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> The correct security design is that when things aren't secure you fail entirely. Yikes, this is extremely wrong. Security failures should be proportional to

by mlthoughts2018 6y ago

> The correct security design is that when things aren't secure you fail entirely. Yikes, this is extremely wrong. Security failures should be proportional to the actual cost and consequences. On top of this, you can’t just fail systems in a business. You’ll lose all your customers and go bankrupt. On the other hand, you _can_ allow security vulnerabilities to continue existing. Sometimes you might lose customers or face legal consequences, so you might _have to_ address those security situations, but they are in the rare minority of all security issues overall, many of which you just need to apply expected value thinking towards and treat like any other trade-off. Security is a resource to be traded off against other concerns, not an absolute necessity.

panta 6y ago
You are right in that security is a trade-off, but a security vulnerability should be considered almost as a failed system from a business perspective imho, because sooner or later it will turn into one. If you architect your systems to fail when not secure, you should detect the problem (and fix it) even before going live in production. It’s the fail fast, fail early strategy.
tialaramex 6y ago
> Security failures should be proportional to the actual cost and consequences. That's wonderful for Nostradamus, but everybody else is obliged to operate without knowledge of the future. What will the actual consequences be of bad guys being able to send email from the VP Asia Pacific's account to the CFO's office five minutes before close of business? Maybe nothing right? Or maybe an "urgent cash payment" of $48M to secure a take over deal vanishes into a maze of international accounts never to be recovered... Security is a special problem because you have unknown sentient adversaries. You completely lack intelligence about the adversary because you don't even know who they are. Don't think about security decisions the way you'd think about decisions like whether to hire a back-up venue in case the company picnic is rained off.

panta 6y ago

You are right in that security is a trade-off, but a security vulnerability should be considered almost as a failed system from a business perspective imho, because sooner or later it will turn into one. If you architect your systems to fail when not secure, you should detect the problem (and fix it) even before going live in production. It’s the fail fast, fail early strategy.

tialaramex 6y ago

> Security failures should be proportional to the actual cost and consequences. That's wonderful for Nostradamus, but everybody else is obliged to operate without knowledge of the future. What will the actual consequences be of bad guys being able to send email from the VP Asia Pacific's account to the CFO's office five minutes before close of business? Maybe nothing right? Or maybe an "urgent cash payment" of $48M to secure a take over deal vanishes into a maze of international accounts never to be recovered... Security is a special problem because you have unknown sentient adversaries. You completely lack intelligence about the adversary because you don't even know who they are. Don't think about security decisions the way you'd think about decisions like whether to hire a back-up venue in case the company picnic is rained off.