are not a promise of what you will achieve.

If we publish client testimonials or reviews in the future, they will reflect the genuine, individual experience of the person giving them, and we will disclose any material connection between that person and SecuritySage in line with the Federal Trade Commission’s guidance on endorsements. Individual experiences vary, and results depend on many factors, including your existing environment, the measures you implement and how consistently you maintain them.

Where we refer to industry statistics, we try to name the source, such as the FBI’s IC3 annual report. Those figures belong to the original publisher, describe broad trends, and may not reflect your organization’s risk.

8. Errors and omissions

While we take care to make sure our content is accurate when published, cybersecurity changes quickly. Products update their settings and menus, vendors change their features, regulators issue new guidance and new threats appear. As a result, some information on the Site may become outdated, incomplete or inaccurate over time, and it may contain typographical or technical errors.

We provide the Site and its content “as is,” without any warranty of accuracy, completeness, timeliness or fitness for a particular purpose. We may update, correct or remove content at any time without notice, but we are under no obligation to do so. Before making changes to production systems based on any guide, check the current vendor documentation and make sure you have a tested backup.

If you spot an error, we would genuinely appreciate hearing about it at [email protected].

9. Affiliate disclosure

SecuritySage does not currently participate in any affiliate programs, and we do not receive commissions or payments for recommending any product or service mentioned on the Site. When we mention a product, tool or vendor, it is because we believe it is relevant and useful to our readers.

If this changes in the future, we will update this Disclaimer and clearly disclose affiliate relationships on the relevant pages, in line with the Federal Trade Commission’s endorsement guidance. Product and company names mentioned on the Site are trademarks of their respective owners, and their mention does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by those owners.

10. Fair use and third-party materials

From time to time, the Site may refer to, quote or reproduce small portions of third-party materials, such as short excerpts from government publications, standards or news reports, or screenshots of software interfaces, for purposes of commentary, criticism, teaching, research and education. We believe this constitutes fair use of such material under Section 107 of the US Copyright Act, and we credit sources wherever practical.

Images on the Site are sourced from Wikimedia Commons under open licenses and are credited on our image credits page. If you are the owner of any material on the Site and believe it is being used in a way that goes beyond fair use or its license, please contact us or follow the process described in our DMCA Policy, and we will review the matter promptly.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, SecuritySage will not be liable for any loss or damage, whether direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or otherwise, arising out of or in connection with your use of, or reliance on, any information on the Site, including loss of data, revenue, profits or business, or costs associated with a security incident. Further limitations are set out in our Terms & Conditions.

12. Contact us

If you have questions about this Disclaimer, please contact us: