Sectors
One ruler, five readings.
The operational ruler covers 15 sectors in the engine taxonomy. Five of them have a reading of their own here, chosen because they concentrate the decisions that reach GWK. The rest take part in comparisons but have no page.
Cohorts
What separates one sector from another
Not organization size, nor the security budget. It is data shelf life: the longer a piece of information must stay secret, the greater the chance that the cryptography protecting it today will not protect it through that whole term.On the operational ruler, the median confidentiality horizon ranges from 0.21 to 0.96 across sectors: the highest is 4.5 times the lowest.
IEQ median by sector
98.1Government7,203 companies · Government · CriticalSecrecy lasting decades, long procurement cycles, and critical infrastructure: why the public sector concentrates the highest structural exposure on the ruler.94.8Healthcare10,495 companies · Healthcare · CriticalMedical records do not expire, devices outlive their software cycles, and interoperability multiplies the surface: the structure of exposure in healthcare.87.5Industry14,958 companies · Critical industry · CriticalIntellectual property with decades of value, operational technology that cannot stop, and a manufacturer chain that sets the possible pace of migration.66.3Finance7,574 companies · Finance · HighData that must stay secret for decades, legacy that does not migrate by configuration, and a third-party chain that carries part of the exposure.34.7Technology8,236 companies · SaaS · LowThe lowest exposure among the five sectors with their own page, with an observable surface on par with the rest. What lowers the result is the data horizon.The three numbers on this site, and why they differ
- Five: sectors with a reading of their own on this site, by editorial choice, not a property of the ruler.
- 15: sectors in the engine taxonomy, which is the operational ruler comparisons are made against.
- Seventeen: sectors in IEQ Technical Report 2026-S1, published on Zenodo under an open license. A different collection, cutoff, and taxonomy.
What this comparison is measured against
- Ruler generated
- October 7, 2026
- Population
- 80,182 companies
- Sectors
- 15 sectors in the engine taxonomy
- Anonymity floor
- K = 30
Limits of the comparison
- The ruler is a static reference base, not a continuous measurement: there is no automatic update between one run and the next.
- Comparison is always against anonymous aggregates, never against another organization's individual result.
- A public-mode result does not compare to a complete-mode result, because the two readings start from different kinds of evidence.
Want to see where your organization sits on its sector's scale?
Send the domain. The comparison uses the same ruler and cutoff date as these medians.