HackWatch Editorial Policy

Source standards

• Primary sources are preferred: vendor advisories, CERT notices, government guidance, court records, official incident statements and named researcher reports.
• Secondary sources may support context, but they should not replace a primary record when the article makes a factual incident claim.
• Weak, anonymous or derivative claims are either excluded, clearly qualified or held for additional review before publication.
• High-impact alerts should include visible source dates, corroborating source count and a last-verification date when the data is available.

Fact-checking process

Each article is reviewed for source quality, topical relevance, duplicate overlap, severity, affected users and response value. When several sources describe the same incident, HackWatch prefers one maintained canonical article over several thin rewrites.

Editors separate confirmed facts from developing claims, avoid overstating exploitation when evidence is weak and update incident status when new vendor, CERT or researcher guidance changes the practical risk.

Correction policy

Accuracy matters more than speed. If a published article contains an error, HackWatch corrects the article after verifying the change and, when appropriate, updates the visible article context so readers understand what changed.

Correction requests should include the article URL, disputed claim, proposed correction and supporting source. Send requests to [email protected].

Independence statement

Advertising, sponsorship and commercial partnerships do not determine what HackWatch covers, how conclusions are written or whether an article is updated. Sponsored content and commercial placements must be clearly labeled and handled separately from editorial review.

AI disclosure

HackWatch may use automation and AI-assisted tools to help monitor public sources, group related incidents, prepare drafts, summarize source material and improve editorial workflows. Human editorial review remains responsible for publication decisions, factual framing, corrections and final article quality.

AI tools are not treated as sources. Claims must be grounded in public records, expert review, official advisories or other verifiable material before they are published as facts.

Update policy

Cyber incidents change quickly. HackWatch updates articles when exploit status, remediation advice, affected products, exposed data, recovery guidance or source chronology materially changes.

When an incident evolves, HackWatch prefers updating the strongest canonical article instead of publishing near-duplicate articles that fragment the source trail.