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+<!--
+SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0
+SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2025-2026 Jonathan D.A. Jewell <j.d.a.jewell@open.ac.uk>
+-->
+
+# Security Policy
+
+**The security policy for this repository lives in [`SECURITY.adoc`](SECURITY.adoc).**
+
+Please read that file. It is the authoritative document and covers the GitHub
+Security Advisories workflow, the response timeline, and the coordinated
+disclosure policy. See also [`SECURITY-ADVISORIES.adoc`](SECURITY-ADVISORIES.adoc).
+
+## Why this file exists
+
+This estate writes prose in AsciiDoc, so every community-health document here is
+`.adoc` — `README`, `CONTRIBUTING`, `CODE_OF_CONDUCT`, `GOVERNANCE` and
+`SECURITY` alike. That is a deliberate convention, not an omission.
+
+Several tools nonetheless look for the literal filename `SECURITY.md` and
+report the policy as missing when they do not find it:
+
+- `hypatia/scorecard/SecurityPolicy` and `hypatia/cicd_rules/missing_requirement`
+  raise code-scanning alerts against this repository
+- `.github/workflows/scorecard-enforcer.yml`'s `check-critical` job runs
+  `if [ ! -f "SECURITY.md" ]` and **fails on every push** without it
+
+This pointer satisfies those literal filename checks without duplicating the
+policy text, so there is exactly one source of truth. Do not copy the policy
+into this file — it will drift.
+
+The alternative fix would be to teach the Hypatia rule and the enforcer script
+to accept `SECURITY.adoc`. That is the more consistent long-term answer and is
+worth doing, but it changes two pieces of shared infrastructure rather than
+adding one pointer file.