Insufficient Technical Documentation

Insufficient documentation creates a major maintenance burden and indirectly harms security. When developers or security consultants can't quickly understand how a system is built and functions, they spend excessive time reverse-engineering it instead of efficiently finding and fixing vulnerabilities. This delay increases the window of exposure for potential flaws. For hardware, the absence of formal engineering artifacts—like HDLs, netlists, or Bills of Materials—makes post-manufacture verification nearly impossible. Without these references, you cannot reliably confirm that the design operates within specifications, is free from unexpected behavior, or meets security and safety tolerances.