IT Security 
IT Security Meta
After 242 days in Beta, we now have over 3000 users and an active community of security professionals, hobbyists and specialists providing input, answers, moderation, blog posts and their own time to make the site a global success.
Congratulations to all the members – your effort has paid off, and today we joined 27 other official sites in the Stack Exchange network, and graduate as a fully fledged member. We’re excited to see the new visual design by @Jin (with comments and ideas from many of our core contributors) that permeates all aspects of the new site and blog. Various people see various things in it – the noble and powerful lion (Aslan?) on the great shield of security, wings for swiftness and protection, the various flanking maneuvers and battles raging in the background. As per the other StackExchange sites, you will even be able to get t-shirts and other logoware soon.
What does graduation mean?
A design, official inclusion into StackExchange – statistics, API tools etc. A greater presence online.
Reputation and Privileges
Private and public beta sites operate under reduced reputation requirements. This allows young sites to grow rapidly. However, when the site graduates from beta, the privilege levels return to their normal levels.
| Private Beta | Public Beta | Graduated | |
| 1 | 15 | 15 | Vote Up |
| 15 | 15 | 15 | Flag Offensive |
| 1 | 50 | 50 | Leave Comments |
| 1 | 100 | 100 | Edit Wiki Posts |
| 1 | 125 | 125 | Vote Down |
| 1 | 150 | 150 | Create New Tags |
| 1 | 200 | 200 | Retag Questions |
| 500 | 750 | 2000 | Edit Posts |
| 1 | 500 | 3000 | Vote to Close |
| 2000 | 2000 | 10000 | Access Mod Tools |
This means 19 of you have lost ‘Edit Posts’ privileges until you get over 2000, and 51 have lost ‘Vote to Close’ until you reach 3000. Don’t worry – you can always flag issues and a mod will take care of it. Once you reach the normal thresholds your privileges will automatically return.
But what is the IT Security Stack Exchange for?
From the FAQ:
IT Security – Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics include, but are not limited to:
- web app hardening
- network security
- phishing
- risk management
- policies
- penetration testing
- security tools
- using cryptography*
Celebrate success
Let your colleagues know about the site and the blog – we already get around 1000 visits a day, but the more people who come, the wider the pool of expertise we can bring in.
We also have a twitter hashtag – #stacksecurity – so feel free to communicate to the twitterverse to let people know that answers to a lot of security questions are here.
*Also, we have just heard that a closely related site, the Cryptography Stack Exchange, has just reached 100% commit so will be entering private Beta now. While Security Stack Exchange will continue to have as one of our disciplines the understanding and management of risk in crypto implementations, here we steer clear of the mathematical issues and concentrate on security and risk.
Isn’t the change in the amount of reputation required for access to mod tools a bit much dosen’t that leave us with like 4 moderators as opposed to the 20 we had during the beta?
Congratulations!! Champagne!! Hope it will continue to run well in the few next weeks 😛
@MarkDavidson – “Access to Mod Tools” does not make a user equivalent to a real moderator. It just gives them a better ability to find posts that may be in need of corrective action, via the privileges (close vote, edit, etc) they’ve already earned. Only the SEI-designated and/or community-elected “diamond moderators” can do real moderation, like single-handedly close/delete posts and such. Based on what I see at other SE sites of comparable size to ours, we’ll probably only have three “diamond moderators” for awhile.
Congrats!
Correction: It seems that, at the same level you acquire access to Moderator Tools, you also get the right to vote for post deletion. Again though, this doesn’t put the “mod hammer” in your tool belt – you can only vote for deletion under certain circumstances, and it takes at least three votes to delete a question. http://security.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools Even the venerable “trusted users” with 20k+ reputation are still only granted enhanced voting privileges – one must have the diamond to use any “real” moderator powers.