Decision LighthouseDecision Lighthouse documentation
Open Decision Lighthouse
For all Decision Lighthouse users

Quick Start Guide

Complete your first security decision assessment, from setup through an evidence-backed report, in about 15–30 minutes.

Decision Lighthouse helps you validate security decisions with structured context, adaptive questions, behavioral analysis, and an implementation plan.

Before you begin

  • Know which security decision you want to evaluate.
  • Have your organization’s constraints ready: budget, team capacity, deadlines, regulations, and existing tools.
  • For a vendor comparison, prepare a shortlist of 2–6 options.
  • Use your organization login. If you were invited, complete the Auth0 onboarding flow before opening Decision Lighthouse.

Your first assessment

  1. Open Decision Lighthouse. On the Start screen, choose Get Started. The sidebar unlocks one stage at a time.
  2. Optional: add a Behavioral Profile. Import an existing profile, create one, or choose Skip to Decision Setup. A profile gives the interview more organizational context, but it is not required.
  3. Set the Decision Context. Enter the organization name, select the role/persona answering, choose a decision, and select the objectives that matter. For a custom decision, describe the question you need to answer. Add a vendor shortlist when the scenario asks for one.
  4. Start the Interview. Answer one question at a time. Be concrete: include numbers, owners, timelines, current tools, and known constraints. Use Next to continue and Previous to review an answer.
  5. Complete the Interview. When enough context is collected, choose Complete Interview. You can export the interview Q&A as JSON before continuing if you need a working copy.
  6. Generate the Report. Use Generate Report in Quick Actions or open Report and start synthesis. Report generation normally takes about 60–90 seconds.
  7. Act on the result. Review the recommendation, confidence, trade-offs, risks, success metrics, implementation plan, interventions, control mappings, and Gantt timeline.
Good answers make better decisions. “We need better monitoring” is a starting point. “Our three-person SOC handles 2,000 alerts a day, has a 45-minute response target, and must support SOC 2 evidence by Q3” gives Decision Lighthouse useful decision evidence.

What to review first

Recommendation

Start with the Decision Validation Layer and confidence information. Confidence reflects evidence coverage, not a guarantee that the recommendation is correct.

Trade-offs

Read the Primary Trade-Off Narrative and Comparative Option Matrix before sharing a decision with stakeholders.

Execution

Use the Implementation Plan and Gantt Chart to turn the recommendation into phases, owners, dependencies, and timing.

Challenge the result

Review the Risk Register, Assumptions, Gaps & Confidence, and detected Biases. Unknown information should remain a question to resolve.

Two specialized workflows

  • Vulnerability Management: choose a VM policy, provide analysis context and a vulnerability list, answer three prioritization questions, and review or approve the ranked remediation list.
  • Strategic Plan Prioritization: provide a plan, verify extracted initiatives, answer the bounded-choice interview, and generate a ranking once context is complete. Save is opt-in and retains only the approved derived ranking.

Need help?

Open the in-app Help Center for searchable articles. For deeper walkthroughs, continue to the Full User Guide. Administrators can use the Organization Admin Guide, and platform operators can use the Super Admin Guide.