A lot of the classic Unix security advice is pretty outdated. For example the idea that someone getting "root" access is worse than someone gaining "ssp" access

A lot of the classic Unix security advice is pretty outdated. For example the idea that someone getting "root" access is worse than someone gaining "ssp" access. Everything interesting is already readable and writable by ssp. The only new thing root can do is destroy stuff that can pretty easily be recreated. The root account is still useful to prevent ssp from accidentally screwing things up, but as a security measure it's pointless in many cases.