Good security review depends on knowing which signals matter. Most false confidence comes from watching the wrong things: style, naming, or superficial cleanup instead of access control, data flow, and failure behavior.
Signals worth attention
- Auth logic changes
- New database queries or permissions
- Secret handling and logging
- External calls and webhook processing
- Fallbacks that fail open
Signals that are often noise
- Formatting-only changes
- Pure renames
- Trivial refactors with no behavior change
- Style disagreements that do not affect runtime behavior
What the reviewer should ask
- What new trust boundary appears here?
- Who can influence this input?
- What happens when this path fails?
- Could this leak data or weaken access control?
Why this helps
Review gets much better when the team agrees on the signals that matter. That keeps the conversation focused on real risk and reduces the chance that important issues get buried under irrelevant feedback.